The Heaviest Things

September 30, 2016 / davethe10r / 0 Comments

Spotted: 9/26/2016
Creator: Motivational(?)

Oh geez. A friend sent me this one, and quite frankly, there’s a whole lot of WTF in this meme. I’m pretty sure that was the point, but still … thanks for nothing, man.

First, let’s address the text. Major required changes include capitalizing the first word, adding a period at the end of the sentence, and spelling out “Anonymous” instead of using an abbreviation. The greater-than sign (>)doesn’t really do much for the quote, so I would get rid of that. Also, since we apparently have a quotation here (albeit an unattributed one), let’s add some quotation marks, shall we?

I’m not going to address the use of feels as a plural noun. Whatever floats your boat.

Attribution is an interesting topic. According to the English Language & Usage forum over at StackExchange, the proper punctuation mark for citing a quote is actually the “horizontal bar,” (U+2015), which is sometimes called the “quotation dash.” Most people have never even heard of the horizontal bar, so the em-dash (U+2014) is an acceptable alternative. The more you know, right?

I was curious about and the image. I’ve seen Pepe the Frog before, of course, and understand the origins of his starring role in the meme. It’s interesting that Pepe’s image was recently reclassified as a “hate symbol” by the Anti-Defamation League. I don’t know whether this meme predates that or not. This picture looks more loving than hateful, so I’m not going to worry about it.

But seriously—doesn’t it look like the white guy is feeling up the frog? I assumed, when I first saw the meme, that this was some kind of spotting technique for people doing squats. To confirm my hunch, I did a Google image search for “spotting for squats.” Guess what I found?

That’s literally the very first image in the search results. Let’s go to Photoshop….

So while we have no idea where the quote came from, we can be pretty sure about the origins of the image. The spotter in the photo is even wearing white!

My last criticism is about the graphic format of the original meme. Any expert will tell you the best aspect ratio for posts on most social media platforms is squarish or just slightly horizontal. Of all of the things that are terrible about the meme above, its composition is one of the worst.

I’m really not recommending that anyone share this meme. It’s weird and creepy and potentially offensive. But if you must share an image of a poorly drawn white guy feeling up a symbol of hate above a barely intelligible quotation that can’t even be attributed to anyone, here you go. Knock yourself out.

Just Be Nice

September 30, 2016 / davethe10r / 0 Comments

Spotted: 9/30/2016
Creator: Inspirational Quotes Genie

Almost every day we see pleasant sentiments in memes that are spoiled by grammatical problems. At the risk of hurting the feelings of whoever created this one (after all, I don’t know what’s going on in his or her personal life), I’ll tackle a few issues today.

First of all, people have lives. The use of the plural possessive pronoun their is a good indication that life should be plural as well. Also, the comma in the original here is a comma splice, meaning it’s joining two sentences that really should stand alone. I think the meme reads better with the comma after lives, a period after nice, with a new sentence beginning at it’s.

Let’s give credit to the meme’s author for using it’s correctly (as a contraction of it and is) and the correct form of their. Yay, team!

There’s another possible way to punctuate this same text:

You seriously have no idea what people are dealing with in their personal lives. So just be nice—it’s that simple.

I’m sure there are people who would say, “You can’t do that, because it’s wrong to begin a sentence with a conjunction.” Those people can go soak their heads.

You’ll also note that I marked “Type ‘Yes’ if you agree” as a mistake. Sure—here in America we would use double quotation marks instead of single quotes in this context, but that’s not the problem here. The problem is with “like farming” (or, in this case, comment farming).

According to this article on Forbes.com:

How are scammers exploiting “like-farming?” Scammers post positive stories on Facebook to garner a large number of “likes” and “shares.” And the more engagement a post receives, the higher it will appear at the top of the News Feed — which is how the scam gets a lot of attention. When the scammer posts a story, it appears harmless….

Once a certain threshold is met, the scammer will completely change the post or Facebook Page into products that receive commissions or request credit card numbers. “They may also sell the page and information that was collected from the ‘likes’ with a more direct threat of gaining access in an attempt to gather credit card numbers that may be stored for certain Facebook apps, passwords or other personal information,” said the Better Business Bureau in a new release last year. “New pages created from gathered data may be used to spread malicious software to compromise data or spread malware. The best approach is to think before you like.”

Beware any meme that tells you “Like for Yes, share for No” or some such nonsense. More than likely (heh) it’s somebody trying to build momentum to push a product, company or organization that you might not agree with. Resist the urge!

Here’s a version of the meme that you can share with a clear conscience:

Blocked on Facebook

September 27, 2016 / davethe10r / 0 Comments

Spotted: 9/26/2016
Creator: Tight Ministry/More Truth

Whoever created this one almost got it right. The apostrophes are all in the right place. The statement is entirely grammatical, and there’s even a period at the end of the sentence! But there are two glaring errors.

First of all, it’s FACEBOOK and not FACE BOOK. That’s the obvious one. Second of all, the comma after INDICATION doesn’t make any sense. Sure, there are rules about commas, and I could cite a few here. But just read it out loud, pausing at the comma, and you’ll see that it doesn’t feel right.

I moved the comma to the appropriate spot and added another one after FACEBOOK. You’re welcome. Here’s the version you should share:

Turned Out OK

September 22, 2016 / davethe10r / 0 Comments

Spotted: 9/22/2016
Creator: Appalachian Memes

What’s wrong here? Let me count the ways:

• Under most style guides, numbers less than 10 should be spelled out. I changed 3 to three and removed the extra had.
• An ampersand (&) is almost never appropriate in regular text. The only real appropriate context would be a company name (as in Barnes & Noble) or in certain abbreviations (like AT&T and R&D). Otherwise, just spell it out.
• To maintain the parallel structure of the list, I changed school started to started school. That’s better, isn’t it?
• There’s no reason to use scare quotes around The Pledge. And on first mention, using the entire title is probably appropriate.
• It’s just a quibble, but I think onto works better than using.
• When using an ellipses (…) in the middle of a sentence, most style guides say you need a space before and after the punctuation mark.
• Sorry, folks, but multiple exclamation points (!!!) don’t necessarily create additional emphasis. Instead, they simply make your writing look more amateurish. If one isn’t enough, go back and revise the sentence to make it more exciting.

Here’s a revised version of the meme that just might be more literate than necessary for a group called “Appalachian Memes.”

Lady Warrior

September 21, 2016 / davethe10r / 0 Comments

Spotted: 9/21/2016
Creator: Delicious Wicked Desires

First of all, why can’t you do both?

Second of all, why are independent and dependent clauses so difficult to understand? The question at the top of the meme is fine if it stands alone, but the question really continues at the bottom of the meme. It’s all one sentence (an independent and dependent clause), and yet it’s punctuated as a question and a statement.

I joined them up with ellipses, fixed the capitalization and put the question mark where it belongs. Use this version:

Bowl of Skittles

September 20, 2016 / davethe10r / 0 Comments

Spotted: 9/20/2016
Creator: @DonaldJTrumpJr

Now, I don’t care much about politics. (Also, the Earth is flat.) But if you’re putting out memes in support of your candidate (even if the candidate happens to be your daddy), its probably best if you get things grammatically correct.

The “bowl of Skittles” meme pushed out yesterday by Donald Trump, Jr., has (as of this writing) 14,391 retweets and 22,245 likes. Of those fans and sharers, nobody seems to have noticed that there are several pretty glaring errors in the text of the meme.

The obvious error is that the entire content in the red box needs to be one sentence. That’s because beginning the first sentence with If turns it into a dependent clause. It has to have an independent clause to make it work. Combining those two sentences (with a comma in between) fixes the problem.

The other issue is the word skittles. Admittedly, there are two definitions of skittles that don’t require capitalization:

1. a game played, chiefly in Britain, with wooden pins, typically nine in number, set up at the end of an alley to be bowled down with a wooden ball or disk.
2. a pin used in the game of skittles.

The photo used in the meme negates either of these possibilities. You can even see the S on some of the candies. As a businessman, either Trump Jr. or Trump Sr. should be fully aware of the importance of intellectual property—especially registered trademarks. After all, the US Patent and Trademark Office lists trademark registrations for Trump (86817223, 86724574, 86969629), Ivanka Trump (87166216, 87166298, 87172872), Trumpublican (87097920), Trumpocrat (87044834) and a whole menagerie of other word marks.

Skittles is a registered trademark of Mars Incorporated, and should always be capitalized when used to refer to the multi-colored candies made by that company. To be on the safe side (since the brand is undoubtedly used here without permission), it’s probably best to also include the registered trademark symbol (®) to make it clear that the mark is controlled by someone other than Donald Trump (Jr. or Sr.) or the various Trumpublicans and Trumpocrats.

So, as a public service, here’s a revised version of the much-liked, much-shared Skittles meme:

I Mean Seriously

September 20, 2016 / davethe10r / 0 Comments

Spotted: 9/20/2016
Creator: @bitter sweet sarcasm_

This meme is being fixed by request. The problems here are multiple and various.

I mean seriously is a fragment—not even an actual sentence. But it could be interpreted as an exclamation, so that’s how I recast it in the fixed meme. Based on that interpretation, it needs both a comma and an exclamation point.

Nowadays is a word. Now a days makes no sense at all. Naturally, in order to fix this, I had to reflow the text below it.

The final “sentence” is another fragment, which only makes sense if it’s connected to the previous one, which is actually a question. So of course, I had to join up the clauses, give it a comma and (most importantly) a question mark. I could’ve used an em-dash instead of a comma.

So here’s the deal. This is undoubtedly something somebody would say. People talk like this. But it’s almost always possible to punctuate real-sounding speech in such a way that it’s grammatically correct. It’s often a challenge, but it can be done.

I was originally going to change unkept to unkempt, but the original actually works:

• unkept: 2. not tidy or cared for.
• unkempt: (especially of a person) having an untidy or disheveled appearance.

From the context, I’d say either word works.

I won’t venture further comment on beards and vaginas, but if you want to make such a comment, I’d recommend that you use my version of this meme:

Sometimes You Just Need

September 20, 2016 / davethe10r / 0 Comments

Spotted: 9/19/2016
Creator: Word Porn

Okay, this one is tricky, but the people over at Word Porn really should know better. The problem I’d like to address is in the final line, where it says  you need to “give into sadness.”

Give in is a phrasal verb, which is one of the trickiest parts of English. A phrasal verb consists of a verb and either a preposition (more common) or an adverb (less common). Usage can be really tricky. For example, some phrasal verbs can be split up. You could say, “Be careful not to burn down the house.” Equally correct is, “Be careful not to burn the house down.” Though it’s not a hard and fast rule, you can generally only split phrasal verbs that have a direct object.

Since give in is a phrasal verb, it’s incorrect to combine the preposition particle in with the to that precedes sadness. It all depends on how you interpret the sentence:

• [give in] to sadness
• give [in to] sadness

The first is clearly correct, given the phrasal nature of give in. Whoever created this meme went with the second interpretation, which completely changes the meaning.

I see this a lot in tech documentation. The phrasal verb log in is very often misrepresented in sentences like, “Next, log into the system with your user name and password.” It really should be “log in to the system.”

Also, I suspect that “You need to learn now to pick yourself up” also contains a typo. I would guess that now actually should’ve been how. But it works in its current form.

Here’s the corrected meme:

My Wife

September 19, 2016 / davethe10r / 0 Comments

Spotted: 9/19/2016
Creator: Ironman Outdoors

Sadly, this mistake is way too common. Most people don’t know that “everyday” and “every day” have different contextual uses. But they do. Here’s the deal:

Everyday is an adjective. It’s generally only appropriate to use the one-word version when it directly precedes the noun it modifies, as in “For most people, lunch is an everyday occurrence.”

Every day is an adverbial phrase. As an adverbial, it usually modifies the predicate of a sentence (instead of the subject), as in “Most people have lunch every day.”

If you happen to be a level 6 grammar Nazi, you could make a case for changing the entire second sentence of the meme: “Her love is a gift for which I am thankful every day.” But I won’t go that far.

Here’s the meme from Ironman Outdoors, with the problem all fixed: