Christmas Grammar Grouch

I really don’t have any great words of wisdom, nor any diseased mutterings to share.
Instead, I’m going to grouse about some things which have made me grouchy regarding the decline in precise grammar. But first, a factoid: You know that silly story about the frog sitting in pot of water with the oh-so slowly rising temperature? It’s been tried, and it doesn’t work. I’ll leave it to you to look it up, but when it gets too warm, those suckers do jump out. Pick yourself another metaphor.
It’s not “baited breath” because you aren’t catching anything with your halitosis. It’s “bated breath” which a colloquialism for “abated breath.” It means you almost dare not breathe because of the tension of the moment.
In the military, we line up carefully, and the standard is the toes of our boots are in perfect visual alignment. It’s called “toe the line.” It means follow orders, do what you’re told, take your assigned place. You don’t “tow the line” because you aren’t dragging anything around.
At least I haven’t had to endure any “irregardless” or “floormat” instead of “format.” Of course, those or more often oral errors, and I really haven’t had any long conversations in quite a while. In case you don’t see what’s wrong with “irregardless” it works out like this. If you regard something, you evaluate it. It counts for something. If you make a decision regardless of that thing, then it no longer counts. If we add the prefix “ir-” then we reverse it one more time; now it means something again.
There are a couple of really good writers out there who acknowledge their poor grammar and punctuation. Those who humbly refuse to put on airs can be forgiven, because communicating some things is simply too important to worry about rules. I’m sure you can scan back through some of my previous posts and find typos and such aplenty.
I grouch at myself, too.
Addenda: This one bothers me so much it was worth coming back to add it. You hone a knife using something which restores the edge. You might hone some skills, but if you don’t stop writing “hone in” when you are supposed to write “home in” you have need to hone your grammar skills.
In times of old we used homing pigeons for the Internet. Take them anywhere you like, tie your tweet or short email on the leg and let it go. That bird will always return home. When you fire a smart missile, it will home in on the target. Sometimes I wish I had a smart missile to chase folks who insist on writing it wrong.