We've just returned from a day in Moruya - of which I'll tell you later - and cleared the mail box on the way back home. One letter was from council telling me that the nine lots on which "Riverbend" is situated are now worth $1,554,000 and I owe them $5,271.80 in rates. PHEW!!!
The other letter was from an old friend from my New Guinea days who'd sent me this clipping from "The Weekend Australian Magazine" with the notation, "P.G. This will interest you. Cheers." What I found even more interesting was that he hadn't given up on me despite my annoying habit of correction other people's grammar. As I explained in the heading, my life is a constant battle between wanting to correct grammar and wanting to make friends.
Mind you, there's now evidence that such people are actually ill, suffering from a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder which researchers are calling Grammatical Pedantry Syndrome, or GPS.
I'm not all that much into grammar; it's more the wrong punctuation that gets me (apostrophes are my particular hot button). I mean, punctuation can really change a sentence. Consider these two examples: 1) I drank all the wine; 2) I drank all the punctuation.
Reading back over this post, I'm not sure where I'm going with all this, but my GPS (Grammatical Pedantry Syndrome) should get me there.
