I am a grammar nerd. But most of all I am a pedant for punctuation (as someone once told me).
The improper use of apostrophes has always bothered me. Especially with the words "its" and "it's".
It's (with an apostrophe) is only used when you are using the contracted form of "it is". As in, "It's entirely possible that I failed to learn about that in school."
If it does not make sense to say "it is" where you are using "it's", then drop the apostrophe. (Confusing then and than is another pet peeve of mine, but that's for another day.)
It's (i.e. it is) never used as a possesive, meaning something that belongs to it. That would be "its" (no apostrophe): "Its color was red."
And another thing that is really bothering me lately is the use of the word "fail" as a noun. As in, "I had an epic fail".
Fail is a verb, as in "to fail". It is not a noun, as in "I had a sewing fail last night". That does not even make sense, if you take it literally. I just want to ask, what did the sewing do, that it failed so miserably?
Why not just say "I made a mistake?"
Perhaps that is the answer- we don't want to admit that we made a mistake, and are trying to blame an inanimate object for our "fail"? I don't know, I just know that it really irritates me to read that!
Well, I feel a little better about that now.
It's a miracle.
P.S. Enjoy some of these pictures I took at the Philadelphia Flower Show a couple weeks ago- see it's not all bad!
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My daughter & you would get along fabulously! LOL
ReplyDeleteIt drives her crazy when grammer is used incorrectly. She corrects me a lot.
The Philadelphia Flower show. I recall attending the show once when we lived in N.J.in the 70's.
My mom loved flowers.She was excited to attend the show. She passed away in 2006. Just the mention of the show brought back such wonderful memories.
I HATE the it's/its thing. People do not know the difference. I was an English major, but even before then I knew the difference, ugh!
ReplyDeleteAlso, the fail thing, which I also find annoying, comes from the video game world. (We don't have those at our house, lol, my kids are the "nerds" who don't have video games...)
Your and you're bug me but really whatever. I rarely type "correctly" myself although Im well aware of all the rules. I guess Im just lazy haha
ReplyDeleteI know I'm not perfect, but it does really bother me when people continually write things incorrectly and don't wish to be any better. "Would you like to swing on a star?/Carry moonbeams home in a jar/And be better off than you are/Or would you rather be a mule?" :-)
ReplyDeleteI didn't get to the flower show but heard it was great. I think Paris was theme, which I would have liked.
ReplyDeleteEats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss I think is a great book for punctuation. My son studied The Elements of Style, which I don't think is as clear.
Christy
Lil Bit Brit
Heh, after reading this I was paranoid I could have been the offender and had to check my blog with a fine tooth comb for typos.
ReplyDeleteI love 'everyone's entitled to my opinion' lol:)
ReplyDeleteI feel your pain, although i'm bothered more by ppl speaking incorrectly more so than writing although that is definitely annoying.I have to admit though that sometimes my written grammar is not entirely up to scratch.
I'm pleased to say that i don't use 'epic fail' :)