Learning to love those who misuse the language

Here’s a confession: When people commit certain grammatical errors on TikTok, I instantly discredit everything they’re about to say. Actually, that’s two confessions. The first is that I’m a language snob. The second is that I’m on TikTok.Everyone’s social media algorithm is different. They’re like fingerprints, in that for better or worse, they identify you as exactly who you are when no one is looking. So make of this what you will: My social media algorithm serves me a steady rotation of food, old English churches, dogs, and Biblical scholars viciously going at each other in videos and video responses. Mostly, though, it’s cooking demonstrations.A few nights ago, I watched a chef prepare a complicated French chicken dish that required a pile of expensive mushrooms. “These mushrooms,” the chef said, “costed a lot.” Immediate scroll. I didn’t stick around to watch the rest. I was out when I heard “costed.” My thinking was, if you don’t know that the past tense of the verb “cost” is “cost” — not “costed” — well, how good could that chicken really be? (Getty Images) I’m not really a stickler. Who vs. whom, for instance — I don’t much mind. And I don’t mind your saying I don’t mind you saying in a sentence, even though I don’t mind your saying is correct — a gerund takes a possessive — but, as I said, I don’t mind your saying it another way.But “costed” got me. Worse, though, is the sudden, epidemic misuse of “I” as a possessive pronoun — as in, “I want to tell you about Byron, and I’s trip to Endor,” instead of “Byron’s and my trip to Endor.” I hear that construction, and there’s almost nothing you can say after that to reclaim your dignity. Not even The oncologist and I’s analysis of your test results suggests your cancer is in remission or The other Supreme Court judges and I’s unanimous ruling is to overturn the previous decision or anything at all.The I’s vs. my problem is largely a case of hypercorrection: Once people finally absorbed the rule that I is “correct” and me is “incorrect” in certain compound constructions — often because they were repeatedly corrected for saying things like “John and me went…” — they generalized the rule beyond where it applies, because no one likes to be corrected (I have learned this lesson the hard way) and no one wants to sound stupid.Eventually, after all of that correcting and grammar-shaming, I began to be seen as the prestigious form to use whenever it’s paired with another person. Thus, Byron and I (correct as a subject) gets mistakenly carried over into the possessive construction Byron and I’s, even though the possessive form is Byron’s and my. It’s essentially a familiar grammatical rule applied where the underlying grammatical case has changed, which is another way of saying that sometimes when we want to sound smart, we end up sounding stupid.Here’s the trouble: I’m in seminary now, trying to take seriously the instruction to love my neighbor as God loves me. And “Byron and I’s trip to Endor” is my neighbor. The mushroom chef is my neighbor. I’m supposed to love them exactly as they are, present tense, apostrophes and all.But God and I’s love isn’t quite the same. God loves everybody from what you might characterize as 50,000 miles up. From that altitude, looking down, we’re all sinners, indistinguishable, equally in need of grace, equally forgiven.THE HARDY BOYS SHOW US HOW CHILDHOOD HAS CHANGED Of course, I don’t have a 50,000-mile view. I have my view, which is close-up, specific, clogged with other people’s misused possessives, and a lot pettier than I like to think. The chef’s “costed” didn’t tell me anything about the chef. It told me about me — about the small, ungenerous satisfaction I have in feeling briefly superior to a stranger who was just trying to show me how to make a delicious piece of chicken.Byron and I’s trip to Endor, in the same way, says nothing about I and everything about me. Loving my neighbor means loving the one who says “costed,” not the improved version of him I’ve been drafting in my head. God, presumably, isn’t scrolling past anybody. Which means, when I put it that way, it was Byron, and our trip to Endor that cost me so much.Rob Long is a television writer and producer, including as a screenwriter and executive producer on Cheers, and the co-founder of Ricochet.com.