Monday, January 24, 2011

Grammar..a forgotten art

I love Facebook.  It's a way to communicate with my family quickly and efficiently.  It also has opened the door to new friendships and finding folks who need prayer and who want to pray for me also. 
But that's not what this post is about today.  It's about how people write to be understood.  For me, I feel like a fingernail is being scratched across a blackboard when I read and try to comprehend what others are writing.. so I gotta complain.  Brace yourself, I'm approaching my soapbox.
Let's talk about the words YOUR and the contraction YOU'RE.  I can bearly stand the way these 2 words are interchanged..
"YOUR" is possessive~ it's YOUR book, YOUR post, YOUR dinner.  Got it?
Now , YOU'RE is the contraction of 2 words, YOU and ARE.  It means just that "you are".
~You're beautiful, You're on the wrong side, You're the leader. 
It makes no sense whatsoever to confuse these two terms~ You are book, you are dinner, you are post.  Eh?  Or Your beautiful (what?)  , Your on the wrong side (?) (your what is on the wrong side?) , Your the leader (who?)  So let's get this straight.. Your is always possessive.. You're is always a subject and verb (you, are).. think before you write.

Okay, I know I posted on this before, but it looks like it's getting under my skin again, so I'm gonna put this out one more time.
Two is a number- it tells me how many numerically.
(Two cents, two boys, two cars, etc)
Too is an adjective and also can mean 'also'.
(I want to go 'too')  If you wrote this with the connecting 'to', you would have to tell me where you want to go.  (I want to go to....where?)  It's a preposition.
I assume most folks get the 'two' right, but if one could just get the 'too' right, the other 'to' would be the correct option.
(too many, too much, too full, too red)
Okay?
I feel better.
I spotted another word today that grated my ears- boarded.  The person was trying to say that a property bordered another one, but instead, told me it boarded the property.  Can you see how confusing this could be?  It took me about 4 full reads through the article to grasp what they were trying to communicate.  UGH.

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