Thread: Grammar Lessons From The Grammar Police

I can't take the obvious lack of comprehension for a grade 8 reading level anymore, makes me want to stab myself in the eyes. Here's some tips on helping you reduce my frustration when reading your posts:

Apostrophes: Believe it or not, these have a purpose. They denote missing characters within a word or they signify possession. For example, you can take the words "can not" and mast them together to create "can't." As you can see, the "O" was removed and is therefore denoted by an apostrophe. Any time you remove letters from words when creating contractions, you replace those letters with an apostrophe.
Similarly, you can also use apostrophes to denote possession. For example, if Mike owns a car, it is Mike's car. Complications arise when the name ends in "S" but all you do there is simply add an apostrophe at the end without the extra "S." For example, "That's Dennis' car." Notice the lack of an extra "S", this is because his name already ends in "S." Lastly, the biggest complication arises when you pluralize a possessive and you have to do both. For example, "This is my parents' car." First you pluralize it by adding the "S", then add the apostrophe to show possession. Not that hard a concept.

Homonyms: Some words are spelled differently but sound the same, these are called homonyms. For example. there, their, they're. You should never misuse "they're" because it's a contraction of "they are" and if you expand it to try and use "they are" in your sentence, you'll quickly realize if it makes sense or not. For example, "I really like they're carputer ideas" would turn into, "I really like they are carputer ideas" and you can easily see it doesn't make sense. It's even easier with your and you're because you only have the 2 to deal with and you'd have to be an idiot to misuse them since one is a contraction.

Who would of thought? This one is atrocious, it doesn't even make sense as a sentence in English. The correct term is, "Who would have thought?" That actually makes sense, you're asking a question about who would have thought something. And if you wish, you can contract it to, "Who would've thought?"

Spelling: Have you ever wondered how people seem to be able to spell everything properly? It's not that we can remember 30,000 words, we simply read books sometimes. It's not that hard, pick up a book, read a page, start a new page. You'd be surprised how much your spelling and grammar will improve from simply reading things and getting used to seeing the words/sentence structure.

A lot: This is two words, not one! "Alot" is not a word, that would be like writing "abunch" or "afew." It doesn't make sense, the correct term is "a lot."

I have more, can't think of them now. This isn't meant to beat on anyone, just to help people out with a slight touch of sarcasm. Enjoy.