Friday, March 22, 2013

Y'all Need to Learn to Talk Right

"Everyone please stop having heart attacks when i miss an apostrophe or a period or a coma.Dont wanna pop a blood vessel in your eyeballs." Snooki via Twitter

First of all Snooki, we are not the ones who should be "having heart attacks" if you missed your period. That's a personal matter perhaps you should tweet less about. Second of all, how do you miss a coma? It seems like a pretty recognizable condition for someone to be in, but I'm no medical doctor. I suppose if you were the one in a coma, it might be excusable for you to miss it.
The purpose of grammar is to create an avenue for clear communication. The example above clearly demonstrates that without it, the meaning of our sentences becomes unclear. While grammar is not the most important thing in the known universe, it does have its place. I always find it worrisome when our society glorifies people who have very low language skills. (See tweet above.) It shows that either the majority of people don't possess the language skills to differentiate the poor grammar themselves or they don't care. Neither option is commendable.

Often, like if your fly is down or you have a booger on your nose, people are too embarrassed to point it out to you when you make obvious errors. We all have lexical gaps, words we should know how to spell but don't, and words we mispronouce. For example, until I was well into adulthood, I thought hyperbole was pronouned "hyper-bowl".  So, for your enjoyment and possibly your edification, below I have listed some common grammar errors.

1. Your/You're
   You+are= you're
   Possessive=your
This one wins the prize for most commonly misused in Facebook and Twitter updates. Just remember if you want to say "you are", you only drop the "a" and add an apostrophe.

2. Could of/should of
This is actually a shortening of the words "could have" and "should have". So instead of saying or writing "could of", you should be using the contraction "could've".

3. "For all intensive purposes"
The phrase is actually "for all intents and purposes".

4. "Hold down the fort"
Technically, unless the fort is helium filled or immune to the pull of gravity, there is no need to hold it down. The phrase is actually the military term "hold the fort", which is actually a thing a human can do.

5. "I could care less"
What you mean to say is "I COULDN'T care less", because if you could care less, then obviously you do care.

6. It's/Its
It's=it is
Its=possessive

7. "Who" is for people, "that" is for things.
You don't have a friend THAT is kind, you have a friend WHO is kind.

8. Misuse of the word ironic
Surprisingly enough, the word ironic does NOT mean "unfortunate coincidence". It does mean "the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning". And with that, I've defeated an entire Alanis Morissette song.

Punctuation is also key in being grammatically correct. It's the difference between "Let's eat grandma" and "Let's eat, grandma". In this sense, it even saves lives.

Keep in mind, though, that the purpose of grammar is to create clear communication between parties. When we are snotty about people having perfect grammar, or feel the need to always correct them, they will stop communicating out of fear or annoyance. That also nullifies the purpose of grammar. So, keep in mind that kindness and tolerance are always more important than perfect grammar.

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