Everyone loves...

Alright I'll admit there are many little things in life which drive me crazy. Some say I have OCD as I can't stand the smallest thing out of place, never mind the little idiosyncrasies like counting the number of times I stir my beverage when adding sweetener. Many have noticed my grammatical pet peeves. There are many 'pet peeves' which clog up my daily life and can admittedly oft times impact my tenuous grasp on sanity.

Let's begin, for illustrative purpose, with grammar horrors. I don't actually expect every individual to consistently use proper grammar. No one is perfect but there are little things which we all learn early on that I think should stick. Examples include the differences between to, too, and two, our and are, or there, their, and they're, or even, though rare, seen and saw. One I have only recently become aware of, many don't seem to know there's a difference between then and than.

Admittedly, these are errors you will only find when one is writing. It would seem I become particularly incensed when the error is spoken in radio or television. Enough so that someone who I never really thought paid much attention once asked if I had seen my 'favorite' Easter commercial that season.

For years Cadbury ran a commercial at the end of which they used the tag line "nobody knows Easter better than him." Really? How many people had the opportunity to correct that copy before the commercial was made? Does no one proof read these things? How many years did they have to correct the error before they quit using that commercial all together? This type of mistake seems rampant in advertising, and journalism.

It seems to me by the time you've reached a stage that you're writing ad copy, or a journalism piece, you should have had more opportunity to learn the intricacies of the language and by example should be encouraging young people to use those skills themselves. If they constantly hear misuse from every media outlet why should they try themselves to speak or write properly?

But I digress, the issue that set me to writing today is the blatant overuse and misuse of the phrase 'everyone loves,' or 'everybody loves,' alternately, 'who doesn't love.'

While I understand the user feels strongly about whatever it is they're touting I can generally find at least one who would disagree. I do not love burgers, ice cream, chocolate, or pizza, nor have I ever even so much as liked Raymond, in fact the few times I saw the show I thought it was horrible and Raymond was probably the biggest reason.

The problem with speaking in generalities is much like the problem with stereotypes, while there may be a reason in the minds of some for their use, they are all too frequently inaccurate.