grammar rant originally posted on facebook

If I may go all "Mrs. Thistlebottom" on all y'all for a minute, I need to get something off my chest. It baffles me that native speakers of English, who have undoubtedly spoken English since they were toddlers, cannot master the proper use of the subjunctive case. "I wish I hadn't cut my hair" does not take longer to say than "I wish I didn't cut my hair", and yet ... and YET. People choose to use the latter, which is not only grammatically wrong, it is semantically a totally separate sentence. I know you meant to say "hadn't", Miss Grammatically-stupid-girl-on-pinterest, because the caption accompanied a photo of long hair. However, saying "I wish I didn't cut my hair", conjures a mental image of one who never, in fact, cuts one's hair. In another example, "I wish I would have chosen my words more wisely", although an understandable sentiment, would be better expressed with the more grammatically correct "I wish I had chosen my words more wisely". Hint: the better choice would have been option 2, and it would have saved you the effort of saying an extra word. Additionally, if you were typing that sentence, it might have even saved you the embarrassment (if you are capable of being embarrassed by such things) of inevitably misspelling the word "would". If you are trying to be lazy, you are doing it incorrectly. See, a lolcat would have said "rong", but lolcats have notoriously bad command of grammar and spelling.