Gramer Girl here, I'm Manion Fogredy and you can think of me as your friendly guide to

the English language.

Writing, history, rules, and cool stuff.

Today I have an especially grammar-filled show for you about how English is evolving

to make certain kinds of sentences more acceptable.

It's a little more complicated than most of my shows, but I hope you'll think it's worth

it.

And now, onto the funny thing about verbs such as NAB and a witness.

A listener named Daphne sent us this sentence from an online news story about package thieves.

Nol Rivera gets a notification on his phone anytime someone comes to his front door.

But early in December, in the middle of the day, he witnessed two women walk up to his

porch and NAB, his four-year-old son's Christmas gifts.

That sentence didn't sound quite right to her, and the reason was the specific forms

of the verbs walk and NAB.

If she'd been the one writing the story, she would have written, he witnessed two women

walking up to his porch and NABbing his four-year-old son's Christmas gifts.

She says she's been hearing short forms of verbs often lately and wonders what's happening.

In cases like this, you need to be aware of something called the recency illusion.

The tendency to think that something is new because you started to notice it only recently.

That happens a lot, but in this case, it turns out that Daphne is right.

Sentences like he witnessed them NAB the gifts are a relatively recent development and they

are becoming more frequent, and that's not where the surprises end.

...