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  • Everybody loves to be corrected.

  • I can tell you from experience, they don't.

  • The fact is, while the grammar police

  • act like these rules were laid down by God herself,

  • they can change and morph over time,

  • just like language does.

  • How dare you! The rules are the rules.

  • She ain't listenin'.

  • Don't say "ain't," dear.

  • It's low-class.

  • Funny you say that.

  • Up until the 1800s, "ain't" was a proper contraction

  • of "am not," used by the upper class.

  • Are you attending Lady Margaret's soiree?

  • I won't, I shan't, I ain't.

  • It wasn't until the lower classes began to use it

  • that the word fell out of fashion

  • and was deemed bad English.

  • I ain't going either. What luck.

  • Now we can hang out together.

  • How vulgar!

  • I'll never use that word again.

  • (both) Shun, shun, shun!

  • And now, when someone says "ain't,"

  • grammar nuts literally go insane.

  • (laughs) Aha, I got you now.

  • You said "literally" when you meant "figuratively."

  • That's actually the opposite of what you meant.

  • It's wrong and it's always been wrong.

  • So be gone.

  • Whoa!

  • Wrong again, Ms. Dazzle.

  • People have been using "literally"

  • as a hyperbolic intensifier for literally hundreds of years.

  • Hogwash.

  • Charles Dickens used it.

  • So did Charlotte Bronte.

  • Not to mention Mark Twain, James Joyce,

  • F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Vladimir Nabokov.

  • (screaming)

  • But those are the English language's greatest writers.

  • Didn't they know about the rule?

  • The fact is, there was no documented rule

  • against using "literally" this way until 1909,

  • when author Ambrose Bierce wrote a grammar book

  • titled "Write It Right."

  • To those who use "literally" when you mean "figuratively" ♪

  • It is bad enough to exaggerate

  • But to affirm the truth of the exaggeration is intolerable

Everybody loves to be corrected.

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