Language Correction Quotes

The sibilant s is the most difficult sound to correct.

My father is from North Carolina, and he got rid of his drawl really fast. He's very much about speaking correctly, enunciating in certain ways.

My high-school coach Tony Reginelli was kind of famous for 'Reggie-isms,' kind of like 'Yogi-isms.' He always said if you want to be a good quarterback, when sprinting left you want to be amphibious and throw left-handed. I told him, 'You mean ambidextrous, coach?'

I remember when we did our first read-through, Sonny [Bono] looks at the script and he goes, "Okay, I'll see you guys later. Chai-ay-oh!" And I said, "It's ciao! Aren't you Italian? C-i-a-o doesn't spell 'chai-ay-oh.'" Sonny's dead, so he won't be embarrassed if I tell that story.

Xylophone is spelled with an X. That's wrong. It should be a Z up front. Next time you spell xylophone, use a Z. If someone says, "That's wrong!", you say, "No, it ain't." If you think that's wrong, then you need to have your head Z-rayed.

I'm used to shifting languages because my father used to speak to us, to my brother and I, he used to speak in English. He wanted us to be quite fluent in English, especially when he was trying to correct our behavior; he would do that in English.

When all those city folks try to fix up my talking, all they do is mess me up.

People sometimes have to correct my English. I knew I had a problem when Arnold Schwarzenegger started doing it.

I grew up cursing a lot. It felt natural. My parents told me to stop.

After my husband spell-checks one of my manuscripts, my editor says, 'It's been Normanized.'

... as a rule of thumb, whenever there appears a plural, correct for a singular. Should I ever let slip a royal WE, put me out of my misery with a swift blow to the head.

Most children are given far too much praise for their early drawings, so much so that they rarely learn the ability to refine their first crude efforts the way their early attempts at language are corrected.

I think smartphones need to send an electrical shock to a user when they get their your/you're mixed up.

I Used the Word 'Negro' and I was Firmly Corrected

I was an exchange student for a summer, and most of that summer was in Ukraine. I used to say 'the Ukraine' until I was there, and one of the Ukrainian college students I got to be good friends with, he said, 'Do you say I'm going back to the Texas,' and I said, 'No.' He said, 'We don't say we're going back to the Ukraine, either.'