For some reason my students have a compulsion to load their writing with affirmations. They truly feel the need to sincerely convince me that they absolutely, honestly feel a certain way (HAH! See what I did there? Oh, wit.). While the peppering of adverbs is usually just a bit of lazy writing, the issue that comes up with the most consistency is mistakenly writing "defiantly" instead of "definitely." Spell-checkers fly over this one, and it usually leads to pretty funny mistakes in meaning.
A colleague and I started joking last year about keeping track of how many times this gets misused, and in what context. It only took three weeks for me to catch one this semester, and I figured what better use of a blog than to keep a running list of these. Without further ado, the first entry in what is absolutely, positively, and most assuredly to become a long list:
"I love the outdoors, so I can defiantly spend a lot of time outside."
A defiant position, indeed.
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Perhaps he/she comes from a household where staying indoors is a parental expectation. By defiantly spending time outside he/she is asserting his/her independence from mommy and daddy.
ReplyDeleteI am a college student. I think your blog will be a big help. Thanks
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