The Unforgivable Syntax

A certain young man never knew
Just when to say whom and when who;
"The question of choosing,"
He said, "is confusing;
I wonder if which wouldn't do?"

Nothing is so illegitimate
As a noun when his verbs do not fit him; it
Makes him disturbed
If not properly verbed--
If he asks for the plural, why git him it!

Lie and lay offer slips to the pen
That have bothered most excellent men:
You can say that you lay
In bed--yesterday;
If you do it today, you're a hen!

A person we met at a play
Was cruel to pronouns all day:
She would frequently cry
"Between you and I,
If only us girls had our way--!"
(Christopher Morley, Mince Pie: Adventures on the Sunny Side of Grub Street, 1919)

• 1100 Words
  "Let us be brief, crisp, packed with thought."
• The Art of Walking
  "Sometimes it seems as though literature were a co-product of legs and head."
• A Morning in Marathon
  "[W]e flashed onto the Hackensack marshes and into the fully minted gold of superb morning."
• On Going to Bed
  "The happier creatures . . . take the tide of sleep at the flood and are borne calmly and with gracious gentleness out to great waters of nothingness."
• On Laziness
  "Every time we get into trouble it is due to not having been lazy enough."
• The Unnatural Naturalist
  "It is spring, when the feet of the floorwalker pain him and smoking-car windows have to be pried open with chisels."