Wednesday, May 9, 2007

What Kind of Nerd Are You?

Please don't be offended by the question. I am the first to admit that nerdiness did not leave me when I left high school. What I mean is this dictionary definition:



nerd: an intelligent but single-minded person obsessed with a nonsocial hobby or pursuit


and certainly NOT this one:


nerd: a stupid, irritating, ineffectual, or unattractive person (which is pretty rude and doesn't describe anyone *I* know).


Anyway, I love nerds. As long as they have some social skills, being totally into a hobby or pursuit is pretty cool by me. In high school I was heavily involved in the Latin club. Carthago delenda est!


Now I think my passion and my pain come from English grammar. If there's anything you could say I'm an expert on, it's that. (Of course this comment now invites you to find mistakes in anything I've ever written.) I love how words are put together. Commas, apostrophes, semicolons, em-dash--these are some of my favorite bits of punctuation. But my interest has a dark side that I can't get rid of: I want to correct every mistake I see, ESPECIALLY from my children's teachers. Second place goes to professional advertisements. Why can't everyone just apply what they learned in the 8th grade and give me some peace?


I found this video on YouTube recently and thought these guys rocked. It makes me wish I knew all about math.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Aha! Found a typo! "Whey"
What do you think about that miss sassy pants?

Anonymous said...

Hey look.... It's Betsy. The nerd who likes to point out mistakes on peoples' blogs.

Just so all who read this know....there WAS a typo when I wrote that earlier comment. There is no escaping my all-searching-eye Rebecca!

Mendum delenda est!

Rebecca and Co. said...

Touche! Betsy, I can't cover my tracks quick enough to keep up with you.

brooklyn said...

me and dave are your worst nightmare.

good thing were family, or you mihte want to kill us.

brooklyn said...

it's besty's fault...she stole all the family gene-ius.

(i'm a dork, not a nerd)

Rebecca and Co. said...

No, you're not my worst nightmare. There's a big difference between friendly chat among friends and something that's a final product in a professional realm, IMO. So you're off the hook! Also note, I just have a thing for grammar, not spelling.

brooklyn said...

well, i'm glad i'ts just spelling, becuz, like i said, me and dave is relly poor at that:

but our grammer are real well and we talk real good.

Rebecca and Co. said...

This is an example of my pet peeve:

Attention Teacher's and Parent's! We have a carnival next week, it will be fun.