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Hi gilobrien, and welcome to the forum!
I think this is yet another example of "verbification" of a noun. Plenty of those to go around in the English language. If you start with:
These errors in grammar cause me concern (or create concern).
then it's a simple next step to turn the noun "concern" into the verb "concerning." Same thing happened to "impact" and many other nouns. These things creep into the language gradually. I'm not surprised it doesn't show in the dictionaries yet. So strictly speaking, yes, your example is grammatically incorrect (for now). But most of us on this forum tend to be descriptivists when it comes to new usage, so I'm fine with that verbification. The meaning comes through clearly to me.
Another -ing verb I see misused a lot, apparently by people who don't quite grasp its meaning, is untelling, to mean nobody knows and perhaps nobody can know. Example usage: It's untelling how many of the defective units are still in use.
The proper expression, at least from when I was learning to speak, would be There's no telling.
Welcome to the forum, gilobrien.
While I cannot find "concerning" in any American dictionary as anything but a preposition, but Collins dictionary, an English dictionary, accepts it as either a preposition or as an adjective. Unless your cow orkers have developed hard signals indicating that ne is speaking Ameican or speaking English, a polite man would have to assume that one is not making grammatical errors, but is speaking English.
It is very satisfying to catch Donald Trump's beloved poorly educated followers in grammatical errors. That jibes well with our feelings that they are fools in general. Spelling and grammar flames, however, are generally prett lame, and for my self-respect, I try to avoid voicing them out loud. Unless, of course, they are loutish as well as ignorant. There are many people whose ungrammatical language is not an indication that they are not worth knowing, or that their pronouncements are not worthy of consideration.
Thanks for stopping in. I hope you decide to eturn often!
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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