The long awaited return of Indiana Jones is almost upon us, but clearly the layoff affected Indiana’s command of grammar.
In an interview published on CNN.com today, George Lucas began “He’s a real guy. He’s just like us….He makes lots of mistakes.” Almost on cue, Harrison Ford said “It was the three of us, Steven, George and I, coming to agreement on the central notion of it all.”
Central notion maybe, but grammatically Harrison, it should have been Steve, George and me!
Not to be outdone, and proving that he also makes mistakes, Lucas then said, “Again, that’s the way it works with Steven and Harrison and I.”
The success of all three gentlemen only goes to prove my theory (see last week’s article) that grammar matters mainly to grammarians, and that as long as you can get your message across, most people don’t care about the odd misplaced “I”.
In my view, we enter grammar’s “Temple of Doom” when mistakes are made in important written documents or emails. People have lost jobs, lost contracts, or have even been passed over for promotions because of their poor grammar.
What should you or Indiana do if you have to write something important?
That easy. Just visit “The Temple of WhiteSmoke” for the grammar checker that turns erroneous “I”s into “me”s.
