The time has come for my first official blog rant regarding grammar! I am getting so tired of seeing the words "there", "they're" and "their" mixed up. It's really not that difficult. There's also the issues of "then" and "than", "your" and "you're", and the apostrophe conundrum. Let me begin:
There - They're - Their
There: opposite of "here"; has many uses not including those for "they're" and "their".
They're: contraction for "they are"; if the sentence means the same if you interchange "they're" and "they are", then you can use "they're", but you should not use "there" or "their".
Their: belonging to them; when referring to something as belonging to "them", it would be acceptable to use the word "their".
Then - Than
Then: it follows that; "Then" can be used to indicate chronological sequentiality, conditional effects, or any other resultant situation.
Than: compared to; when a characteristic is placed in comparison to something else, either explicit or implicit, "than" can be used.
Your - You're
Your: belonging to you; much like "their", but the possessor is "you" as opposed to "them".
You're: contraction for "you are"; if the sentence holds its meaning when replacing "you're" with "you are" then you should not use "your".
Apostrophe
Contraction: there are a variety of situations where two words can be combined into one, and an apostrophe is used in place of omitted letters.
Possessive: when referring to a possessive situation, an apostrophe is placed at the end of the possessor followed by an "s", unless the word already ends in "s" in which case there is no additional "s" added. Exception: "Its" is possessive. ("It's" is a contraction for "it is".)
There are other apostrophe rules, but these should cover 99% of situations.
I have a few other grammar rules about which I'm rather anal, but I'll leave those for another day.
- Grammar Nazi
(P.S. Did you catch the rule that I awkwardly followed in my last sentence?)
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2 comments:
You HAVE to read "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves"! It's full of good grammar rants and it's hilarious. You and the author are very much on the same wavelength. :-)
Also, ending a sentence with a preposition is no longer quite the taboo it once was, so live it up.
I do remember an English teacher in college yelling at me for using but and a comma together. She always said that BUT is strong enough to stand on its own without a comma. However, I believe that is only true sometimes. But is often the beginning of a new thought and needs the support of a comma to break up the sentence.
My big complaint is about those who can't figure out to-too-two! I think the days of texting and IMing have made kids (now young adults) unable to differentiate between the three distinct words and their meanings.... they seem to be the worst offenders. Sigh!
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