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It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

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November 15, 2016
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GOTCHA! Thought this was going to be a holiday post, eh? Nope. The most wonderful time of the year is, in fact, when Grammatical Art puts up new merchandise! That’s right. Natalie has been hard at work adding brand new designs in addition to expanding some of her print designs for shirts, v-necks, and tote bags.

What’s brand new? Awesome tea towels and tote bags (designs are available on both) like these:

orange-720x964watermelon tote

And designs that are now available on shirts and totes:

electrical navysplice v neck grayscience beaker tote

These are just a very small sampling of the 20+ new designs and styles. And yes, they are available just in time for the holidays (the second most wonderful time of the year)! We also have even more rolling out in the coming days and weeks.

Make sure to check back here for our upcoming Black Friday deals! This year’s are amazing.

 

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Totes Magotes

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October 11, 2016
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I’m a bit of a bag lady. By my front door as I type this, there is a hook that has about 15 bags hanging from it. And these are just my reusable bags that I take to the grocery store. I have fancy bags (like my gorgeous Kate Spade beauties), diaper bags (yes, plural), backpacks, duffel bags, suitcases, messenger bags, computer bags, and loads of purses and clutches. I can’t get enough. And though I do give away a bagful (see what I did there?) to Goodwill every spring, I still feel like each bag serves its purpose.

And yet, while I dance around and make it rain with all of my bags, there are still some I do NOT own.

Like one with my name on it:

personalized tote5

Or one with a swear word (!):

fck-tote

Or the most coveted of all, one just for my library books:

library tote4

What kind of a librarian doesn’t have a tote bag in her collection that features the word “library” and is intended for carrying books? One who’s about to get out her credit card and purchase one stat, that’s who.

So, I encourage you to take a long, hard look at your collection of tote bags and purses and fill in what’s missing with one of these (or one of our other) awesome bags.

And since this is a grammar blog, let’s talk about totes magotes. Not “totes my goats” as some may confuse it, “totes magotes” is attributed to the 2009 bromance I Love You, Man, although there is some debate about whether or not it’s been around for much longer. I’m sure you all know what it means, but basically it’s a phrase that emphasizes the word “totally.” You may also hear “totally magotally.” But you probably won’t hear it anymore because no one has said “totes magotes” except for me since 2010.

Go forth and collect your tote bags!

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Grammar for All

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October 4, 2016
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It has become a (sad) game to find bad grammar out in the world. Items found can be as innocuous as a sign on a bathroom door to a piece of art that you are meant to hang in your kitchen that says, “Mom’s are the best chefs.”

Nope.

Of course, it’s all over social media, blogs, websites, The Interwebs. But that doesn’t stop me from smiling a little when I see something like this:

tricker treating

Ah yes, the timeless tradition of “tricker treating.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about grammar and how the ways we use it reflect back on us. In one of my Facebook groups, someone posted a question about hiring a photographer who had used poor grammar in a message exchange. My first reaction was I absolutely would not hire someone who has poor grammar. When I was planning my wedding, I dismissed vendors who had websites or advertisements riddled with grammatical errors.

But this post gave me pause. Grammar is complex. Some schools teach it thoroughly, intensely. Some don’t. Some people have a mind for all of the rules (many of which confuse and evade me). Some don’t. The mode of communication matters. Is it bad grammar on a website or is it bad grammar in a casual text message?

What fascinates me is that everyone has a relationship with grammar, whether they want to or not. We all write, even if it’s only in text messages and on social media. Some people don’t have a clue that what they’re written is at all grammatically incorrect. And does it really matter if it is so long as it’s understood? If I moved to Spain and attempted to speak in Spanish and misspoke here or there or with my thick American accent, would anyone criticize me so long as I could be understood? Probably not. Grammar is a language that belongs to all of us. Maybe common grammatical errors are sort of like written slang. It’s an evolution.

And while some grammatical errors make me shudder (the abuse of the apostrophe chief among them), I totally know what tricker treat is. I might be committing grammatical suicide, but is it a big deal if it’s spelled that way on Facebook?

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Tell Them from the Start

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September 26, 2016
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I’m writing this with the presidential debates in the background. I won’t get political here, but I will say that as a woman who as a girl didn’t even know that a woman could run for president, it’s pretty darn cool to see a woman on that stage.

I have two sisters. Growing up, it was always a girls’ club. We loved all of the same toys, music, movies, games, you name it. Even though we’re so similar and grew up in the same household, I’m different. I’m the sister with no science gene. None. Zip. Nada. I muddled through science classes in high school, and in college I took geology for my graduation requirement, y’all. Geology. (It’s worth noting that my boss took just about every advanced science class offered at our alma mater, and I took geology.)

My sisters are scientists. Claire just finished her PhD and is a post doc for a lab at Children’s National Hospital in DC. Kate double-majored in Biology and Creative Writing. I’m constantly in awe of these women in science. And though I don’t know what they deal with as women who work in a male-dominated field, I know it’s not always easy. I know people make assumptions about their roles in the lab or their level of knowledge. I know that they’re working subtly, quietly every day to change the roles of women in science.

So, even though I’m not a scientist or even remotely science-minded, I want more women to find a home in STEM fields. I want girls to become science literate and science confident, even if they don’t want to be scientists.

Science: girls do it better. Tell them from the start.

toddler-sciencegirls-hot-pink

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Hey Biatches, the OED Added New Words

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September 14, 2016
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OMG, y’all. The Oxford English Dictionary added new words. More than 1,000 entries have been updated and some 1,200 words or meanings added, according to an article on the updates by NPR. The editors of the OED typically wait years before they ultimately decide what words and meanings to add, making the “newness” of some of these words sort of silly. Once we start writing down and spelling out words that may only have been spoken or used jokingly, the editors start to take notice. The process of legitimizing and recording a word begins.

Some of the best additions for this go-around include:

  • cheese eater (n.): a person who eats cheese; a person who appreciates or routinely consumes cheese
  • ‘Merica (n.): America. Note: Originally and chiefly in representations of nonstandard speech. Now frequently also in ironic or self-conscious use, emphasizing emblematic or stereotypical qualities of American traditions, institutions and national ideals.
  • moobs (n.): unusually prominent breasts on a man, typically as a result of excess pectoral fat.
  • uptalk (n.): a manner of speaking in which declarative sentences are uttered with rising intonation at the end, a type of intonation more typically associated with questions.
  • YOLO (int.): “You only live once”; used to express the view that one should make the most of the present moment without worrying about the future (often as a rationale for impulsive or reckless behavior).

YOLO cracks me up in particular because it’s grammatically incorrect to say “you only live once” (it should really be “you live only once,” so YLOO). But hey, so goes the evolution of language.

There are also some racy, NSFW ones like biatch and jagoff. I might be most proud to see jagoff in the OED as a Pittsburgher (it’s a classic work of Pittsburghese). I’ll let you use your imagination on the actual definition or look that one up yourself. 😉

What’s coolest about all of this to me is that it demonstrates how fluid and flexible language is, which is one of my favorite things about it. We are, all of us, allowed to own it, bend it, tweak it, use it how we need to. There is certainly a difference between a creative evolution of a word and the bastardization of a word, to be clear. And I know there are purists among us, but I am a huge fan of this malleability. I once had a professor spend an entire class lamenting the misuse of impact. What was once a noun has now also become a verb, likely because people wanted to avoid misusing affect/effect. I for one say, “So what? Who cares?” Documentation adds validity, so now that it’s in the OED, go ahead, use it. YOLO, after all.

 

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When Bad Grammar Happens to Good (Grammar) People

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September 4, 2016
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I proofread text messages. Most of the time. I absolutely proofread emails. Big, heavy, important emails I proofread by reading them out loud just as I was taught to do in my college writing class. Sometimes, if they’re really important, I have someone else proofread them. This is how obsessed neurotic careful I am about my grammar.

It’s always been important to me to be sure I’m communicating as clearly as possible. There’s nothing more confusing or frustrating than muddling through someone’s ill-written, typo-ridden email, text message, Facebook post.

But, hey, everyone’s busy. Sometimes, you’re jotting off a text quickly and autocorrect gets the better of you. You’re typing a response to a simple email and there are more than one or two typos. Stuff happens!

But then there’s the time that you post something for all to see on a blog, website, even your social media. You think it looks great, and then you go back and notice a mistake. And there’s a pit in your stomach. You think to yourself, How could I have done that? I proofread that! I don’t make grammar mistakes.

Well, bad grammar happens, even to people with good grammar skills.

I wonder if it’s gotten worse. Editing is so easy, even on social media! That is, unless you screw up a tweet, and then your only option is to delete it and re-type it. Did people take grammar more seriously when they were using typewriters? Quill pens? The dread you feel when realizing you’ve made an error in pen in a thank you note to your grandmother is way worse than realizing you made a mistake on your blog. What do you do in the thank you note? Cross it out and rewrite it so that it looks like scribble art? Maybe we’re lazier about checking our writing beforehand because we have a lot of ways to check it after the fact.

Trust and believe, even though you can edit a blog post, the feeling of dread is still there when you catch a grammatical error. It’s even worse when you work for a company called Grammatical Art and you have a glaring typo on a blog post you wrote for said company. I mean, I didn’t do that, but a friend of mine may have.

So, even though sometimes bad grammar happens to good (grammar) people, you’re still allowed to wear this shirt.

grammar queen

 

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Book Review: The Fireman by Joe Hill

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August 28, 2016
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I can’t help it. I was an English major; I’m a librarian. I have to talk about books, guys. If your “to read” list looks anything like mine, it will take you years to finish reading everything you want to. I get it. I really do. But here’s another for your consideration: The Fireman by Joe Hill.

Joe Hill has been getting buzz not only for his best-selling Heart-Shaped Box, but also as Stephen and Tabitha King’s son. Deliberately choosing not to use his birth name in full, Hill started writing as anonymously as possible with the aim that his work be read and treated as something other than “that book Stephen King’s kid wrote.” Well, The Fireman is that book Stephen King’s kid wrote, and ain’t no shame in his game, it’s pretty good.

The book opens on a not-too-distant future where society has begun to crumble thanks to a sweeping epidemic called Dragonscale. When a person gets Dragonscale, their body slowly becomes covered in thin, tattoo-like swirls, but what’s worse is most who are infected slowly burn until they catch fire and combust. The world is in a permanent state of fire and smoke. No one knows for sure how you “catch” Dragonscale, but it seems to be coming for everyone.

We follow Harper through the story, and she’s possibly one of the best parts of the book. She’s capable and strong, and really doesn’t discover just how much so until she is infected with Dragonscale and becomes pregnant.

Hill does a great job of navigating a realistic, non-zombie apocalypse. The beginning of the book feels exactly how you would imagine the world beginning to end if this did in fact happen tomorrow. Things fall apart slowly with people clinging to society as they knew it. Firefighters, police officers, and doctors are in high demand. People try to keep things going (go to work, send kids to school) until it becomes nearly impossible. There is denial and confusion and a slowly permeating fear, one that reveals the type of person really living inside each of us.

As my friend Amberly points out, there is a lot of heavy-handed foreshadowing (and boy is there), but mostly it’s okay with me. I found the story to be suspenseful and engaging. The middle drags a bit through some clunky and awkward action scenes, and the end is a bit puzzling (sorry, I won’t spoil it for you!) and maybe mildly disappointing, but I’d still recommend checking it out. There’s some truly great writing and, well, all the drama of fire you could ask for. The concept is smart, and while I have no idea whether or not the science holds up, I’m willing to suspend disbelief, so kudos to Hill on that.

Not sure if I’d read a sequel, but I’m definitely interested in reading Heart-Shaped Box. Hill’s a good storyteller, and I’m looking forward to more from him.

If you’re really into fire, then you might want to check out this Fire Triangle print on our website. Science: it’s everywhere. Even in your fiction.

Happy reading!

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Don’t be a milquetoast!

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August 21, 2016
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I decided to share the story of one of my most favorite designs in our shop. Meet milquetoast!

milquetoast2

Cute, right?

Yeah, super cute, but you might be scratching your head. What the heck is milquetoast?

Simply, a milquetoast is someone who is meek, timid, and easily intimidated. It’s such a strange word that I started wondering where it came from. “Toast” as in toast you eat?

Turns out, the word originates from the 1924 comic strip character Casper Milquetoast by H.T. Webster. He’s known as “the man who speaks softly and gets hit with a big stick.” His name “Milquetoast” is a deliberate misspelling of the food “milk toast,” a bland breakfast food made of toasted bread in warm milk. In other words, something bland and inoffensive. Much like a timid person.

So there you have it! Milquetoast is a fairly recent addition to the American English dictionary (it’s worth noting that it doesn’t usually appear in non-American English dictionaries). Celebrate the etymology of milquetoast with our awesome and adorable t-shirt and see how many of your friends are in on the joke!

Blog, News

In Defense of Bad Language

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August 15, 2016
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You may have seen a headline or two floating around your Facebook or Twitter feed lately declaring that “People Who Swear Are Smart.” Maybe you smiled because you swear and darn it, you’re smart! But no, really, it’s true!

In the article “Taboo Word Fluency and Knowledge of Slurs and General Pejoratives: Deconstructing the Poverty-of-Vocabulary Myth” published in the November 2015 issue of Language Sciences, authors Kristin L. Jay and Timothy B. Jay do in fact find that “taboo word fluency is correlated with general fluency.” Those with a large curse word vocabulary have a large vocabulary period. This may be the best scholarly article ever published, and not just because they use the word “taboo” to describe swear words. [Note: they also include other types of inappropriate slurs and language in the study–not just curse words–which is why they describe them as “taboo.”]

But wait! Before you go patting yourself on the back for your large bank of curse words, consider the rest of the findings: “taboo fluency is correlated with neuroticism and openness.” So thumbs down and thumbs up?

If you love your swears as much as I do, you might want to check out our awesome t-shirts:

fuck-mensmartass-menbucket-men

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click here for men’s and women’s: “I actually have an extensive vocabulary; F*CK just happens to be my favorite word.”

Click here for men’s and women’s: “Smart a*&”

Click here for men’s and women’s: “F*ck It Bucket”

P.S. We also have all of these available as prints!

I wanted to end this with something clever, but f*ck it.

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Language Evolution, Emoji Revolution

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July 9, 2016
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I’m emoji obsessed. I use them as much as possible, anywhere possible. This is probably a sign that I’m old, but I already knew that.

I wrote a post recently about the evolution of the period and whether or not it’s necessary to keep using it in a digital age. Natalie wrote one last week about the word (or non-word) “flustrated,” a word that smashes together flustered and frustrated … we guess? Along these lines, I’ve been thinking about my love of all emojis and how they may impact the written word.

Coming soon to a phone near you is a new round of 72 emojis including the face palm, bacon, and a selfie arm. I can’t help but think of these additions as something akin to the words that Merriam-Webster adds each year. They’re an evolution of how we need and want to be able to communicate with each other. Sometimes, there are absolutely no words better than this guy:

emoji

 

After all, aren’t emojis the more sophisticated version of emoticons? Cute though they were, the standard keyboard is somewhat limiting in expressing feelings.

Communicating so much through the written word can be frustrating sometimes. Emails and texts are super efficient, but not always the most effective way to convey more complex thoughts and feelings. When we talk face to face, we’re using more than words of course, there’s the drop of the brow, a crooked smile, arms crossed. We’re saying so much more than we’re saying. For me, that’s what the gap the emojis help to close between written communication and face-to-face. It’s also an opportunity to be less misunderstood because you can send along a near picture of what you want to convey along with the words.

I’m here to say, I’m all for it. I’m in favor of this evolution. I think it’s fascinating and fabulous and what a cool way that we’ve come up with to help make our digital communication more like sitting down to coffee with a friend. I won’t say it’s a replacement for that by any means, but it sure does help.

I have some friends who also text a ton of gifs to help express what they’re trying to say, and let’s not downplay the fun of Bitmoji. What do you think the next evolution of emojis will be? Are they here to stay or a passing fad? Are they ruining the way we text and talk? Any old school emoticon users out there? 😉