Taylor Swift, patron saint of the modern teenager, has swooped in to defend her flock against their greatest enemy (the standardized test). After an SAT prep book used one of Taylor Swift's lyrics to illustrate a grammatical wrong about pronoun use, Swift issued a speedy correction.
The book incorrectly quoted Swift's lyrics as:
Somebody tells you they love you, you got to believe 'em.
Swift amended the line to:
When you're 15 and somebody tells you they love you, you're gonna believe them.
However, Swift did not address the grammatical error. A hypothetical test-taker might consider changing the sentence to an unwieldy, correct version, such as:
When you're 15 and somebody tells you that he or she loves you, you're gonna believe him or her.
Truly, the best lesson here is: Lots of people are wrong a lot of the time; don’t rely on pop music for your sentence structure; and if you’re 15 and someone makes you take a terrible test, tell that person, Thank you kindly, but no thank you.
Read more posts by Maggie Lange
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taylor swift
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