Grrrrrrammar!

[ravan]

Gaaah! Where's my spork?

Grammar, spelling, and the proper use of the apostrophe are pretty easy to do when you can go back and edit what you wrote. Why in the hell can't people learn to use these tools correctly?

it's == contraction of "it is"
its == possessive of "it"
they're == contraction of "they are"
their == possessive of "them"
there == a place, opposite of here
(plus many, many, more...)

Hell, LJ even has a spelling checker for postings.

Why are people so damned illiterate?

Comments

[treecat]

I get twitchy whenever I see these errors too. I just today saw someone who had previously posted in favor of being judgemental about such things use "effected" instead of "affected."

However I also have caught myself in the act of actually typing some of these abominations myself. Which frightens me... I wonder how many times I've missed it and left the wrong word. Never "effect" and "affect", but it's for its or there for their. Those are the ones I've most often seen escaping from my fingers. Eeek.

Spell check won't fix any of these. They are all real words. You'd need grammar check. That's why they are more disturbing than just misspellings... they're the wrong word altogether.

It's curious to see what people type for some expressions. Say "rein of terror" for example. Or sometimes not even homonyms, they just have some other word completely. They must hear differently or something. Some just don't make any sense at all. I can at least imagine how in a Reign of terror those in charge are Raining terror upon people to Rein them in...