I confess to being a stickler for correct grammar, but whether that makes me a grammar Nazi is not for me to say. There’s no doubt that the standard of our languages has fallen dramatically in recent years, and I’m not just referring to English. This could be down to poor education or the influence of instant messaging, mobile phone use, and social media. For example, spoken English is one thing, but when written as it is spoken, it can feel like someone scraping their fingernails down a blackboard. You may hear someone say I’m gonna do that because I don’t wanna do that, but do we really want to write like that? It appears that millions do. As an example, I was watching a YouTube video by two English men who were testing the standard of English on the streets of Buenos Aires, and I had to take them to task for their misuse of English in the subtitles. We all know that wanna and gonna are contractions of want to and going to, respectively, but most educated people do not write them as contractions.
Naturally, they were a tad peeved at my comment, which I found laughable considering that one of them is an English teacher.
Google grammar Nazi and you’ll be offered thousands of videos on the subject, many hilarious and others which purport to be educational. One such video creator chose not to capitalise Nazi because they wished to reduce its impact due to the connotations of the word itself. But nazi doesn’t minimise the word and if anything, simply grates. Decapitalising a proper noun simply to suit our purposes is akin to wishing to knock down the statue of a slave trader or Confederate general because history upsets us.
Another of my pet peeves is when could have, would have, and should have are written thus – could of, would of, and should of. Again, we may speak like that, but certainly not write in that manner. I often wonder how English is being taught in schools, even knowing that the language evolves over time. I was fortunate to have several inspiring English teachers with whom I could connect, and their teachings have stayed with me ever since.
There’s also the difference between British and American English, which isn’t really a grammar issue, but more of semantics. Or as Churchill once observed, “Two countries divided by a common language.” But, much like the difference between Argentine Spanish and that spoken in Spain, some words can cause confusion and very often, offence. As an example, in American English, fanny is someone’s rear end, but in British English is a woman’s private parts. A very similar difference exists in Argentine Spanish with the word, concha. In Spain, it’s a shell that you would find at the seaside, but here… see above.
Another big transatlantic difference is when dealing with death. In order to soften the event, in the US, it’s often described as passing away or they passed (passed what?). Clearly, this is a very personal choice because describing death as passing certainly does soften the impact. On the other hand, shortly after my father died and in a conversation with my mother, I referred to my dad as having passed away. Her reaction was swift – “He didn’t pass away, he died!” Bless her.
But back to grammar, I dun wanna write anymore, even if I could of!
See what I mean?
—
I must admit, I am old school and am a stickler for proper English, but these days who is to say what proper English is anymore? I have seen so many just run the spelled language into the ground, it’s like no one cares anymore.
Even while texting, I don’t use acronyms , I just type it out . There are so many acronyms in use today, sometimes it takes longer trying to figure out what they mean ….. just type it out!
I too am old school, Ed and cringe when I see how badly people are writing.
Add to that Internet speak and you’ll find FYI and others creeping into Hollywood movies and series.
I find the title and content offensive. To use the word “nazi” in any context other than atrocities committed in the Holocaust in the murder of six million Jews is an insult to their memory, and humanizes the perpetrators of these atrocities.
Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day 2025.
Excuse me for jumping in here, Marc.
Hi Moshe,
The use of the word “Nazi” is, in my experience, only ever used to describe a despicable group of people.
Trying to bury the term and hide it from history only serves to let everyone forget the horror. And that is something we should never do.
Admittedly, the timing is unfortunate.
Richard
Thank you for your comment, Moshe.
The term is common in usage and my article is an attack on poor grammar, nothing more. I cannot be aware of every significant date that commemorates the horrors of war or other events, otherwise I would need to cover myself in every article as to who would be offended.
However, even if I had checked, I would find that The International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust is on 27th January, marking the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
On the other hand, the current US president just declared April 20 to 27th as days of remembrance, which you can read here:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/days-of-remembrance-of-victims-of-the-holocaust-2025/
Best wishes
Marc Thomas
Seinfeld had a character named the Food Nazi on his show.
Now that I remember, the name was actually the Soup Nazi.
Children learn from their parents and teachers, most of whom are clueless on proper grammar. They also learn from what they hear in movies, TV and musical lyrics which have no standards.
If anyone says “gonna” and they’re quoted, it will probably be quoted as such. I don’t like to see it, but people have to be careful how they speak. I would probably take liberties with the person’s speech and quote him/her as saying “going to….” But this would be dishonest–disinformation?– and possibly offensive to the quoted speaker, who could view my misquoting as speech correction.