PSA from your friendly neighborhood Grammar Nazi

[rachg82]

Dear world,

You will notice that this video does not say, "You can also use apostrophes to make a word plural!" Why not, you may ask? BECAUSE IT'S WRONG. There are many girl's with toys in the house. WRONG. That girl's toy is in the house. Yes. Yes, it is.

Unless you're talking about an exception like an abbreviation with two or more interior periods, or a single lowercase letter (simply because a's is less confusing than as, which can wrongly read to the eye as the word "as", though in my opinion this can be solved by capitalizing single letters. Case in point: "I earned two Bs this semester." Perfectly acceptable.), don't do it.

P.S. It's DVDs and 1990s, not DVD's & 1990's. STOP IT.

Love,
Me.

Misused apostrophes make me raaaage, rage against the dying of the light. That is all.

(Also, that cartoon is so cute. Heh. I like the bat. Jayden and I used to have a thing for them. We'd turn off the lights in his room, get out a flashlight, and do shadow puppets of bats on the wall, making bat sounds.)

P.P.S. On a non-related note: I just called the temp agency about my W2 form, and wow, the lady who works at the front desk there is still such an insufferable wench. "Uhh, we sent those out at the end of January." I know. I just told you I misplaced it & need you to look me up in your records so I can pick up a replacement copy in person. Everyone knows W2 forms are sent by the end of January. Can I pick up a copy or are you too busy filing your nails? "If you know for sure you worked last year…" What? No, I don't know for sure; I got hit over the head REALLY HARD & can't remember all of last year at all. WTF are you on? YES, I KNOW FOR SURE. She even asked me twice. BITCH, CHECK YO'SELF.<--bringing us back to the point, note that the apostrophe there denotes the omission of letters. Yay for continuity!

Comments

[rachg82.livejournal.com]

I am here for you, girl (http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-hyphens.aspx).<--That's my favorite site to check for grammar confusion.

[sumpta.livejournal.com]

OH YES THANK YOU. I already have my favourite Dutch grammar site bookmarked, but I hadn't found a good English one yet. This is great! I love it! I do have the Oxford English Dictionary and the Collins Cobuild, but you know... Big books. Faaaar away in the bookcase.

I think I get your OCD. I used to be so careful about posting in English on the Internet, but it took so much time to proofread that I tried to shed the habit. It still makes me feel very uneasy when I remark errors afterwards though. It's annoying, because I write Dutch pretty flawlessly without having to put thought into it. I have a hard time accepting I'll never write/speak my other languages like I do my own, which is obviously very irrational of me.