Us did it

Cross-posted at Tangzine

The Phillies winning the World Series on Wednesday rendered the “Why Can’t Us?” rallying cry useless, but the grammar-abusing fun isn’t over yet.

“Us Did It” and “Us Can” designs have already appeared on Cafe Press, but oddly enough there’s still no sign of “Yes Us Can.”

Why can’t us?

Cross-posted at the Tangzine blog

Back when the Phillies were last in the World Series, fans borrowed the “Whoomp there it is” slogan from the annoying song of the same name and sang it endlessly.

Now, fans are apparently latching on to the grammar-butchering phrase coined by a caller to sports talk radio.

I can almost hear the crazed fans in the ballpark in South Philly chanting it now.

(Hat tip: You Look Good In Black)

A mighty mite

What happens when a college student mixes up “mite” and “might” in an e-mail sent to a professor?

If the student goes to Kent State University, it ends up in a campus newspaper article.

I’d say that’s pretty embarrassing, though not quite as bad as having a student editor change the term “indie-rock” to “India-rock” in a record review. That happened to me in college and unlike this unnamed Kent State student, my name was typset in bold over the India-rock review.

That said, given the amount of grammatical, spelling and punctuation errors college newspapers are prone to make, I’m not so sure the students working at the Kent State paper want to open themselves up to the kind of criticism that is sure to follow the publishing of this article.

In fact, I rarely think criticizing someone for making an error in an e-mail, IM, blog or casual conversation is fair. I prefer to carefully point out mistakes because I know I have been guilty of butchering the English language from time to time, especially when I was still learning how to e-mail in college.