Before I jump into this, I must tell you that this was an exercise I did for my creative writing class. Bill Roorbach, Writing Life Stories author, asked us to "get pissed on paper" and this is what spat out.
A lot of people call me a grammar nazi, but that's not true. If it was, I'd have to send 50% of my Facebook friends off to get tortured and massacred by someone like Jack Bauer for their misuse of "its" and "it's." ("Which of the two belongs in the sentence: its/it's time to go? What? You don't know? Say goodbye to your fingernails!") But the good news is, those people have lived to see another day and many more grammatical mistakes. But seriously, what's the deal with all the poor grammar?
It's not that tricky. I'd say this isn't life or death here, but clearly it is. (Grammar nazis of the world are cringing behind their computer screens wishing the punishment for dangling prepositions was the electric chair.) So bad grammar people--get a life, stop being lazy and use Google to your advantage. Not sure if you can use a colon there? Look. It. Up.
One of the worst offenses of grammar is absolutely there/their/they're. NO--they are not interchangeable and do not mean the same thing. THERE refers to a place: There is the bathroom. THEIR is possessive: I like their house. (Don't know what possessive means? Please do not pass go and do return to the third grade.) THEY'RE is a contraction for "they are": They're really nice. Simple enough?
Commas are also a glutton for punishment. To some comma users, I say: commas are not million dollar chips of gold to, be, used all, the, time, , , , , , (See how frustrating that is?) To other offenders, I say: commas are not nuclear weapons. Try and use one after a conjunction. Using a comma is not lethal, and it doesn't complicate the sentence if you use it right.
When I see a grammar mistake, all I want to do is take my knife--er, red pen--and slaughter that paper with corrections until its writer learns that CDs is not possessive and, thus, does not need an apostrophe. (The "CD's" what? Friends? Scratches? Life?)
If a person uses poor grammar, my opinion of their intelligence lowers automatically. Sorry. I don't care if you're writing a paper that announces the cure for cancer. If you can't spell that drug's name and you can't figure out the difference between "your" and "you're," you look like an idiot. Sorry again, but every person in the position to hire a person is thinking the same thing when they look at your resume and see mistakes.
I know my goal for golden grammar is highly unrealistic. I also know that grammar doesn't come easy to everyone. Yes, it comes easy to me. I was that kid that liked Tuesdays in English class because it meant diagramming sentences and choosing the correct verb (run/ran) to complete the sentence and finding mistakes in a paragraph. And I saw those kids who didn't do any of those exercises, but filled in the correct answers as the teacher went over them in class.
I'm not asking that all of you understand what a participle or a gerund is. I just want you to use punctuation correctly and use your dang spell check. Here's a tip: if you don't know how to use it, don't. Semicolons are a beast to understand. Don't use one if you don't understand its purpose.
And for goodness' sake, "a lot" is two words.
Constant grammar offender? Here's some websites for reference:
Dictionary/Thesaurus: http://www.merriam-webster.com/
Grammar Explanations: http://www.grammarbook.com/english_rules.asp
AP Stylebook: http://www.apstylebook.com/
Also. My grammar isn't perfect either. Murphy's Law will probably require that there is a least one grammatical mistake in this post, but hopefully not.
