The Five Grammatical Errors That Make You Look Dumb outlined by blogger Brian Clark are indeed the five errors I most commonly see when reading blogs. In the first part of my Diary of a Storyteller, I detailed my amazement at the way the Internet allows people to establish authority as writers in spite of the careless grammatical errors they make. Brian’s post reassured me that I am not alone in being irritated by these habits.

Although by no means comprehensive, his list addresses some of the key culprits: your vs. you’re; it’s vs. its; there vs. their; affect vs. effect. But my particular favourite at the moment is the last error on Brian’s list, the dangling participle. Rather than annoying me, this one usually makes me laugh. Indeed, reading Brian’s post reminded me of one text I recently read in which the dangling participle was only too prominent. On the first page of our wedding venue brochure I read:

As well as providing your wedding breakfast, why not take out the stress of travelling to and from the church or registry office and get married at the hotel.

Such a misuse of the English language totally distorts what the writer is trying to say to the extent that, in this case, the meaning is reversed. The writer means that the hotel can deal with all aspects of the wedding so that we don’t have to. Instead, he inadvertently implies that we will be responsible for providing our own food.

Is this actually amusing, or am I just some kind of grammar geek?