Dear Grammar,
I love you, but only when you are convenient to me. When you make no sense or make me look like a pompous ass for using you, I kind of hate you.
Best,
G
Okay so I wouldn't necessarily call myself a "grammar nazi," but I like to think I know something about grammar. One of my biggest pet peeves is when people either: use the wrong your/you're, there/their/they're, ect., or use the wrong verb tense. This is one of the reasons I can hardly stand parts of the internet. Let's be real people, you not using grammar or spelling things wrong on purpose isn't funny, nor will it make you seem cool. You just look stupid.
Although I love calling people out and making them look stupid, because I am just that kind of person, there are some points where grammar makes me cringe. Take my English class today, we were prepping for the PSAT. Our teacher was showing us examples of types of sentences (all of which were incorrect) that we would see on the test and how/why to correct them. There were the ones that made complete sense such wrong verb tenses and other cringe worthy mistakes that I don't remember the names of. But then, there are the ones that are complete and utter jack shit. Let me show you the two examples that I had the biggest problems with.
1.) The application for a new job was faxed by Ellen.
2.) Everyone gets their own pony.
I bet that most of you wouldn't think that there is any thing wrong with either of these sentences. And honestly I still don't. I'll tell you why they are wrong and why I think the fact that they are wrong is wrong, if that makes any sense.
1.) Okay so the problem with this one is that it is written passively, which according the the PSAT or any English major is wrong. If you don't already know writing passively is when in the subject is acted upon by the verb. Okay, some of you out there might have kept reading this over again, and again trying to figure out what is wrong with it. And to tell you, there really isn't anything wrong with it. It is grammatically correct, no the problem is the people over at the PSAT, along with English majors don't like it. You heard me right, its wrong because people don't like it. Okay fine I guess I can look past it, yah I guess I wouldn't want to read anything if it was always written passively, it would get kind of boring. What I can't get passed is the fact the in the directions for sections like that it is along the lines of choose how to best correct the sentence. Which is essentially saying that it is wrong in the first place. I mean I guess in the long run its not really a huge deal but it always is the little things that get me the most.
2.) In this sentence the subject is 'everyone,' which is singular, but later the same group is described by the word 'their.,' which is plural. So its a subject agreement thing. It should be 'Everyone gets his or her own pony.' I understand if you were describing a non-sentient beings/things, but in this case 'everyone' is describing an entity of people. Living, thinking, feeling, things. So in this case I just think that this rule is just straight up wrong.
In short, there are just some parts of grammar (more than I have shown here) that just rub me the wrong way.
-G
Oh yah, and also. Don't even get me started on commas man. I love me my commas and I'm going to use them whenever I want however the hell I want. So don't talk to be about this "comma splice" crap because I am not going to change that. Soooooooooo screw you!
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