Thursday, January 24, 2013

Grammar Nazi

Gaaaaarrrgggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!

You use what to be cool?

Does no one check these things? Now, god knows I wouldn't want an English professor evaluating my punctuation, but I think there is a level of basic English. To see this on the flipping radio being broadcast all over the place makes me want to scream. Your handwritten yard sale sign may have mistakes, but not something professional that you're sending out to the world. If you don't care about these things, hire someone that does. This, to me, is on par with this horrifying trend of adding an apostrophe s to make something plural: someone makes a sign that says "Free Kitten's." Free the kitten's what? Oh my god, make it stop before this becomes the rule. People can't seem to remember that apostrophe s is possessive, not plural. Maybe you remember my grammar graffiti in the art building stairwell at UNR? Someone wrote "breath fire," which sounds more like severe halitosis than the poetic, artsy nonsense the student intended. I brought a Sharpie and added the e. You're welcome. That's you're welcome, not your welcome.

I recognize that language evolves. I realize that it has to. I just wish it changed a little slower, like one or two spellings over the course of my lifetime. I cannot handle it when I encounter a sign that says you are "suppose to" do something. I grab my Sharpie.

I do have a suggestion for how to remember plural vs. possessive. Just think of a box of pens. If you label the box in all caps and write pen's, it will look like you wrote PENIS, and you do not have a box of penis. You have a box of pens. Someone at the tow yard labeled a box like that and every single day I had to restrain myself from asking them why on earth they had a box of penis. I wish I had. I bet they would have never misused the apostrophe s again.

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