How to Lose Friends, Caleb Caswell, grammar detective

The grammar enthusiast must be one of incredible social ability to keep their friends. Wrong spellings and punctuation stand out and scream to us. A decision of such moral magnitude must be made that many find themselves willing to avoid it all together. The decision is this: does one correct a friend after having made a typographical error, or, leave them to stew in their ignorance?

In an age of typing, texting, and typography typical of today's tendencies towards technology, more punctuation and spelling is being left at the wayside for the sake of speed and style. In many cases, these are flippant remarks that hold little to no effect on the grander scheme of our lives, but when a writer should see a friend text him "My woman think's you're cute, and wants to find you a girl," we have little to do but hold our opinions in our cheeks and let the room stop spinning of its own accord.

These comments are everywhere. As writers, we must make a moral decision as to whether we value the sanctity of our friendships or the sanctity of our friends freedom to be grammatically ignorant.

But where do these issues stop? and will they not effect language as a whole should we let the go uncorrected? Blockbuster carries "movie's" instead of "movies." You can purchase 'apple's, orange's, and banana's" from your local grocery store, although what belongs to these fruits remains a mystery. Should we let the country as a whole become so unconfident in its typographical ability that they start making errors out of the fear of making errors? Or as a community of dedicated snobs, should we take hold of the issue and sacrifice our friendships for the cause of proper signage and speech?

I have made my decision, and my birthday parties have been getting lonelier with every year that passes.

Here is a nifty site to help with five major errors made in grammar.

Here's something Ramona wrote that will be sure to be some fun.

Grammar Detective, Jennifer Kerr

I see grammar mistakes in published work on a regular basis. More commonly, I see mistakes in things like church bulletins and hand written signs or emails from friends. In everyday conversation, I can constantly pick up ways in which people I talk to misuse English language. While I do notice mistakes, I try not to point out everyone’s mistakes, because I don’t want to be perceived as a “Grammar Nazi,” and I do believe that errors are understandable and generally don’t affect how understandable something is. However, there are certain common errors that drive me crazy, and I see them startlingly often.

One example of a common mistake that I find irritating is the misuse of the contraction “there’s”. In her Grammar Detective post, Jenny Neilson talked about a journalist who said “I hope there is some Albertans there.” She pointed out that “there is” is used incorrectly in this sentence. The verb “is” does not agree with the plural subject. It seems obvious to me, and yet this mistake is made constantly, especially when “there is” is made into the contraction “there’s.”

“There’s” is the shortened form of “there is” or “there has”. What is not short for is “There are,” and yet I constantly find instances where writers use “there’s” where “there are” is the correct phrase. As an experiment, I searched the Edmonton Journal website for the contraction “There’s.” I came up with several examples of headlines using “there’s” incorrectly. As another example, consider the title of the book pictured below. It is possible that this grammar mistake was intentional, but nonetheless, it irritates me.

Grammar errors are common and to be expected. In many cases, they are forgivable and can be attributed to keyboard mistakes or simply not feeling the need to be grammatically correct. However there are certain common mistakes that can become extremely annoying, and when they appear in published work, I feel that they are unforgivable.