Grammar Czarina

I'd been musing about a post on bad spelling, punctuation, and grammar when I found this link, thanks to Twisty:


The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks

Making Fun of Bad Punctuation since 2005.


My own pet peeve is the misuse of the apostrophe, not just the ubiquitous confusion of it's and its, but the random sprinkling of apostrophes like parsley on mashed potatoes. Or should I say, the random sprinkling of apostrophe's like parsley on mashed potatoes'.

My grammar alarm was set off by a particular blog writer who posted a snivel (not up to the rate of a rant) about those nasty, snobbish guidelines for good writing. His/her blogulation in general is rather muddy, and shows a need for those aforesaid nasty guidelines. Reading the rambling sentences, illogical topic jumps, poor proofreading, and misused apostrophes made this English major's head hurt. (I'm not linking to the post, since it is by just one poor writer on an otherwise excellent blog.)*

So, to keep me from getting the vapors, remember these simple rules:

• its is a possessive pronoun; it's is the contraction for it is
• plural nouns do not use apostrophes: books, not book's
• singular verbs do not use apostrophes: Poor grammar bothers me, not Poor grammar bother's me

Of course, by the Murphy's Law of Blogging, there will be at least one egregious misspelling or grammatical error in this post, and Wild Roses will finally get a hit.

*Yes, I know I tend to use a lot of comments in parentheses and dashes, but this is informal writing meant to more-or-less sound like conversation. I am much more persnickety in formal writing.