Word Crimes lyrics

[Intro:]

Everybody shut up, woo!

Everyone listen up!

Hey, hey, hey, uh.

Hey, hey, hey.

Hey, hey, hey.

If you can’t write in the proper way,

if you don’t know how to conjugate,

maybe you flunked that class,

and maybe now you find

that people mock you online.

Okay, now here’s the deal:

I’ll try to educate ya;

gonna familiarize

you with the nomenclature;

you’ll learn the definitions

of nouns and prepositions;

literacy’s your mission;

and that’s why I think it’s a…

[Chorus:]

Good time

to learn some grammar.

Now, did I stammer?

Work on that grammar;

you should know when

it’s ‟less” or it’s ‟fewer”,

like people who were

never raised in a sewer.

I hate these word crimes,

like ‟I could care less”:

that means you do care,

at least a little.

Don’t be a moron;

you’d better slow down

and use the right pronoun;

show the world you’re no clown.

Everybody wise up!

[Verse 2:]

Say you got an ‟i”, ‟t”,

followed by apostrophe, ‟s”.

Now, what does that mean?

You would not use ‟it’s” in this case

as a possessive;

it’s a contraction.

What’s a contraction?

Well, it’s the shortening of a word, or a group of words,

by the omission of a sound or letter.

Okay, now here’s some notes,

syntax you’re always mangling:

no ‟x” in ‟espresso”,

your participle’s danglin’,

but I don’t want your drama.

If you really wanna

leave out that Oxford comma,

just keep in mind…

That ‟be”, ‟see”, ‟are”, ‟you”,

are words, not letters.

Get it together;

use your spellchecker;

you should never

write words using numbers,

unless you’re seven

or your name is Prince.

I hate these word crimes;

you really need a

full-time proofreader,

you dumb mouth-breather.

Well, you should hire

some cunning linguist1

to help you distinguish

what is proper English.

One thing I ask of you;

time to learn your homophones is past due;

learn to diagram a sentence too;

always say ‟to whom”,

don’t ever say ‟to who”;

and listen up when I tell you this:

I hope you never use quotation marks for emphasis.

You finished second grade;

I hope you can tell

if you’re doing good or doing well.

Better figure out the difference:

irony is not coincidence.2

And I thought that you’d gotten it through your skull

what’s figurative and what’s literal.

Oh but, just now, you said

you literally couldn’t get out of bed:

that really makes me want to literally

smack a crowbar upside your stupid head.

I read your e-mail:

it’s quite apparent

your grammar’s errant,

you’re incoherent.

Saw your blog post:

it’s really fantastic;

that was sarcastic, (Oh, psych!)

’cause you write like a spastic.

I hate these word crimes.

Your prose is dopey;

think you should only

write in emoji.

Oh, you’re a lost cause;

go back to pre-school,

get out of the gene pool,

try your best to not drool.

Never mind, I give up.

Really now, I give up.

Hey, hey, hey.

Hey, hey, hey.

Go away!

1. Cunning linguist is a very common pun about linguistics; it implies that a linguist, being both intelligent and skilled with languages (and tongues) will also be skilled in performing oral sex, as a cunnilinguist, that is, someone performing cunnilingus.2. Many people misuse "irony" to mean "coincidence", and this is something that’s particularly annoying to many purists.

See here one of the innumerable rants about it.

See also here.

• Artist:Weird Al Yankovic
• Album:Mandatory Fun