By Carol Hastings Santa Monica
What’s the deal with a headline screaming with a blatant grammar mistake (Dec. 31, page 1,“Where’s the party at?”)?
Are you trying to be cutely colloquial (very subtle) or did you flunk English 101? (or was that 8th grade?) I hear this use of “at” after “where is” all the time and I wonder if those who use it have emerged from some distant mountain where education is available only to the 8th grade in a one-room school house. My niece, who is getting her master’s degree in education from UCSB, uses this term and it scrapes my guts that my relative uses such poor grammar. If a local newspaper is screaming headlines with improper grammar, why do you bother to run articles about Santa Monica’s various education issues?
Will you now use “I don’t know nothin’” also because people use it? I realize this may seem small in a world with much bigger problems, but in a time when education issues are of vital importance, let’s start with our literary messengers. That includes the Santa Monica Daily Press.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 3, 2008. Read the original PDF.