Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Up Next: Mixing Metaphors For Fun & Profit

While pimping a podcast featuring her father, English major Megan screws up again:

Dad has just finished up as a member of the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission, which issued their report last month.
You can go either way w/ this one; "who issued their report," or "which issued its report," but you can't have it both ways. (There may actually be a preferred usage for gov't. commissions & other such collective nouns, but I'm not quite such a pedant that I know, & though I'm posting from the library, I'm not going to look it up.)

And what's wrong w/ simple, plain old "finished?" Do you have to type "finished up" so we won't think "Dad" finished down, or finished sideways? Are we soon to read "return it back" from the metaphorical mouth of Megatron?

By the way, adults refer to their parents as "my father," or "my mother," not "Dad" or "Mom," unless discussing them w/ family or close friends who actually know the parental unit in question.

1 comment:

spencer said...

With nearly every single post, Megan provides a bit more evidence that my oversized, football-factory public university alma mater gave me a better education than Penn did her.

My parents will be pleased to hear this, since tuition to Penn would have bankrupted them. Now they don't have to feel like I missed out on anything . . .