"Here, Here" for another Grammar Rant

Strangely this blog is evolving into some kind of personal grammar rant. And I don't even like grammar!

When someone says something you agree with, have you ever said "Here, Here!"? What the heck does that mean? Why would you highlight your location to indicate agreement with another person? Well, you shouldn't.

Technically, what the phrase should say is "Hear, Hear!" Now it makes sense. Someone says something that you agree with and you indicate your support of that point of view by telling other people they should "hear" what has just been said.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about this phrase:
"Hear, hear is an expression used as a short repeated form of hear him, hear him. It represents a listener's agreement with the point being made by a speaker.

It was originally an imperative for directing attention to speakers, and has since been used, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, as "the regular form of cheering in the House of Commons", with many purposes depending on the intonation of its user. Its use in British Parliament is linked to the fact that applause is normally (though not always) verboten in the chambers of the House of Commons and House of Lords.

It is often incorrectly spelled "here here", especially on websites and IM.

The phrase hear him, hear him! was used in Parliament since the late 1600s, and had been reduced to hear! or hear, hear! by the late 1700s."

This was just another little annoyance to me (I would constantly read people saying "Here, here" and make some patronizing mental comment about their idiocy) until recently.

I was reading a novel by one of my favorite authors, Robin Cook (I've always enjoyed medical thrillers) and on page 288 of the hardcover 1st edition, I ran into this:

"Here, here!" Shawn said in agreement, motioning with his scotch as if making a toast.

Come on, really? Robin Cook? In all fairness, it may be the work of some ignorant editor on the staff of Putnam's books. But seriously, none of the editors on their staff caught this gaffe?

"There, there!"

You must not of learned much!

Okay, I decided to post a quick note to this dormant blog about a pet peeve I have that today boiled over into active frustration. For some reason, today I saw THREE separate instances of people using "of" instead of "have." It drives me NUTS even though I realize how irrational the reaction is.

I am guessing that it is because of the SOUND of the word, people have written things like "I must of learned something in class," or "You should of come over yesterday," or "You must of stayed out late last night."

What is the deal here? Surely when you write it you realize how stupid it looks and sounds? If you can't figure out when to use "have," just go ahead and use a contraction like "must've" or "should've" even though I'm not a huge fan of that usage.

Phew! That feels better ...

And while we're at it, people PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE ...

This post cannot peek your interest, but it certainly can pique your interest.

Well Writing Is Important A Lot Or Not?

In the midst of grading numerous student reports, I started wondering about a lot of things related to writing. First, I wonder what makes someone a good writer as opposed to a poor writer. I always thought that my ability to write (fairly) clearly was because I was a very avid reader when I was a kid. Although I still don't know a past participle from a dangling vertebrae, I can instantly read a sentence and realize that it is awkwardly worded. Rewriting a sentence to flow better has always been easy for me. But, my son who is also a very avid reader still writes and speaks using convoluted and grammatically incorrect sentences.

I am grading reports written by college students (all juniors or seniors) and I am appalled at the astonishingly poor writing on many of them. I wonder whether they realize how much writing style influences their grade. Of course, content is critical. That's a given. But even good content, when poorly communicated can dramatically affect their grade. I even explicitly told them this in class. When I am grading report after report, I can feel my frustration rise rapidly when I encounter a report that is poorly organized (jumping from topic to topic with no sense of organization), has lousy sentence structure (convoluted, grammatically incorrect sentences that I have to read three times to understand), and lacks a clear narrative. As I sense my frustration rise, I can almost feel the decrease in my inclination to give them a good grade. Folks, if you're listening, it helps a lot if you make grading easy for your profs. Try to write well so you can get your ideas across efficiently!

Finally, I wonder if this matters in the "real world." Is it just an "academic bias" I have that makes me think clear writing is so important? Perhaps in this world of sound bites, text messaging, and micro-memos, the importance of sentence construction and narrative structure is not as critical as it used to be. Perhaps it is only for school reports that these skills are important. What do you think?