Hello all, this may sound silly but these days everyone (especially tv adds) say "for free" The reason I ask is, have I had it wrong all my life that if something is free, then we say "this is free" and not this is for free. Otherwise we we would need a bag of "frees" Or did my parents and teachers guide me incorrectly. The other question is, do I now have to write: "Get your hands off of me" or can I still write "get your hands off me"?
I ask because I think I know but am no longer sure. If I am writing then I need to get as much correct as I can. There are more things like this but it would become a list and I think these are the two main ones that bug me.
Or is it just Americanisms? and if this is the case do I have to learn the way they use English.
I hope that makes sense to anyone who reads this post.
Thanks in advance. Regards Paul G
Hi Paul. I say just write the way you have been taught through your parents and education. If you send any kind of m.s. off to a publisher here they will probably have been educated in the same way. As the saying goes, 'stick to what you know.'
'For free' and 'off of me' are both incorrect English. To 'this is for free' one might retort 'but who's free?' for example. You could write them in conversation because some people actually talk that way, but in narrative they're just plain wrong. So's the latter, which should read 'plainly wrong', and that just shows how flexible language can be.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that 'correct' is often in the eye and mind of the reader. My personal 'correct English' is based 30 to 40-year-old grammar, punctuation and syntax instruction from school. I suspect that's very different nowadays, if in fact it's taught at all, in the same way the Oxford English Dictionary is very different to my (recently lost in a house move) 1968 version.I had a nasty shock recently when I read that apostrophe-s, used to denote possessive was now correctly used after a noun ending in 's' rather than just the apostrophe. That's reserved for use after plurals.
You can't win, mate.