Whatever happened to grammar? I turn on the television--the anchors and reporters use bad grammar. Bad grammar is in the newspaper, in magazines, and on signs. Bad grammar is even on NPR, for god's sake. Today, I looked at the stories in a respected electronic literary journal. The first two I looked at had grammatical errors in the opening paragraphs--not as part of dialect--but as narration. One of the authors was a writing teacher; the other had an MFA.

My personal pet peeve is what people have done to the poor adverb. The adverb is supposed to be a rarely used part of speech, and now, it is everywhere. "He'll head up the committee." Up? Why? "I'll print it out." Why out? And if it isn't "up" or "out" that's tacked onto a perfectly good verb, it's "off," as in "She'll copy it off."

Then there's that nasty business about "firstly," "secondly," and "thirdly." Hello! "First," "second," and "third" are already adverbs when used in the ordinal context.

Only a few minutes ago, I heard someone say "...and most importantly..." In that phrase, "important" is already an adverb.

These days, I am surprised when I discover someone whose grammar is correct.

Who said that?!

I. It was I.