Coty+Prestage

__What’s Wrong With English?__ is an article by Dennis Baron and is about the uses of words and their meanings as well as the change that words are going through as the years pass. The main problem in the article is how meanings of words in today often trump the grammatical rules that the words follow in English. Such as using the singular form of words in the place of plural forms because they sound right when used instead of the plural form. Baron provides some examples such as a columnist in the Christian Science Monitor who thinks that editors are allowing sentences such as “A number of people find this appalling”-Baron, with the word number being in singular form. Another example of Barons’ is a writer in the Hartford Courant doesn’t like when the news refer people to actors, for example “The politicians were key actors in the passage of the bill”-Baron. Barons’ key argument is that even though imprecise grammar is criticized by experts and non-experts, the same ones that criticize its use often make the same mistakes that those being criticized make. The language that we call English is constantly changing and evolving in some cases allowing the singular forms of words to take the place of their plural forms. Also that the same people agree that change is a good thing but also that they think what they think is wrong should not be subject to change on the grounds of grammatical correctness. For example the columnist from the Hartford Courant wasn’t really against misuse of grammar rather than the misuse of meaning in that she didn’t so much dislike the misuse of the words that the news use grammatically but the meanings they give them. Based on the fact that the article was located at illinois.edu/db/view/25/971?count=1&amp;ACTION=DIALOG I would think that the article was meant for a somewhat scholarly audience; however after reading the article I now feel as if it was meant for anyone who happens to come across it. The affect that the fact that the article has an unknown audience makes the information in it seem more biased in opinion than in truth. There are several weaknesses with Barons’ arguments, mostly because there is a lack of evidence to back up his statements he relies more on the hope that the readers have had a similar experience in their life where they have noticed the occurrences that he argues about such as critics of the use of words and meanings can be caught making similar mistakes to the ones that they criticize for being incorrect.
 * __What’s Wrong With English?__**

Coty Prestage English 101 Prof. Wendt Article Summary 20/27/10  __Piercings __   The article “Service With a Smile, And Plenty Of Metal” was written by Debra Darvick. Debra Darvick is a journalist in which is writing about piercings and how she feels about them. Darvick talks about how piercings have went from the casual earring in the lobes of your ears to a range from gaping holes in which you can see through to metal rods going through varying parts of the human body. In this article, debra describes the rising trend of extreme piercings to me as the people indulging themselves in the fad looking like something out of a horror flick; often making her sick at the sight of them. Generational fads are brought into light as Darvick brings back her memory of her own generation fad in the 1970’s when the women wore no bras, had long hair, and bell bottom pants; comparing them to the piercings among today’s generation. Debra also feels as if maybe piercings are a way to fill some sort of void in the younger generations’ life as expressed by Theologian Ariel Glucklich in which she Quotes in her article. She also compares the feelings such as pain that have to be endured while getting piercings are somehow a religious or sacramental in meaning to them such as described by Darvick like that of childbirth. However, she does both feel and fear that piercings such as bull rings and bars and whatever other types of piercings are just a generational trend that will eventually die out and means nothing more.