Just heard that today is National Grammar Day. Only problem is they were not too specific on which nation so I’m claiming it.

One of my pettest peeves has to be when people use the word “loose” when they are intending to mean the word “lose” – that always makes me just want to loose it.

[where “it” is a fire-breathing dragon that will rain down burning molten lava upon the unsuspecting person who butchered the english language, but in a metaphorical non-burny way]

i am probably a bit of an ironic hypocriticalist when it comes to grammar, to be honest, because i did pretty well in English in school and so i, for the most part, know what is supposed to go where, but for me i largely have chosen to bite my thumb at a lot of grammatical conventions all in the name of being different, or getting a jump start on earning the “eccentric” moniker.

for example, i don’t use a lot of CAPS – i tend to save them for God or God related things or sometimes proper nouns, but generally choose to bring all things down to a level playing field when it comes to those – drives people batty when i don’t start sentences with CAPS but that’s just a personal style thing. my biggest fear is that it will only be seen as fun and quirky after i’m dead.

i also refer to the Grammar Police [usually on Facebook cos let’s be honest, that’s where 90% of all grammar deaths happen, right?] as the Grandma Police in the hope that it blunts a little bit the fact that i am about to tell you you got something horribly wrong. the teacher in me struggles to sit idly by while ‘their’ becomes ‘there’ and ‘they’re’ is totally avoided altogether, but i do hope that people receive the spelling correction while chuckling that, ‘Ha, Ha, he said Grandma and not Grammar’ and so it becomes more of a fun thing than a judgement. i also intentionally choose ‘Police’ over ‘nazi’ because i try and avoid the usage of the word ‘nazi’ outside of its actual meant meaning as it feels like too big a thing for me to take flippantly.

as you can see, i do take writing quite seriously and think about some of these things way to much.

so Loose=Lose is one of my biggest and i will try to think of some others that really bug me. in the meantime i would love to hear from you in the comments if there is a particular grammar error that really gets your back up.

i think the big everyone-who-knows-better one tends to be ‘their’, ‘there’ and ‘they’re’ and if you are one of the unfortunate ones who needs help with that, i have a chart for you:

i found these fun ecards in an article titled, 10 Heartfelt Sentiments for National Grammar Day, which alerted me to the fact that its nationalness was today [pity we don’t get the day of, right? i guess that’s another one i don’t particularly enjoy!]

and this one is probably my favourite of the lot:

especially because it sums up internet trolls so nicely…

in fact, now that i think about it, there is definitely a better one but i may have to go searching to find it [as the examples in that article are too much of rude – quick scurry as people head to article to confirm!]

there are a number of varieties, but the grandma one has always been my favourite and i would definitely wear this shirt if someone bought it for me:

and more:

and more – its and it’s seems to be another one that really gets to some people. John and me vs. John and i feels like an easy one to get right.

and i’m sure there are others i will think of later.

but to close off, let’s celebrate those who got it wrong even worse than you did:

and lastly, you should probably take note:

but share with us some of your worst examples of Grandma gone bad?

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