“How are you?” I asked.

A friend emailed me; I replied, asking, “How are you?”

“Oh, getting thing’s done,” was the response.

Gee, I didn’t realize that a thing could possess a done!

Most of my friends are writers. Still, occasionally, we lapse and throw in an apostrophe (or comma) where it doesn’t belong. This apostrophe (above) does NOT belong. My friend meant to use the plural (things) rather than the possessive (done belonging to a thing) or contraction (thing is).

BE WARNED that placing a comma or apostrophe in the wrong place could wreak havoc on your message!

Strike the “E”s in U.S.-English

The first day of law school, you learn that judgment is spelled without the British “e”. Another word that did not translate well from England is: acknowledgment. Please! We changed much of our spelling and grammar after we kicked out the red coats. About time we got used to our independence. (There! four “e”s; are you happy now?)

Word Madness

With March Madness (basketball) and Spring Training (baseball) underway, here’s a warning to sports fans with connections to Australia. DO NOT tell an Aussie that you’re “rooting” for your team. That word translates into Australian-English as the U.S.-English version of the f-word. Not nice! Now do you understand why grammar anarchy makes sense? All English speakers do not speak E-N-G-L-I-S-H?

It’s a cruel, cruel world! It is! or is it?

And the world in its wisdom and its idiosyncrasies doesn’t always let you know what it’s thinking.

Whether to use the apostrophe or whether to leave it alone? That is the question. If you are confused about apostrophes, try this simple test:

When you use the apostrophe, you are turning one word (it’s) into two: it is.
Without the apostrophe, one word (its) remains one word: a possessive pronoun (for those who love labels).

Mixed Up Words

Do you know the difference between…

allusion and illusion?

ingenious and ingenuous?

censor and censure?

conscience and conscious?

 WARNING: 

Know the meanings

of the words you choose!

 

Go in the door / Go into the door?

In and Into are little words (pronouns, actually), but they can change your life. If you go “in the door”, you are making a proper entrance. If you go “into the door”, you could get a laugh or a blood transfusion.

Likewise, you will go “into the room” before you are standing “in the room”. Watch out for those little buggers! They’ll trip you up if you don’t watch them.

What to do with “Grammar Purists”

A bona fide anarchist would probably round them up and shoot them. But I’m a GRAMMAR anarchist. To those who rail loudly about the “rules that must be obeyed”, I can ask only one thing: where are they? Naysayers keep telling me about the “rules” they learned in the deep dark past, as if they were blessed with secrets still hidden from the world’s leading linguists. In the U.S., we use a multi-language, a stew of speech habits and words from around the world. So how is it possible to have one-size-fits-all “rules” to guide writers? Arise, Writers of the World! Bring Your Style Manual and follow me to the next rally! Banish the rule-sayers! Hoohah!