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Posts Tagged ‘Apostrophes’

The five love-to-text languages #ThursdayThoughts

Posted in Technology, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 5, 2021| 2 Comments »

Dear Gary Chapman:

Trish the Human told me about your “Five Love Languages” philosophy ages ago. I have three languages competing for the top, but Acts of Service usually wins. No surprise.

I would like to propose Five Text Languages. I’m pretty sure everyone I know falls into one of these categories.

  1. Actual words
  2. Gif
  3. Emoji
  4. Bitmoji
  5. None

Words: I text in full sentences with proper grammar and punctuation. (Of course I do.) Gideon does too. Dominic texts in words without grammar or punctuation, and I want to die.

Gif: My niece Chelsea is definitely a Gif fan. This is my second favorite way to communicate.

Emoji: Eddie is an emoji user. And sometimes I can’t figure out what he means.

Bitmoji: Trish the Human is a bitmoji fan, as is my new friend Andy. (A discussion with him was the inspiration for this post.)

None, aka radio silence: This style is no style at all because these people DON’T TEXT back for DAYS, if ever. Brian and Edgar, I’m looking at you.

Which one are you?

I’m guessing you use words because you are an author.

If you read this, let me know in the comments.

Yours in service,
Beth

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And now for something completely wholesome #SundayStories

Posted in Parenting, tagged , , , , , , , on April 18, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Dear Friends,

After my last post, I think I lost some of you. That’s ok. If we’re really friends, we’ll be fine.

I’m not done with that topic, but I’m done for now.

Today, I offer a palate cleanser.

I’m sharing with you two posts that sum up the difference between my two sons:

Here’s Gideon, the sensitive, nice one:

And here’s Dominic, my twin.

Please forgive the lack of punctuation. I know I have to all the time.

Enjoy your Sunday!

Love,
Beth

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Need a little patience, yeah* #SundayStories

Posted in Parenting, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 1, 2020| 3 Comments »

Dear Parental Patience:

Where are you? Now in my hour of need? Please come back.

I thought I had turned a corner with Dominic.

Funny, right?

And he finally got his Publix uniform to start working.

Today was the big day.

But.

He realized that he had to be at work in 10 minutes but didn’t want to walk in the cold.

He’s so delicate, you know.

So he wanted me to drive him.

After sighing loudly, I put a coat on over my pajamas, and took him over.

Then he texts me. And this is when you, Patience, apparently jumped on another call.

And if the subject matter isn’t bad enough, the child refuses to use proper grammar and punctuation.

Please come back.

I miss you.

Love,
Beth

* Thanks, GnR.

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Not the same old song: Looking for #SundaySuggestions

Posted in Advice, Music, Technology, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 13, 2019| Leave a Comment »

Dear Friends:

It’s the rare time of year in the South where I can put down the top on my convertible and be comfortable.

One of my favorite things to do is play music REALLY LOUD and (possibly) torture those around me.

I’ve been in a serious metal and rock phase lately: Think Halestorm, Drowning Pool, Rage Against the Machine, Disturbed, Metallica, etc.

But I do have eclectic taste. See this recent screenshot from my Ticketmaster app:

I’m looking for suggestions. What’s your favorite song? Though I will listen to almost anything, note that I’m not a huge fan of rap, trap, jazz and classical music.

And please don’t send me video game theme songs. The 14 year old has the lock on that. And he is persistent. (Read: annoying when he wants me to do something.)

(Yes, this is what I have to live with every day.)

Looking forward to your suggestions!

Sincerely,
Beth

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Help me: My kids are on social media @scarymommy #ThursdayThoughts

Posted in Parenting, tagged , , , , , , , on October 25, 2018| Leave a Comment »

Dear Sons of Mine:

It’s been very weird for me for you to have phones and, with them, social media accounts. You know I gave you phones only because you had good grades and are fairly responsible (and because you not having phones was starting to be a pain for me).

The weirdest conversation so far was this one with you, Gideon, not too long ago:

You: Today is Glenn’s birthday.
Me: Glenn who?
You: Glenn, your boss.
Me: Wait … what? How do you know?
You: We are friends on Facebook.
Me: !!!

But strange conversations are now de rigueur. Behold (this convo comes after your father talked about your baseball team going from “last to first”):

And here is this soon-to-be classic from you, Dominic (you never text me unless you want something):

My head nearly exploded. Please, please pay attention in language arts class and USE PUNCTUATION (or you’ll never again get what you want from me, a grammarian who is a stickler for proper punctuation).

You both make me crazy. And also, I love you.
Mama

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Attention: Stop making these mistakes! #grammarfail #punctuationfail

Posted in Grammar, etc., tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on April 24, 2018| Leave a Comment »

Dear Content Providers*:

To avoid annoying people who care about the English language (i.e., me), please learn how to use apostrophes, when to use “I” and when to use “me,” and what spelling of the word you need for your sentence.

Auntie Beth is here to help. Again.

 

1. Apostrophes

As I have explained before, apostrophes have two uses: to show possession (of things or people, but not by demons) and to show that a letter is missing (sometimes forming contractions).

What the older-looking Faddel (above) should have written is:

“19 years old, financially stable, in shape, family’s healthy.”

That would mean his family is healthy. Instead, he has pluralized “family” and rendered the sentence nonsensical.

To pluralize, you DO NOT use an apostrophe. Ever. (Please stop making me have to explain this.) Perhaps Tybee Island lifeguards are spending all their time training for beach emergencies and not worrying about punctuation, but I believe in clarity.

2. I vs. me

Here it is, one more time with feeling: Use “I” when you are referring to the subject of the sentence, “me” when you are referring to the object. The linguistics scholar above should have known better. She shouldn’t feel too awful though; even Lady Gaga gets it wrong:

3. Homonyms

Homonyms are words that sound alike but are spelled differently.

Trump is not the only one who has trouble with this if my Facebook, Twitter and Instagram feeds are any indication. Please consider carefully which version of the word you need. I don’t want to have to keep going over this.

Thank you so much.

You’re (not “your”) a peach!
Beth

*By this I mean anyone who maintains a social media account, prepares signs, writes to someone else, etc.

Should be “teachers.”

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A post about strippers, a penis and pee (guaranteed clickbait!)

Posted in Grammar, etc., tagged , , , , , on September 23, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Dear readers (and, I hope, fellow lovers of language):

I need a break from the 2016 election.

Let’s talk about the serial comma (also called the Oxford comma) for a moment. We’ve all seen the following to advocate for its use:
why-use-the-serial-comma

But here’s the thing: I would use a colon to clarify if I really meant that JFK and Stalin had side jobs. My sentence would read:

We invited the strippers: JFK and Stalin.

If I meant that JFK, Stalin and some ladies working their way through college were all coming to the party, I would write:

We invited JFK, Stalin and the strippers.

I’m a fan of improving clarity by rewriting. No need to overwork the comma and use it for a simple series.

However, we cannot give the comma a gold watch and say goodbye. We still need it. And some people certainly appreciate it. (Read this from the bottom up.)

Email courtesy of 36-hour Tina

Email courtesy of 36-hour Tina

 

We also need articles or bad things happen.

 

Image courtesy of Shane Marshall Brown

Image courtesy of Shane Marshall Brown

A “the” before “pen” would have made all the difference. (Or even a bigger space before “is.”)

What we don’t need is random quotation marks — not even one random quotation mark, as seen in the photo below. (By the way, quotation marks come in pairs. That’s how they work. But if the signmaker had added another, we’d be wondering what the dogs are actually doing.)

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Image courtesy of Angela DeVore

Please send me your sign/email/meme fails in the comments or via Twitter (@BethCon5). I think we all will be needing more election breaks over the next 45 days.

Love,
Beth

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Take it easy

Posted in Grammar, etc., tagged , , , , on March 21, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Dear Apostrophe:

You really need a vacation. You clearly are overworked. I’ve lost track of all the times you’ve had to show up unnecessarily on a sign.

Here’s an example of what I mean:

"Sunday's"

I guess the sign’s writer thought the S would be lonely without you. You and I both know that the letter can get by on its own. No need to call you in.

I wish you could assert yourself. Just say “no” to incorrect possessives. I wish I could do something to help beyond calling attention to your situation with this blog.

Take some of your friends — the quotation marks for example — and run away for a while to rest up. They need a vacation too:

There's more wrong here than just quotation mark overuse. (Photo courtesy of Karla Knudsen)

There’s more wrong here than just quotation mark overuse. (Photo courtesy of Karla Knudsen)

I hear the Maici River in Brazil is lovely this time of year. You’d get a welcome respite among the Pirahã.

Just know I’ll only request you in an emergency. You know, one of the following situations: showing possession (“Is that Gideon’s dirty sock?”),  making contractions (“No, it’s Dominic’s dirty sock.”), and indicating when a letter is deliberately left out (“Did Eddie just call me a dirty ol’ ‘ho’?”). And you never have to worry that I’ll mistake you for your doppelgänger, the single quotation mark.

Wishing you a happy vacation,
Beth

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Gallery of gripes

Posted in Grammar, etc., tagged , , on March 11, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Let’s take a break from the sideshow that is politics, and enjoy a slideshow of textual assaults.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

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Freaks like me

Posted in Grammar, etc., Random, tagged , , , , , , on February 21, 2012| 7 Comments »

About 400 people have linked, emailed, tweeted or otherwise made me aware of this cartoon:

I love the cartoon, and I love that people thought (think) of me when they saw (see) it.

(That’s indeed how I feel on a regular basis.)

While most of my friends and family know me as the grammar guru, the Internet thinks I’m a different kind of freak. Just look at the search terms people used that led them to my blog.

Finding me via “parasites” and other such terms makes sense because of my “Procrastination by parasite” post.

And “rednecks” also makes sense because of my frequent posts about the “Redneck Games.”

“Butterfly McQueen” and “antithesis” led searchers to posts about rhetorical devices.

I can even explain “std in the mouth” because I admitted in the procrastination post that my leap into the information vortex includes viewing images of “STD outbreaks” and “meth mouth.”

The last term is inexplicable on many levels: Who uses “inhumans wallpaper” as a search term? Why did the search engine pick me? What did searchers really want?

Not someone who likes to talk about grammar, for sure.

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