On Grammar

As many of you who know me know, I am a bit of a perfectionist (it's my star-sign, I tell you). Not that I am not guilty of making misteaks myself (oops?). I confess, I have to make mistakes, or else my true identity as a perfect alien would be revealed, and one of the first things I learnt when I beamed down to this planet Earth was that it is human to err.

However, that does not stop me from pointing and laughing at those mistakes people do make.
(Not that I really do, they tend to just make me shake my head and cringe.)

These are several of those grammatical bloopers that really give me neck exercise:




Spelling 

Your vs. You're

"Your so mean to me!" She typed out in protest.

"You fool, it's you're!" I rolled my eyes.

"NO, YOUR MEAN TO ME. I AM SO NICE"

"You're!"

"No I'm not!"

"You're as in YOU ARE."

"I'm not!"

"YOU'RE really in over YOUR head, aren't you" I sighed.

You're: Contraction of  "you are" (the apostrophe replaces the 'a').
Your: Belonging to or associated with the person or people that the speaker is addressing: "What is your name?".

Quite vs. Quiet

"Your so quite today."

"I'm quite what? And it's you're!"

"Am not quite."

"Quite what?"

"I mean to say, why are you not talking..."

"Oh, quiet."

"Yes, that's what I said?"

"No you misspelled it."

"Oh... thanks. Your quiet nice."

*facepalm*



Quite: Absolutely; completely: "You are quite nice!"

Quiet: (Making) little or no noise. Still. "You are very quiet today."


Loose vs. Lose

"You looser!"

"Loser."

"I called you that first! You can't think of anything just because you loosed!"

"Lost."

"Whatever. Watch, I will never loose like you!"

"So...you're tight?"

"Huh?"


Lose: opposite of win.

Loose: opposite of tight.



Weird vs. Wierd

Considering wierd is not even a word, this is just wrong.

You've heard the "I before e, except after c" rule right? It's not true for all cases (especially when it's an "ay" sounding word, like neighbour), but the best way to remember it in this case, is that weird is just weird, so it doesn't follow the rule.

Punctuation

These aren't so obvious as the bad spelling. Most often bad punctuation just stems from not knowing better. I've got two friends who make a deal about punctuation. Nerdyy asserts that his beloved math teacher taught him that "Punctuation maketh a man, no punctuation maketh a mouse." Another friend, who we refer to as the Punctuation Baba, demands that song lyrics be 'typed out' (i.e. 'sung') with proper punctuation. (Go figure.)

Space before question mark/exclamation mark/other punctuation mark

I've always wondered why people put spaces before their punctuation mark. Not that I've actually been taught to do it one way or the other (or, maybe I have, and I simply do not recall), but as far as I know there was never a need for these spaces. So I looked it up and this is what my darling Wiki told me:

Some writers put a space between the end of their sentence and the question mark. This is thought to come from a French practice and is called French spacing. In French a space is always put before question marks, exclamation marks, colons, and semicolons. In English, however, using this space is thought of as bad form. The Oxford English Dictionary does not encourage it. 

No space after comma/period/punctuation mark

This is another of those that also make me feel uncomfortable just seeing, because it feels disorganized. I always think of sentences as one frame of thought, and these thoughts are either separated by period (full stop) or joined with a comma. And these thoughts just as you think them, need the proper pauses. Hence the space (and pertinent punctuation).  So again, I looked this up:

Wiki Answers :
Q: How much times do you space after a comma?
A: After each and every comma there should be a single space.The same as with fullstops, colons and semicolons.

(Not to mention, the bad grammar in the Q, with 'how much times' vs. 'how many'. If it's a countable quantity, use "many".)

Apostrophe Catastrophe: "Plural's" 

I am sure whoever is guilty of making this mistake is just as guilty of skipping the grammar class that taught this simple rule.

You would think that people would know better, but it's (contraction of "it is") amazing to see the number of signs (not sign's) you would encounter that actually have plurals with apostrophes.

In looking up material relevant to this case, I found this awesome site that directly addresses this problem: http://www.apostrophecatastrophes.com/.

Apostrophe with letter s is used to show possession, or in some instances a contraction with "is", and not plural.

E.g. "That is the boy's store." The store belongs to the boy.
E.g. "The boy's going to the store." Used as a contraction for "The boy is going to the store."

The apostrophe is not used for plurals. There are exceptions, such as using it to show a plural of an abbreviation (CD's), however this is the most fundamental rule.

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Okay, so Miss Know-It-All, aka Miss Perfectionist is done for now. This wasn't really a rant (if you're inclined to think so).  I just came across many instances recently that have always made me want to point it out, and simultaneously shake my head.

The best of them all: 

Person: "I am such a genious."

Me: "Wonderful. A genius who can't spell genius." 

"DONT CORRECT MY GRAMMER'S !!!"