Friday 29 October 2010

I'll get better at daily updating I promise! - Grammar today.

I bet there's no-one reading this, however. Never mind...

Today's task is grammar!

This is a pet peeve of mine, so I'd love to make you all a little better at using grammar correctly.

My top 4 grammar tips:

1. Capital Letters and full stops.
This should be obvious, but rarely is. Please start and end sentences correctly.

2. Apostrophes.
Never, ever, ever use an apostrophe for a pluralization. Apostrophes are used for:
Possession: The Cat's Pyjamas. (The Pyjamas belong to the cat)
Simplifying: He's got an odd shirt. (He has got a strange face, we're skipping the space and the "ha")
Exceptions: "Its" is already possessive. Therefore, one would say: "That tree is rather large. Its branches are toughing the garage roof." The only time "its" has an apostrophe is when it's shortened from "it is."

3. "A or an"
"A" is used when the word following starts with a consonant. "An" is used when it's a vowel.
There are exceptions to this, one can use "an" for semivowels such as 'y' or 'h.' I still prefer not to, however. "A house" can be considered to be correct, anyway.

4. CAPS LOCK
Please, don't use the Caps Lock key on your keyboard. Ever. It was there because it was on typewriters. There's really no need for it these days, and if you type everything in capitals it makes it almost intelligible.


These are just a few things which can really annoy me, and I'm sure others too. Give them a go, you'll thank me for it! (If not, then you've lost nothing, anyway)

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