We live in trying times. Though many among us live in trying time’s.

Last week, Matthew was kind enough to point out the BBC’s 50 worst clichés, a website which features this brilliant tool.

If you don’t work in a corporate office environment but still want to play, hang around an airport lounge, a hotel lobby or a downtown Starbucks. They’ll find you.

Business jargon is like a bad infomercial: so bad it’s good. Our much graver concern, the real axis of evil, is awful, lazy English:

• apostrophe crimes
  
• lobotomised word choice
  
• hyphenation abominations
  

Where my Tapestries of Travesties do all they can to name and shame, I urge you to take to your trenches with a little coping mechanism.

Illiterate Bingo

Keep this sucker on your desktop and, when you score bingo, send back screenshots of your victories (or what little solace we can find in such butchery).

You can fill in the middle slot with the slice of bad language that makes you bleed the most. I’ve already found mine and it’s a bloody zinger. We’re talking triple-threat stuff.

A few rules?

1. No picking on non-native English speakers. 99 times out of 100 it’s the native speakers doing the visible damage – those who painstakingly learn English grammar would never dash their hard work with such carelessness.
   
2. No trifling typos. While – knock on wood – I’ve never published a typo that I know of, we’re all mortals and make no promises otherwise. It’s the sloppy folks ruining the internet that I’m after. They’re habitual felons and I implore you to make citizens’ arrests as and when their sorry trail of destruction appears.

Nervous?

Are people going to score points on your blog or website?
Seek help now. 12-step programme: stop killing the apostrophe.

Go forth and take back what we hold sacred!

Tags: bad grammar, board games, oops, proof read