I posed that question to our readers last month and received some interesting responses. 

Lisa Huetteman, a business coach and consultant in Tampa Bay, FL (www.the-black-diamonsd.com), wrote the following:

My pet peeve is the opposite of your granddaughter's saying, "Me and my girlfriend...." I hate it when people say "...for you and I" or "like you and I" or "between you and I."  

Another one of my pet peeves is "have went."  Oooh, that one is like fingernails on the chalkboard. (I'm dating myself, since chalkboards don't exist anymore.)

And Tim Morrison, a writing coach who resides in Atlanta (www.writechoiceservices.com), had the following comment: 

What I find peculiarly discomfiting are companies that talk about servicing their clients.  I may have missed out on an update from Webster, but my understanding of the word servicing applies to animal husbandry and prostitution.  Businesses should really talk about serving their clients.  Oh, and I know about servicing since I grew up in farm country!

In last month's newsletter, i pointed out that the Lands' End catalog spells its own name incorrectly! It should be Land's End , not Lands' End.

At the suggestion of  Jeff Martin, a CPA here in St. Simons Island, GA, I visited the company's website to get their side of the story. Here it is:

...a lot of people ask why the apostrophe is Lands' End is in the wrong place. There have been some silly explanations along the way, but the truth is, it was a mistake.

In was a typo in our first printed piece, and we couldn't afford to reprint and correct it.

In the years since, the misplaced apostrophe has continued to grace our name and our label. And while it has prompted some raised eyebrows among English teachers, it also sets us apart as a company whose continuing concern for what's best for the customer is unmistakably human.  

How about that for clever damage control: Associate the grammatical error with humanness and call the people who notice it English teachers. But I admire their honesty; at least they owned up to their mistake.

Well, let's not boycott this great catalog for such a trivial grammatical slip-up. But we can learn from their experience that grammatical errors do get noticed, and sometimes they're very difficult to correct!

This short passage contains 6 errors. Below is the corrected version with the changes highlighted: 

My 2010 New Year's Resolutions:

1.      To make fewer written mistakes

2.      To set short and long-term goals

3.      To effect positive change

4.      To write a book

Some explanations pertaining to the numbered items:

1. In general, use less when speaking of quantities (e.g., how much sugar you want in your coffee) and fewer when referring to discrete numbers (e.g., how many cubes of sugar you want in your coffee). 

2. Long term should be hyphenated because it's a compound adjective modifying goals. On the other hand, if the sentence had read "I set goals for the long term," the hyphen would not be needed because long would be an adjective modifying the noun term.

3. Affect means to produce an effect on. Effect, when used as a verb, means to bring about. The latter is the better choice here.

4. "All items in a list should be syntactically alike - that is, all should be noun forms, phrases, full sentences, or whatever the context requires." (Chicago Manual of Style 6.126) Point 4 is incorrectly stated because it does not syntactically agree with the first three. 
   

How did you do on the quiz?

• If you spotted all 6 errors, you're a grammatical genius! 
  

• If you got 4 or more right, you're above average.

• If you got 3 or less right, your not doing to good! (Stay after school and answer the bonus question below.)
  

Bonus question: How many grammatical errors are there in the third bulleted sentence above?

Answer: 4