People Who Can't Use Proper Grammar

so, i guess this is my rant for the day. it drives me crazy when people in a position to educate or lead the masses use improper grammar. now, i don't always adhere to the rules of english grammar (obviously, since i don't bother w/ capitalization in my blog or in unofficial emails), but i do when i'm speaking in public and when i'm teaching. to do otherwise would be to discredit myself. is it too much to ask to expect the same attention to language from others? i don't think so.

what brought this on, you ask? well, i was in my biometry class this morning, and mccreadie kept using the plural forms of words when he should have used the singular. like when he was talking about experimenting with a particular fungus he kept saying things like "and this particular fungi..." and the day he said "larvae" 500 times, he should have said "larva" 400 of those times, since he was only talking about one larva, not a whole bunch of them. see, this is what happens when i pay attention in class. i realize that the profs don't use proper english half the time, and it drives me nuts.

but the thing that gets me the most is george w. bush. he always mispronounces the word "nuclear." he says "nuk-you-lar" instead of "nuk-lee-ar." i guess that has just always been one of my pet peeves. when it happened once, i overlooked it, since many people in the south make the same mistake. but when it happened in speech after speech, it began to make me crazy. one would think that his speech-writers or publicists or someone would tell the man that "nuk-you-lar" is not how you say that. his constant mispronounciation, in my humble opinion, makes him look uneducated and dumb, qualities that i find undesirable in a leader. not that he is uneduacted or dumb - he may be a freakin' genius for all i know (i don't think that's true, either). anyway, my point is: when you're speaking to large groups of people, especially in a leadership role, use proper grammar and make sure that you know how to pronounce all of the words you have to say.