dumb<\/strong>.\u00a0 Commas do not go together.\u00a0 They are strictly soloists.\u00a0 There is not a single reason in the English language to put one comma next to another comma.<\/p>\nSomewhat less dumb but still pretty stupid is the your \/ you’re thing.\u00a0 I understand that they sound the same, but when you’re writing something you are, by definition, not listening to it.\u00a0 Sure, sometimes you might read it out loud or at least move your lips when you read, but that’s hardly an excuse.\u00a0 Put more simply, one can’t put “your” everywhere one wants one of these words.\u00a0 “Your” is only<\/em> for possessive use.\u00a0 “This is your book.”\u00a0 “I have your number.”\u00a0 Etc.\u00a0 “You’re” is a contraction of “You are”.\u00a0 If one can change “your” to “you are” and have it make sense, then one should not be using “your” in the first place.\u00a0 And yes, I see plenty of cases of this being wrong in both directions.\u00a0 “I want you’re looks.”\u00a0 “I am so glad your here.”\u00a0 These usages are wrong<\/strong><\/span>, so please figure it out and get it straight.<\/p>\nAs I said earlier, I understand the its \/ it’s confusion.\u00a0 Without the apostrophe, we have a possessive, which goes against the usual possessive rule of putting one in place.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 If you can replace the word with “it is” and have it sound right, then the apostrophe goes there.\u00a0 If you replace the word with “it is” and it sounds wrong, leave the apostrophe out:\u00a0 “It’s (it is) coming this way!”\u00a0 “Its (it is<\/span>) eyes are blue.”\u00a0 Simple enough.<\/p>\nSpeaking of that troublesome apostrophe, let me make this clear:\u00a0 Stop using an apostrophe every time there is an S at the end of a word.<\/span> The apostrophe is used to do exactly two things:\u00a0 Indicate possession or replace missing letters.\u00a0 In “you’re” and “it’s” the apostrophe replaces the letter A and either I or HA respectively.\u00a0 Plurals aren’t missing letters and they are generally not possessive, so they don’t need that apostrophe.\u00a0 “There are hundred’s of them” is wrong.\u00a0 So is “I have six banana’s.”\u00a0 Seriously, how have so many people missed the bazillion times they had plurals spelled out for them without an apostrophe?<\/p>\nAs some of you may have guessed by this point, I am a Grammar Nazi.\u00a0 It makes me sad, because what I really want to be is part of some sort of Grammar Police.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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<\/em> being creative in spelling is wrong.<\/p>\nSeriously, in general, just stop being lazy.\u00a0 It’s<\/strong><\/span> obvious that you’re<\/strong><\/span> going to <\/strong><\/span>make up your<\/strong> <\/span>own mind about this…<\/strong><\/span>but I hope you follow my advice before too<\/strong> <\/span>long, because in this one sentence, and in the two<\/strong> <\/span>bits<\/strong><\/span> I put in above, I have shown how easy it is to use all of these grammar bits<\/strong><\/span> correctly.\u00a0 Correct Grammar Usage is, in my opinion, its<\/strong> <\/span>own reward.<\/p>\nRant off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rant on. I am going to take a half step back from the political chaos of the mid-term elections.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 That problem is basic English […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":140,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions\/140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}