NGD is NDG

So, yesterday was National Grammar Day (I cannot in good conscience recommend you go there; the site froze my browser - Firefox!). As usual, the group confuses grammar errors with other things. This is clearly evident in their "competition" for "worst grammar of 2008" - voted on by members/readers/I'm not sure if there's a difference. Once again, it's an epic fail.

The big winner - a misspelling on a memorial (it "won by a substantial margin"). Second place - a letter with genuine bad grammar though what caught their attention was the "all-capital letters" and "the spelling—'thru' and 'advertizement'", which were judged "definitely detention-worthy". Third place, a poorly crafted headline: "Young girl survives deadly plane crash, kills businessman and daughter".

This was "the worst grammar in 2008"? The third-place one actually was - headlinese has its own rules, but this violates even that. It should, clearly, have been: "Deadly plane crash kills businessman and daughter, young girl survives" but someone wanted the girl up front. Try "Young girl survives deadly plane crash, businessman and daughter killed". So, okay, that's bad grammar. If that's the worst 2008 produced, we're in pretty good shape, I think. But the point is the winner.

Misspelling the word "memory" on a tombstone may be embarrassing or sad, but it's not bad grammar. They "corrected" the stone in their photo, so I can't tell how "memory" is spelled (ME--RY); I'd have guessed MEMRY, but there's too much space. Maybe MEOMRY? But whatever the original stone says (especially if it's from 1840), I can't consider this the "worst grammar" of even the day it was chiseled, let alone an entire year, let alone by "a wide margin".

And the runner-up? It does contain two genuine grammar errors: use of the bare form instead of the past participle in constructions such as "I have work" and "I was offer", and also instead of the past in "I check around and got the best deals" and "I wrote and ask for them". Considering the very high probability that English is not this writer's first language, I find these errors to be quite forgivable. Apparently, so do the NGD folks, since all they castigated it for was using all caps, and the spelling. Do they even notice the genuine grammar errors?

If they would content themselves with pointing out genuine grammar errors (note: using the wrong verb form is an error; splitting an infinitive is not) they would be tolerable. But since they insist that spelling is grammar, they are not.