It’s National Grammar Day in the USA, and to celebrate, Mark Allen has been running a grammar haiku contest. As he opened it up to entries from across the world, I had a few goes:
Pedants must be told
What they can go and stick their
Prepositions upWe’ll not be so well
Without the apostrophe
He’ll save us from hellDangling oddly
I conjured absurdities
With modifiersPeople shouldn’t say
‘I could care less’ when they mean
‘I could care fewer’
(Many thanks to the several people on Twitter who replied to that last one to tell me that it ought to be ‘couldn’t’. Your sneaky mischief-making/earnest desire to help is much appreciated.)
I didn’t win, although a couple did get honourable mentions. The winners, you see, were really very good indeed. Well done to all and thanks to Mark and the judges.
(I also do limericks. And no, they don’t win competitions either. But I do it out of love, albeit mostly the love of winning free stuff.)
Stroppy Editor 