Front Porch: Heed the grammar gods and resist the urge to click

I came across a little item on Facebook recently, showing a woman sitting in a chair, then stretching one leg out straight (at right angles to her torso) and standing up using only the muscles in her other leg and hip and without hands touching anything.

This wasn’t the exercise wherein the straightened leg touches the ground once lift is taking place. No, that darn stiff leg was supposed to stay airborne until the person was standing.

Puhleeze.

The accompanying text spoke to how once one is over 40, one begins losing leg strength and so, one should practice this little maneuver to keep strong.

I was already “over 40” back in the 20th century when Pearl Jam was rocking out in Seattle. I couldn’t do it then, nor when I was younger and could do no-arm cartwheels or put my heel behind my neck.

Exercise, yes. Work on strengthening muscles and being limber, certainly. Doing the modified (and recommended) version of a one-straight-leg stand-up exercise, you betcha.

But I was not going to click on this item to learn more. I don’t know what they were selling, nor do I care. It was another bit of online clickbait ultimately designed to lure, dupe or drive a person crazy. Or at least to purchase Dr. Whozit’s magic cure-all.

The posts I hate the most are those that offer some versions of Here Are the Five Signs of (name the disease). Go ahead and click – there will be a goodly number of websites, medications and everything but a plain and simple list of signs/symptoms.

There are also a host of heart-breaking, warm-and-fuzzy or outrageous stories appearing online. If you start reading, you get to a point – usually a key point in the telling – wherein, you need to click to read the rest.

Sometimes you get the rest – buried in among a whole lot of other stories or leading to more clicks and ads and who-knows-what else – but often you get a phishing scam or virus alert or other annoyance.

Proceed with caution, for sure. How to tell the ones that aren’t just clickbait from ones that actually deliver … well, sometimes it’s the grammar that gives them away.

Speaking of which, there often appears a note for you to click on if you’d like to see “more or less posts like this one.” More posts or fewer posts are a thing. Less posts aren’t. Not unless the lords of grammar have abdicated.

From time to time I do don my Grammar Goddess robe and rail against the offenses that are taking place in the world, recognizing all the while that language is a fluid and ever-evolving thing. But unless I’ve missed a memo on the matter, the rule about plural and singular nouns is still in place.

I’ve restated how that works so often that I won’t do so again now, lest I surely become that old lady who yells, “Get off my lawn!” all day long – though I’m afraid I may have crossed that Rubicon already.

I understand that clickbait is here forever and that the grammar war has been lost, but sometimes I just have to rant about the things that bug me … even if I’m just bellowing into a headwind.

Voices correspondent Stefanie Pettit can be reached by email at [email protected]