Many people use the expression "how I spent this summer"
Many people use the expression "how I spent this summer". Honestly, few things in this world put me on edge, but this phrase positively drives me out of my mind.
Consider: how (who?) [I] (did what?) [spent] (what?) [this summer]. It is perfectly obvious!
"How I spent this summer" is a most loathsome example of solecism, a stylistic device consisting in the deliberate distortion of the grammatical or syntactic structure of an expression without altering its meaning. Though I would quarrel with that. The term was coined by the grammarians of antiquity after the name of the city of Soli, situated either on the south-eastern coast of Turkey, founded by the Argives and Lindians, or on the island of Cyprus, founded by the Athenians. Be that as it may, the founders of Soli in time mingled with the native population and lost the purity of their language. Speakers of the Attic dialect mocked their degenerate fellows mercilessly, and their speech came to be characterised by the word solecism. PS Some call phrases in the spirit of 'how I spent this summer' anacoluthon (inconsequence), but that figure too consists in the erroneous agreement of words.