Caring for the Grammar Purist in Your Life

The Holidays are the hardest time of a year for a grammar purist. It can be especially exhausting to care for the grammar purist in your life as he/she copes with descriptive grammar everywhere. The omnipresence of improper punctuation is also a trigger.

For example, have you ever considered "Season's Greetings" if improperly punctuated? To a grammar purist, this is pure psychological warfare. What if the card were to say Seasons Greetings? As in a plural set of seasons are busily greeting. The grammar purist immediately embarks upon the following journey of images:

As you care for the grammar purist in your life, you may want to note common places where grammar impurity is tolerated, in order to help your purist not have a conniption fit. You may see him/her writhing in pain at the simple opening of a letter. SO many Christmas cards with, for example, "The Higgenbottom's" as return address. THE HIGGENBOTTOMS. PLURAL. NOT POSSESSIVE. You may hear him/her muttering, as he/she reads another Christmas letter ad nauseum:

"It's 'This year was special for my family and ME.' ME. I is not a direct object pronoun or even an indirect object pronoun!!!"

Understand that mumbled grammatical lessons to an unsuspecting or even an invisible audience is normal behavior for a grammar purist, particularly for this time of year. As long as the grammar purist stays in a healthy zone of the didactic, rather than the preachy or even violent, he/she should emerge from the holiday season with sanity intact.

Although difficult to avoid, you should try your best to steer your grammar purist away from shopping malls where signage with grammar impurities run rampant. Lest your grammar purist be compelled to correct every sign hastily printed:

Loving your grammar purist can be a thorny business as you endure their spastic, oftentimes inconsolable tantrums over seemingly inconsequential  matters. However, your abiding is appreciated and will reap plenty of rewards in the new  year when he/she is back to helping you edit your cover letter for that new job you're about to snag. Yay, grammar purity!

New Laws in Kendraspondence, USA

Howdy, all. As the mayor of Kendraspondence, USA, I'm proud of our city council for enacting the following laws. Please take note of any tax consequences as even without prior offense, we will be taxing indiscriminately.

I. Under no circumstances may any citizen or visitor of the municipality begin a sentence, verbal or written, with "Him and I/Her and I/Me and Him/Me and Her." Penalty will be total banishment for 14 days or until proper use of pronouns reinstated.

II. Under no circumstances may any citizen or visitor of the municipality use "I" as an indirect object, such as "It was important to him and I." Penalty will be standing with one's nose in a corner for 45 minutes, or until proper use of direct/indirect objects reinstated.

III. Citizenry who find out the sex of their baby and announce the name of the baby before the baby is born to the world will be given their Christmas presents without any wrapping paper since they are incapable of enjoying surprises. And the mayor will laugh haughtily, as if that were even a punishable crime.

IV. Patrons of restaurants who take calls or text on their cellphones in lieu of showing courtesy to waitstaff will be ejected from their seats and catapulted into a bin of bellybutton lint.

V. Parking in a handicapped spot anywhere in the municipality when no physical handicap restricts a driver in any way will be punishable with a fine of 43,000 hours of community service, assisting handicapped drivers/passengers enter and exit their vehicles in the pouring rain.

We shall keep the new legislative measures to five for the present. In the meantime, we will continue to celebrate weekly hammock days and eat as many antioxidants as our diets and budgets will allow.