{"id":320,"date":"2006-03-27T21:46:57","date_gmt":"2006-03-28T02:46:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/?p=320"},"modified":"2020-01-02T12:09:05","modified_gmt":"2020-01-02T17:09:05","slug":"the-grey-squirrel-of-grammar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/the-grey-squirrel-of-grammar\/","title":{"rendered":"The grey squirrel of grammar"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s a companion piece to the <a href=\"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/the-eliza-doolittles-of-the-early-21st-century\/\">Eliza Doolittle post I wrote yesterday<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The grey squirrel of grammar&#8221; is the pairing of &#8220;there is&#8221; with a plural subject, e.g. &#8220;there&#8217;s five plates on the table.&#8221; Like the North American squirrels that now make Britain home, it&#8217;s here to stay, says Michael McCarthy, writing in <em>The Guardian<\/em>. But he&#8217;s okay with that. He sees it as an example of acceptable bad grammar &#8212; it&#8217;s not worth getting fussed about since we all understand what is being said.<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s a bit tougher, however, when it comes to written language or constructions where bungled grammar interferes with clarity . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s a companion piece to the Eliza Doolittle post I wrote yesterday. &#8220;The grey squirrel of grammar&#8221; is the pairing of &#8220;there is&#8221; with a plural subject, e.g. &#8220;there&#8217;s five plates on the table.&#8221; Like the North American squirrels that &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/the-grey-squirrel-of-grammar\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,28],"tags":[881,876,882,869],"class_list":["post-320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pop-culture","category-science","tag-grammar","tag-language","tag-michael-mccarthy","tag-valley-girl-accent"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5768,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions\/5768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}