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Arts & Culture > Poetry & Prose > Grammar, & Third One Today
 

Grammar, & Third One Today

Oh no! Another grammar thing that irritates me! So what else is new!

I dislike the sound of this construction so many people seem to use: They say “based off of” when they mean “based on.” Just ran across it for the millionth time lately:

“We base the market prices off of public auction sales…”

But it does remind me of a funny routine of David Steinberg’s, in which he recounts the story of Moses encountering God for the first time, and God tells him to remove his sandals because this is holy land he’s about to step on:

"'Moses! Take your shoes from off of your feet,' God said in his redundant way.”

So Moses does, and walks towards the burning bush, scorches his feet, and swears. (This was the first mention of Jesus Christ in the Bible.) God laughs and says, “Hah! Third one today!”

posted on Jan 31, 2016 11:08 AM ()

Comments:

Just ran across a variation of the grammar thing, from a blog -- "...false claims about how you can get rich off of domaining." Can't you get rich from domaining? And do parasites live "off of" their biological host, do golddiggers have to live "off of" rich men, or can they do it using only one word?
comment by drmaus on Feb 3, 2016 2:56 PM ()
I'm still contemplating the word 'domaining,' thinking about those Origin of Words articles 100 years from now discussing when it was first used and how many years it stayed in the common vocabulary.
reply by troutbend on Feb 4, 2016 7:10 PM ()
Did you google "based off of vs based on"? One of the search results had a chart of that based off of usage over the years (based upon a scan of Google books). https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/based-off-versus-based-on Now I want to see the chart for other phrases. and Hah hah! at the part of the joke about the swearing.
comment by troutbend on Jan 31, 2016 5:23 PM ()
I hadn't checked it but it's so often I run into it, I'm not surprised people have written it up. The swearing thing was in David Steinberg's monologue, which somehow I remember but not any other ones.
reply by drmaus on Feb 3, 2016 1:12 PM ()
I have grammerly and dislike the way it tries to take the individuality
out of sentence structure. It would be all over the off/on thing.
comment by elderjane on Jan 31, 2016 5:13 PM ()
I could use that myself. And I think I'll recommend this program to writers on Critters.org.
reply by drmaus on Feb 3, 2016 1:13 PM ()
Like John I have NEVER heard that before!! Never heard the 'funny (?) routine.
Time for you to hang out with a different crowd!!
comment by greatmartin on Jan 31, 2016 4:19 PM ()
It is National Carrot Cake Day EVERY DAY!!
reply by greatmartin on Feb 3, 2016 8:36 PM ()
Now, now. No ragging on me for not being funny. It's hard to be. By the way, I just read it's National Carrot Cake Day, so you have celebrating to do.
reply by drmaus on Feb 3, 2016 1:17 PM ()
Somehow I haven't seen/heard that phrasing. But I've seen much worse on fb.
comment by jjoohhnn on Jan 31, 2016 3:32 PM ()
The internet is the home of bad grammar, but this I keep running into in professional blogs, where you'd think it wouldn't be.
reply by drmaus on Feb 3, 2016 1:09 PM ()

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