I tend to over capitalize, but I blame this on being bi-lingual in English and German. Germans capitalize every Noun, not just proper Names.
Grrrrrrr... A friend of mine does this. She'll send me an IM saying something like "I should of done this" and I'll respond "Yes, you should've done that." I keep correcting her and she still does it. As a former elementary school teacher, this drives me NUTS!
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/couldof.html
The there/their/they're thing drives me batty too.
I know I do things that drive people crazy too. LOL!
Non! Le françois et pour les femmes! Anglais et pour les hommes!
My favorite is "I have got...."
It's either "I got..." or "I have..."
George Gershwin taught me grammar.
Well I guess this yankee learned a couple, two tree tings (sic) from y'all
Your thinking you're grammer are driving other people crazy? How come?
I still have a hard time figuring out how people can not spell sir-tih-fih-kit
correctly. It does NOT start with a *&^$*! "L"!!!!!!
Pilots Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge said:The first pilot license was issued to William P. MacCracken, Jr.
My buddy said, "For say" for "Per se."
I think not."Cut the mustard" is one of mine. I maintain it's "cut muster" but I even heard it on Top Gear in the U.K.
I brought it up on a radio talk show on the topic with college profs and they hadn't heard my theory. I will fight the crusade until my dying breath!
One explanation that is sometimes given is that the phrase is a corrupted form of cut the muster, in some way connected with the military muster or assembly of troops for inspection. However, if you cut a muster, presumably you do not attend it, so how this can be connected with the idea of excellence is far from clear. The clinching argument for this not being the source is that nobody has found the supposedly original phrase cut the muster anywhere.
It's (see, I used that correctly!) "Jesus' clothes", not "Jesus's clothes." JESUSUS!!!
There's nothing wrong with "nucular". It's a regionalism, not (as some would have it) a sign of ignorance. If it were, then we'd see the same slams that were directed at one recent target also directed at another, who was one of the US Navy's first nuclear engineers before resigning his commission after the death of his father: the 39th President of the US, Jimmy Carter.Then there's "nucular", but that's a topic for the Spin Zone! ;-)
That is not proper, actually. It is "Jesus's" because "Jesus" is not plural
Special problems arise when you create possessives for names already ending in s. Is it Charles’ Wain or Charles’s Wain? The latter sounds and looks better. Is it St James’s Street or St James’ Street? Custom and rhythm combine in urging the former. Jones’s house indicates that only one person named Jones lives there; if a family does, it should be the Joneses’ house, which sounds the same but looks odd on the page. Until recently, the usual form was Jesus’, not Jesus’s, but this tradition, which has been described in Hart’s Rules as “an acceptable liturgical archaism”, was finally broken in the New English Bible of the mid-sixties.
Despite this special case, there’s a tendency towards using just a terminating apostrophe in names ending in s. A particularly annoying example is that of a famous London hospital; when I was very young and had been mildly naughty, my father, a true-bred Londoner, would jokingly offer me his clenched fists, naming one sudden death and the other St Thomas’s Hospital. It’s been called that for generations, the final s improving the flow of the name, but it is now officially run by the Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital NHS Trust.
The one that bothers me, especially when spoken, is when a possessive proper noun that ends in the letter 's' has apostrophe-'s' added to it.
It's (see, I used that correctly!) "Jesus' clothes", not "Jesus's clothes." JESUSUS!!!
Then there's "nucular", but that's a topic for the Spin Zone! ;-)
There's nothing wrong with "nucular". It's a regionalism, not (as some would have it) a sign of ignorance. If it were, then we'd see the same slams that were directed at one recent target also directed at another, who was one of the US Navy's first nuclear engineers before resigning his commission after the death of his father: the 39th President of the US, Jimmy Carter.
I still have a hard time figuring out how people can not spell sir-tih-fih-kit
correctly. It does NOT start with a *&^$*! "L"!!!!!!
Either use is proper, especially for those folks who tend to drop leading Hs. See http://www.betterwritingskills.com/tip-w005.html.Next: "an historic occasion." Since when is H a vowel? "*A* historic occasion", or "*An* occasion.
Next: "an historic occasion." Since when is H a vowel? "*A* historic occasion", or "*An* occasion."
Either use is proper, especially for those folks who tend to drop leading Hs.
Correct. The key for when to use "a" vs "an" is not what the next LETTER is, but what the next SOUND is. If it's a vowel SOUND, you use "an".
"an heirloom", not "a heirloom".
Another classic example: "She earned an MBA"... because it's "em-bee-ay"
Or, to keep this aviation related, "an NTSB report". "en-tee-ess-bee"
Correct. The key for when to use "a" vs "an" is not what the next LETTER is, but what the next SOUND is. If it's a vowel SOUND, you use "an".
"an heirloom", not "a heirloom".
Another classic example: "She earned an MBA"... because it's "em-bee-ay"
Or, to keep this aviation related, "an NTSB report". "en-tee-ess-bee"
Oooh! I just thought of another one or three.
First: "photo dot jif" (photo.gif). GIF stands for Graphic Interchange Format. So it's "gif" as in "Gifford". If it was dot "jif" like the peanut butter, then it would have to be "Giraffic Interchange Format." And I've never heard even the Jif-ers pronounce it that way.
Next: "an historic occasion." Since when is H a vowel? "*A* historic occasion", or "*An* occasion."
I'll remember the third one later.