Word Crimes

Listen / watch:

Word Crimes


Listen and put the typical misuses of language in the order they are mentioned in the song:


our / hour

good / well

irony / coincidence

literal / figurative

adjective / adverb

less / fewer

who / whom

it's / its

there / they're / their

four / for

lightening / lightning

homonym / homophone




confusion between "good" and "well"

confusion of word meanings: e.g. "irony" and "coincidence", "literal" and "figurative"

incorrect use of punctuation to create emphasis

commonly misspelled words

unfinished sentences or clauses

Knowing the names of the parts of speech  - i.e. the difference between determiners, nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions etc.

childish use of substitutions, i.e. the number 4 for "for"

Knowing the difference between "less" and "fewer"

Misuse of hyperbolic phrases like "I couldn't care less"

Misuse of pronouns

omitted commas, or  misuse of them

confusion between "who" and "whom"

Misuse of the apostrophe - especially the confusing of contractions and possessives

unfinished sentences or clauses

If you can't ______ in the proper way
If you don't know how to c_______
Maybe you flunked that class
And maybe now you find
That people m___  you online

Okay, now here's the deal
I'll try to educate ya
Gonna f__________
You with the nomenclature
You'll learn the definitions
Of nouns and prepositions
Literacy's your m________
And that's why I think it's a good time
To learn some grammar
Now, did I s_______
Work on that grammar
You should know _____
It's "less" or it's "fewer"
Like people who were
Never raised in a s______

I hate these word crimes
Like I could _____ less
That means you _____ care
At least a ______
Don't be a m_____
You'd better slow down
And use the right p_______
Show the world you're no clown
Everybody wise up!

Say you got an "I","T"
Followed by a________, "s"
Now what does that mean?
You would not use "it's" in this c______
As a p__________
It's a contraction
What's a contraction?
Well, it's the sh_______ of a word, or a group of words
By the omission of a sound or letter

Okay, now here's some notes
S______ you're always mangling
No "__" in "espresso"
Your participle's danglin'
But I don't want your d_____
If you really wanna
Leave out that Oxford comma
Just keep in mind

That "be", "see", "are", "you"
Are w____, not letters
G___ it together
Use your s_________
You should never
Write words using numbers
Un____ you're seven
Or your name is P_____

I hate these word crimes
You really need a
Full time proofreader
You dumb mouth-breather
Well, you should hire
Some cunning linguist
To help you d________

What is proper English

One thing I ask of you
Time to learn your h_________ is past due
Learn to diagram a sentence too
Always say "to whom"
Don't ever say "to who"
And listen up when I tell you this
I hope you never use quotation marks for e_________
You finished second grade
I hope you can tell
If you're doing good or doing well
About better figure out the difference
Irony is not c____________
And I thought that you'd gotten it through your s______
What's figurative and what's l_______
Oh but, just now, you said
You literally couldn't get out of bed
That really makes me want to literally
Smack a crowbar upside your stupid h____

I read your e-mail
It's quite apparent
Your grammar's errant
You're i________
Saw your blog post
It's really fantastic
That was s_________ (Oh, psych!)
'Cause you write like a spastic

I hate these Word Crimes
Your prose is dopey
Think you should only
Write in emoji
Oh, you're a lost c____
Go back to pre-school
Get out of the gene p___
Try your best to not drool

Never mind I give up
Really now I give up
Hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey
Go Away!