At  6:19 PM 3/24/97 -0500, EDWARD VAVRA wrote:
>---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>Sender:       Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
>              <[log in to unmask]>
>Poster:       EDWARD VAVRA <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject:      Any more I make a lot of errors
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>   A friend recently objected to my use of "anymore" in the
>following: "If a student hands in a paper anymore, he might
>have gotten it off the Internet."
>
>I don't know how the word (two words?) is/are spelled. I
>would not normally use the word(s) in writing, but since he
>said it is an error, I promised I would post it here to see what
>ya'll have to say about it. All I know is that it seems perfectly
>acceptable to me.
 
Hi Ed:
 
Your use of anymore to mean nowadays (as Bill Murdick mentioned) is
certainly not a "mistake"; however, we can say that it's not a part of
standard written English, as is true of many spoken forms.  Here in Western
PA we often hear "my hair needs washed"--right?
 
The standard (or prestige dialect) use of "anymore" is used with negative
sentences:  I don't make a lot of errors anymore."  My Dictionary of
English Usage identifies your positive use of it as possibly having come to
this country by way of Scotch-Irish immigrants in the 18th
century--apparently the positive "anymore" is, or was, common in parts of
Ireland.  I once used a positive "any" in my ESL class, and my students
corrected me.  The any/some distinction is taught to nonnative speakers as
a positive/negative distinction:  I want some; I don't want any.  The same
applies to some of the expanded some/any words, like anymore:
someone/anyone (I don't see anyone; I see someone), something/anything,
etc.
 
Your usage is fairly common in speech, Ed.  It's certainly not a
grammatical error.
 
Martha Kolln