Monday, October 31, 2005

Poor little verbs

Have my ears become more sensitive of late or is a proportion of native English-speaker biologists incapable of using correct verb tenses? Sends shivers down the spine, this does. (Er, in a bad way, as opposed to the Belgian chocolate my new PI brought back which induces good shivers.) I confess my restraints broke and I reflexively corrected someone today. It simply could not be helped; there was no other way to alleviate the agony of the poor, innocent verb!

Because maltreatment of verbs by biologists in Minneapolis is clearly news...

1 comment:

The Tiger said...

I think that it's a growing pattern in native English-speakers everywhere. I'll confess that only last week I used a plural form of a verb with the subject "proportion", having been fooled by various modifiers between them. (My professor spotted it and marked it in red on my response paper...)