Agreement

Life is good. I had a great, relaxing weekend. The weather was perfect-- Chamber of Commerce one might say. I spent some time each day by the pool reading, after going to the gym (go me!) and I am enjoying this slow transition to fall, but that doesn’t mean I can’t get worked up about something. Agreement. A pet peeve passed down from my executive editor to me is agreement errors.

I usually heart the Food Network, but lately they’ve been airing an ad for The Best Thing I Ever Ate, a lame filler show. The commercial says “What Makes Their Mouth Water?” What?!?!?!? All the chefs and FN celebrities share one, collective mouth? Isn’t that interesting? And that’s not even a sentence that would require two singular, gender appropriate options. All that takes to correct is an s. Make mouth plural, and it agrees with their. What makes their mouths water? Each chef has his or her own mouth.

Doesn’t the Food Network have editors? They should. And maybe those editors could spend a little time coaching the chefs and celebs on the overuse of adverbs when adjectives are required, and ending sentences in prepositions. Cooking shows are a hotbed of grammatical gaffes. Why can’t we just fry anymore? Or sauté? Cook or bake? Measure? Seems every time I turn on a cooking show they are cooking or baking something off or frying something up. Since when?

Maybe it happened when healthy foods became healthful. Which is probably about the time all houses became homes, even when they are empty structures. But that’s another post.