I just realized that I never introduced myself.
I’m Gary McCarty, a semi-retired curmudgeon who lives in the Los Angeles area. I have various degrees, two in U.S. history and one in journalism, and I for many years taught lower division courses for the University of Phoenix and American Intercontinental University while also consulting on Web projects. I now work in full-time cyber and print editing and publishing.
Anyway, this site will hopefully (now there’s a meaningless word) form the background for a book on English usage that will bear the same name*.
Please join in here to discuss whatever issue pertaining to English usage that you can think of or care about. Just don’t ever end a sentence with a preposition. LOL
* Note from long ago: I discovered that some doofus, or doofae, stole my idea and has written a book entitled Grammar Sucks; thus I changed my URL to grammarsource while retaining ownership of grammarsucks. However, this book — if it still exists — could never have the wit or insight of anything I write, so I will come out with my own book of the same name and we can have duelling Grammar Suckses (the plural doesn’t seem too appropriate, does it?)
English is my second language and I am looking for interactive online possibilities that would allow me to practice more English
I am an 82 year-old non-retiree, with a family-owned specialized data processing minibusiness to maintain, at least until I can train one of our four children to xbase programming for large datafiles. .
I have an undergraduate degree in journalism and communications and a master’s degree in urban and regional planning. I worked at both specialties until personal computers entered our lives in late 1981, and I taught myself programming, on Microsoft’s DOS 1, on one of the first IBM-PC’s sold in Madison, Wisconsin.
My wife and I are the only people we know who are turning their living+dining room into a full-scale library, and an in-house garage into a super-size kitchen.
My wife, a trained archaeologist and anthropologist, has developed expertise in historical linguistics and has been teaching herself Sanskrit. Before I get too old, I hope to teach her chess openings and mid-game strategies. We have travelled far and wide by steamship and train.
We live on a rural wooded site in south-central Wisconsin. At various times in the early 1940s, I lived with an aunt and uncle in West Hollywood, California. I still remember the old Pacific Electric red streetcars and the yellow streetcars on the Western Avenue line up to Santa Monica Blvd. (Truly, a wonderland for expatriate mid-westerners; then, even if not now.)
Stay active. And ignore the doofuses, even if they steal your ideas, which, you must know, is the sincerest form of flattery.
Thank you for such beautiful, correct English, and for your wonderful thoughts and lives.
What a delightful site! I say, write your book.