Word: grammar
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Perhaps the most prescient battle over honorary degrees occurred when overseer John Quincy Adams (1787) refused to attend an honorary degree ceremony conferring the coveted parchment on his political enemy Andrew Jackson, who Adams called "a barbarian who could not write a sentence of grammar and could hardly spell his own name...
...Ramones-style hard-core on "Kick The Kat." Squirrelbait's chief appeal lies in their dissemblage of traditional rock music through volume and intensity, where (if you care to think about it) Husker Du's original and only appeal also lay. In fact, despite an atrocious sense of grammar and punctuation, Squirrelbait is better than their precursor because their sound is not burdened with the Husker's tendency towards artistic pretension and lyrical sappiness...
LANGUAGE AS A sign of class--a la George Bernard Shaw's Eliza Doolittle--is contrary to American traditions. Colonial Americans, notes historian Daniel Boorstin, prided themselves on the almost universal use of proper grammar. There were no discernible differences in patois between rich and poor. Unlike their British cousins who developed the language, Americans did not have to look to the upper crust for guidance on the proper use of the King's English. We have traditionally had to look no farther than our neighbors. Now, if we ask to see our neighbor, his son might reply...
...great many of the King-Bachman books seem to have been written on a word processor by a word processor. The author often employs three exclamation points !!! where one would suffice, shows a blithe disregard for grammar ("My mother used to tell my brother David and I to 'hope for the best and expect the worst' "), and produces metaphors that obviously embarrass their creator: "He felt that he had unwittingly stuck his hand into the Great Wasps' Nest of Life. As an image it stank." But all along he displays one talent that never flags -- he is able to convince...
...about to protest or make some pointed remarks about their speech and grammar when I was hit by the sickening realization that they were right. In trying to overcome my own redneck accent, I had gone overboard...