Today I’d like to introduce a guest author who may be writing on this blog from time to time. Please make the acquaintance of The Grammar Grouch.
She lives inside my head, keeping up a constant mumbling monologue about the decline of the English language – “lol, thx FB!”
She laughs at the stupidity of misused homophones – “We got a peak at the peek as we thru a glance threw the window.”
(And we’re not even going to talk about how and when, thru threw out through!)
She is most irritated at ignorance of basic punctuation. I usually try to keep her at bay, but sometimes she will not be silenced. Up she jumps, with teeth bared, screaming, “You never, never, never, use an apostrophe to pluralize!”
I’d like to say she is my alter ego, but in reality maybe she’s my ego. I know there can be a good deal of smug pride in believing you know something better than someone else. And I also know that “pride goes before destruction.”
I make typos every day on my Facebook comments, and when I’m texting. And in a recent blog post I noticed several mistakes minutes after I hit the publish button. (Don’t these people know how to proofread their work?)
And I know very well that the rules of grammar don’t allow for a sentence to begin with And.
Or how about ending a sentence with those three ellipsis-ish dots…
By the way, when did ish become a word?
And so The Grammar Grouch will come with tongue in cheek, and fun in her heart, but holding up a tiny little standard of hope for the preservation of our beautiful language.
“She who the pen of heaven will bear / Should be as careful as severe / Pattern in herself to know / when to stand, and what to let go.” (Thanks, Will!)
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Welcome! My name is Andrena Paladini and this is a blog about family and love and faith and fun. I call it Paladini Potpie because a potpie is like an adventure in a crust. You never know what might come up, but it’s always going to be good!
Think of the best potpie you’ve ever eaten…hot flaky crust holding a rich savory sauce and all kinds of pieces of meat and vegetables…and who knows what?
As a family, we’ve chosen to live within the parameters of God’s love and protection. This is the crust of our Paladini Potpie. The crust never changes. Within this crust, the savory sauce of family love binds it all together. That is also fairly constant. But beyond the crust and the sauce we can add just about anything!
Good ideas come our way and we’ve adopted and adapted them to add to what John calls our treasure box of memories. These stories and ideas from John’s treasure box of memories are the ingredients I’m putting into our Paladini Potpie.
(Okay, so this ridiculous mixing of metaphors about treasure boxes and potpies is exactly what I’m talking about. Silly and ungrammatically correct. But both illustrations work… so we’ll mix them together and it’ll be just fine!)
John and I have been married for 30 years. Our children have wonderfully doubled in number since David married Amanda, Monica married Dan, and Matthew married Sarah.
And the newest little treats that have been added to our potpie are six adorable grandchildren - Ethan, Angelina, Nathan, Audrey, Maleia and Caleb!
I hope you’ll subscribe to my Paladini Potpie blog, and keep up with all the fun new ingredients I add. Hopefully you’ll enjoy our stories and ideas, and find something you’ll want to put into your own potpie! Bon appétit!
Paladini Potpie 
July 11, 2011 at 9:16 am
sounds like a fit of pique to me. 😉
And the reason people tend to start sentences with ‘and’ is probably because they’ve spent too much time reading the Bible. Every third sentence in that book starts with ‘and’. Where was God’s editor? I mean, really!
July 11, 2011 at 9:31 am
Emily, you’ve already had a peek at my pique from time to time! Love your comments!
July 11, 2011 at 5:28 pm
hey now…..
July 11, 2011 at 5:33 pm
Well you non-native-English-speaking folk have a pass… 🙂
July 12, 2011 at 4:13 am
I love your honesty, fighting that pride-demon myself. Not in the grammatical arena (although the inability to remember to/too, there/their/they’re etc as well as homophones does set the teeth on edge sometimes 😀 ). I am one of the offenders of the three dots however….!! lol What a great post.
July 12, 2011 at 5:17 am
Thanks for commenting, Robin! And thanks for the compliment.
If you read many of my posts your will see…many…many…many…dots… And you will see quite a few sentences beginning with “And” (Check out Emily’s comment 🙂
Those are some of my most often-used “punctuations” that would have been frowned upon by my grammar teachers, but I allowed them when I was teaching my kids. I was kind of poking fun at myself for bringing them up in this post.
Misused apostrophes and homophones are what drive me crazy. 🙂
July 12, 2011 at 9:05 am
the apostrophes and homophones – those drive me insane as well, even the ESL speaker that I am. bahhahaha….how grammatically incorrect is my sentence. EAT THAT!
July 12, 2011 at 9:14 am
🙂
February 10, 2012 at 12:13 pm
Hmmm. Now I’m to/too/two self conscious to leave a comment. (Wait! I’ll BRB. I need to check the spelling of “conscious) :0
-Sally
February 10, 2012 at 12:40 pm
Sally, when I was in grade school I went pretty far in one of those big spelling bees and conscious was the word that fianlly got me out. 🙂 It’s so nice to hear from you!