Grammatik macht Frei
typed for your pleasure on 14 September 2006, at 3.37 pmSdtrk: ‘Liar’ by the Sex pistols
Finally, a holiday that I can wholeheartedly get behind! Apart from Hallowe’en, that is. And, ah, Festivus.
Celebrate National Punctuation Day®
September 24, 2006People all over the United States are celebrating the new holiday, National Punctuation Day®, which is listed in Chase’s Calendar of Events as a celebration of the lowly comma, correctly used quotes, and other proper uses of periods, semicolons and the ever mysterious ellipsis.
Jeff Rubin, owner/publisher of The Newsletter Guy, a newsletter publishing company based in Pinole, CA, founded National Punctuation Day® to draw attention to the importance of proper punctuation. It’s a day for librarians, educators, and parents — people who are interested in teaching and promoting good writing skills to their students and their children. It’s also a day to remind business people that they are often judged by how they present themselves.
If you’re like me and you have a baby aneurysm every time you see a sign that says ‘CD’S AND DVD’S FOR SALE’, or if you get the red mist whenever you encounter ‘it’s’ and ‘its’ being erroneously transposed, you’ll dig this holiday as much as I expect I will. Kinda makes you want to go shoot Myspace right in the face, eh? *nods vigourously*
There have been a shedload of punctuation faux pas since.. well, whenever, but my two recent faves would have to be ‘Alot’, and ‘Infact’. When did these become single words? Did I fall asleep one day, and wake up in The Land Where Language Gets Sodomised?
Yes; technically those would be misspellings, but punctuation fuckups are closely related. They’re the slightly less-inbred cousin.
Aaanyway, that’s National Punctuation day, 24 September. Learn it, live it, be it
Random similar posts, for more timewasting:
News you can use, or, Davecat is the Very Picture ov Understanding and Erudition on October 26th, 2004
Etiquette, or, Big mouth strikes again on June 13th, 2005
September 15th, 2006 at 11.03 am
u r sooo funy.! i lyk yur blog alot.
September 15th, 2006 at 2.34 pm
LET THE STABBINGS COMMENCE
September 15th, 2006 at 4.58 pm
‘its’ still occasionally confuses me, if only because logic would dictate the apostrophe be used in all possible derivations.
Remember City Fist’s blog dedicated to the outing of people inappropriately apostrophizing “Finnegans Wake”?
September 18th, 2006 at 4.03 pm
When in doubt with ‘its / it’s’, ask yourself — can you say the same sentence replacing ‘its’ with ‘it is’, or vice versa? Can you?
Yeah; English as a language is so very very flawed and wildly inconsistent, but I love it anyway. But would I love it as much if I weren’t brought up speaking it as my native tongue? Would I?
September 21st, 2006 at 6.41 pm
No, see, if it owns something….
September 21st, 2006 at 6.43 pm
I love the English language as well.
As for its/it’s:
If it is a singular (which I am almost certain it always is) and it then somehow comes into possession of something, then it would SEEM to be it’s thing.
This is the time when I get confused–but only for a moment.
Then I just switch from pronouns to nouns and wander off whistling the theme song from Something About Chesterfield.