Bid a warm hello to Ms Martha Brockenbough, inventor of National Grammar Day, celebrated every March 4th. She’s a stickler for the active voice, correct spelling, appropriate word choice, good sentence structure, the rooting out of typos, the lot. The toothsome Ms B is eager to tell you grammar isn’t boring or dry - in fact, it’s fun and exciting. Here’s just some of the excitement. The letter S starts more English words than any other. R is the most prevalent consonant in the language. “E” is the most frequently used letter in English. The hashtag, pound sign and number sign are all names for the symbol #. A pangram is a sentence made up of all 26 letters of the English alphabet. Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is the longest English word (so far). The letter “I” is one of the oldest and shortest letters in the English language [How can a letter be short - are we height-shaming here?]. Geeze, lady, you’re the kind of gal a guy likes to party with! Ah, but there’s a but, you see. Ms Brockenbough has a fatal flaw and in fairness, she only went to Stanford, so what can she possibly know?
© 2024 John Oliver
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