Rant on.

I am going to take a half step back from the political chaos of the mid-term elections.  It’s only a half step because I am hoping some politician takes today’s rant to heart and maybe actually tries to do something productive about the problem I am outlining today.  That problem is basic English grammar skills.

Anybody who has surfed the net at all has seen a couple of the issues which really bug me.  There are three or four of them which I see a lot and as much as I would like to blame our education system, I don’t know if it’s at fault.  I mean, I went to a public school and I got the same education most everybody else gets, and yet so many seem unable to use an apostrophe or a comma correctly.  Few seem to understand the difference between “to”, “two” and “too”.  Most just write “to” whenever they want a “tu” word (phonetically).  It’s easy, folks! Sesame street goes over the “to” thing regularly.

Then there’s the weird grammar bit I have now seen from a couple of people.  I can understand people confusing “its” and “it’s”–the first, after all, is an exception to a rule–and although “your” and “you’re” misuse baffles me a bit, I understand a little bit of the confusion.  Dropping commas–such as in this embarrassing (f-word warning!) Facebook status–I get; comma usage is a bit confusing and I get it wrong sometimes.  But now I have seen at least two instances where people use commas in an ellipsis instead of periods.  Where the hell are these people getting this from?  Where has anyone ever seen two commas next to each other, much less a whole string of them?  When you want a pause in your sentence…you use periods.  “This,,,that” is just majorly dumb.  Commas do not go together.  They are strictly soloists.  There is not a single reason in the English language to put one comma next to another comma.

Somewhat less dumb but still pretty stupid is the your / you’re thing.  I understand that they sound the same, but when you’re writing something you are, by definition, not listening to it.  Sure, sometimes you might read it out loud or at least move your lips when you read, but that’s hardly an excuse.  Put more simply, one can’t put “your” everywhere one wants one of these words.  “Your” is only for possessive use.  “This is your book.”  “I have your number.”  Etc.  “You’re” is a contraction of “You are”.  If one can change “your” to “you are” and have it make sense, then one should not be using “your” in the first place.  And yes, I see plenty of cases of this being wrong in both directions.  “I want you’re looks.”  “I am so glad your here.”  These usages are wrong, so please figure it out and get it straight.

As I said earlier, I understand the its / it’s confusion.  Without the apostrophe, we have a possessive, which goes against the usual possessive rule of putting one in place.  Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing this exception to the rule go away, but until that happens, one can do that same thing I outlined with “you’re” above.  If you can replace the word with “it is” and have it sound right, then the apostrophe goes there.  If you replace the word with “it is” and it sounds wrong, leave the apostrophe out:  “It’s (it is) coming this way!”  “Its (it is) eyes are blue.”  Simple enough.

Speaking of that troublesome apostrophe, let me make this clear:  Stop using an apostrophe every time there is an S at the end of a word. The apostrophe is used to do exactly two things:  Indicate possession or replace missing letters.  In “you’re” and “it’s” the apostrophe replaces the letter A and either I or HA respectively.  Plurals aren’t missing letters and they are generally not possessive, so they don’t need that apostrophe.  “There are hundred’s of them” is wrong.  So is “I have six banana’s.”  Seriously, how have so many people missed the bazillion times they had plurals spelled out for them without an apostrophe?

As some of you may have guessed by this point, I am a Grammar Nazi.  It makes me sad, because what I really want to be is part of some sort of Grammar Police.  I want to arrest and fine people for screwing up things like what I have mentioned above, and keep doing so until they get it right.  I don’t mind creative spelling as long as it’s obvious somebody is misspelling on purpose–writing the text message style UR or even YER instead of “your” or “you’re”, for example–but being too lazy to figure out correct usage of the apostrophe in words one is not being creative in spelling is wrong.

Seriously, in general, just stop being lazy.  It’s obvious that you’re going to make up your own mind about this…but I hope you follow my advice before too long, because in this one sentence, and in the two bits I put in above, I have shown how easy it is to use all of these grammar bits correctly.  Correct Grammar Usage is, in my opinion, its own reward.

Rant off.