Now, my spelling has never been great, though it's got better over the years. But can I just say that it's profoundly unhelpful of Blogger's built in spell checker to implement its incipient German sensibilities by combining phrases together into single compound words like "bunchvaguelyelly"? Now, I suppose bunchvaguelyelly has a certain evocative sound to it, but I'd prefer to be creative on my own rather than with computer assistance.
I suppose I should stop cheating and do my own proofreading...
My English grammar tends to be instinctual -- mainly because I read widely enough when going to grade school that I could totally ignore the content of grammar lessons and still get all the exercises right. I first had to learn grammar rigorously when studying Latin.
ReplyDeleteIn this case, however, it's my Brit Lit reading habits that have brought me down. In British "has got better" would be the correct construction, while in American English "has gotten better" would be more correct.
Though I must say (call me a snob and all) the form "gotten" has always sounded dead wrong to me. So if really cornered, I would probably just amend the entire sentence and say "it's improved".
Or, now that I think of it, were you referring to abbreviating "it has" as "it's"...? I'm not entirely sure this is (this's?) proper, but one must be a scoundrel at times, you know.
Yes, well. In all honestly I must admit I didn't know "has gotten" was proper anywhere till where went and looked. I guess we'll have to chalk this one up to my "un-American" tendencies.
ReplyDeleteNope. BAAAAAAAD proof reading.
ReplyDeleteMondays tend to be really crazy at work for me, so my blog attempts are dashed out quickly while some report or other is running in another window in the background...