Orthography
I went on about litter in another blog. The literary equivalent of dropping litter is misusing it’s.Its It’s either due to ignorance or carelessness that the human animal drops it’s its mis-spellings. When I find myself offended and disturbed by litter I tell myself it’s natural and search for some usefulness in its occurrence.
Misusing it’s when it occurs in a person who’s whose native language is English denotes a person who was not drilled properly at school, which seems to include most Britishers or Americans under a certain age; or a person who leans on spell-checkers or peers.
If you are driving in a foreign country without having drilled yourself in which side to drive, it may be an acceptable makeshift to copy other drivers.
However if the number of those as uncertain as yourself increases to a certain threshold, watch out round the next bend!
5 comments:
PS here is a link to the Apostrophe Protection Society which gives examples of right and wrong usage & discussion forum.
Funny, Vincent, but there were times in my past where I had paid a visit to the Apostrophe Protection Society! I normally try to overlook people's spelling, grammar or punctuation mistakes, but every now and then one really rubs me the wrong way. For instance, I really dislike seeing the word judgment misspelled! I see people spell it like "judgement", and it makes me anxious. Now days it is becoming quite common to see this particular misspelling, however, so it is likely it is going to become accepted usage. But I'll always love the proper, yet odd spelling of judgment.
I've always understood that judgment can be spelt both ways and I would tend to use judgement more often, considering the other spelling as a bit wild though legitimate. But you and I live in different countries I use Mozilla Firefox and as I write this comment it spell-checks each word. I cannot tell it I am from England. It doesn't like spelt, spoilt, judgement, honour, realise, theatre. But it has no complaint about "Mozilla" and "Firefox"!
Another one which is causing me to tear out what's left of my hair (metaphorically speaking) is definitely the increasing prevalence of "definately" .. gaaaah!
Yes, Davo, and I also sometimes wonder if it is simply that more people now have access to computers or other methods of printing (shop signs etc) so that their writing becomes visible to all, whereas literacy was confined to a small number before.
No, I reject this excuse. The fault lies in the unimportance of spelling and grammar to the teachers. It started as a fad and now it's a pandemic.
Post a Comment