April 27, 2020
What are your pet peeves when it comes to grammar and spelling?
I’m sure the list will be ones you’ve all heard over and over before, but I’ll give this a shot.
- Too! Many! Exclamation! Points! Now, I’m not against the use of
exclamation points in general, but I think they need to be used sparingly. It’s like sending an email in all caps—it’s yelling. Look at me! I’m important! If you, as an author, have to use an exclamation point to show how important the sentence you wrote is, you need to rewrite the sentence. There are exceptions, of course, because they help to show what a character is feeling. But, please, please, don’t overuse the exclamation point!
Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay
- Apostrophes. Apostrophes can be hard. Is it it’s or its? And how about the possessive of a noun that ends in s? If you have more than one dog, and they each have a bone, is it the dogs’ bones or the dogs’s bones? Now throw in someone whose name end in ‘s’. Let’s say someone’s last names is Cookes. Is the car belonging to Mr. Cookes, Cookes’ car or Cookes’s car?
- Here’s a fun one. One or two spaces after a sentence? Old style sheets will tell you two, newer versions will say one. The truth is, back in the days when documents were typewritten, two spaces made for a cleaner look. Nowadays, that’s not true. Microsoft, in all its wisdom, has decided to flag two spaces as errors. (But it’s an option that can be turned off.)
- There, they’re, and their. It strikes me as silly that the English language has three words that sound the same but have different meanings. Especially when all the words are used frequently. Homonyms are bad enough with two words that sound alike, but three word homonyms are totally unnecessary. It’s a wonder that auto-correct ever gets them right.
- How about the word I am most likely to misspell. Awkward, isn’t it? No, that’s the word. Awkward. I always want to put a c in the first syllable. I know it doesn’t belong there, but darn, if my fingers don’t reach for that key every time I type the word awkward.
There’s my five. What did I miss? Tell me your pet peeves in the comments.
And stay safe, y’all.
April 27, 2020
What are your pet peeves when it comes to grammar and spelling?
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