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From our girl here, I'm Manion Fakrity, and you can think of me as your friendly guide to the English language.

We talk about writing, history, rules, and cool stuff.

Today, we'll talk about the word of appearing where it shouldn't,

and we'll talk about two things that make English weird compared to other languages.

This segment is by Ban Yagoda.

One day last week was a red letter day for me.

I was reading in my local newspaper an article about the deal by which in 1947,

the Cleveland Indians bought Larry Dobie's contract from the Newark Eagles,

making Dobie the first African American to play in the American League.

The price was a seemingly low $15,000.

However, the article quoted a baseball historian, Jim Overmeyer,

as saying that relatively speaking, it wasn't so low because no other black player fetched

quote, that good of a price at that time, unquote.

The reason I was so excited was that the word of was in brackets.

In other words, in the interview, Overmeyer had used the phrase that good a price,

and in the article, the reporter added the word of in brackets,

meaning to correct the grammar, make the meaning clear, or both.

The construction in question is intensifier-qualifier, adjective of a noun.

For example, not too big of a portion for me to eat, not that hard of a decision to make,

not too good of a time, and so on.

It's traditionally and technically non-standard English, otherwise known as wrong,

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