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!
Please donate to the Japan relief fund.
or text REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation
