Your Gonna Like These Grammer Fail's

Some people may accuse me of being a spelling and grammar Nazi. I don't think I'm that bad. I know that I make mistakes, but the difference is that I care when I do. I believe that proper language skills are important, and if we keep up the "well as long as you get my drift, it doesn't matter" excuse, subsequent generations will just get dumber.

I think most people reading the above subject would understand what I'm saying. Unfortunately many probably wouldn't see all or any of the glaring mistakes. So, now I'm going to talk about my biggest grammar pet peeves.

• I hate when people don't know the difference between a noun and a verb.

You are an epic failure every time you use the word fail as a noun. Fail is a verb. I don't care how popular stupidity is. When you say, "epic fail," I lose a little more respect for you.

Affect is always a verb; effect is always a noun. The "cause" affects the effect.

An altar is a raised platform, and is a noun. Alter means to change, and is a verb.

Breath is the air that you inhale, and therefore a noun. Breathe is the act of inhaling and exhaling, and therefore a verb.

I'm sure there are other ones, but these came to my mind first.

• I hate when people don't know the difference between a contraction and a possessive noun.

You're revealing your lack of intelligence whenever you confuse your and you're. You're is the contraction of you are and your is possessive.

It's difficult to overlook all of its mistakes. If you want to say "it is" then use the contraction. If you want to refer to something that belongs to "it," use the possessive.

They're butchering their own language over there. They're is the contraction of they are. Their is possessive. And there is a place.

• I hate that apostrophes are atrociously abused.

When you want to make a word plural, and it's not irregular, just add an s. Now, since there are many irregular nouns, and it would take too long to explain, go here for tips on correctly making words plural. However, I know there is one way you NEVER make a word plural. You never throw in an apostrophe before the s. If you're going to use an apostrophe, please ask yourself, "why?" before you just haphazardly start tossing them wherever you want.

As far as I know, there are 3 reasons to use an apostrophe:

1. You use an apostrophe when letters are missing, such as in a contraction.
2. You use an apostrophe when a noun - not a pronoun - is possessive.
3. You use apostrophes when you're writing a quotation within a quotation.

• I hate that so many people don't know the difference between lose and loose.

Every time someone spells lose with an extra o, I want to strangle myself. Lose means to misplace, and loose means not tight. Lose is a verb and loose is an adjective. No one is a looser, so stop spelling it that way.

Just because I have grammar and spelling pet peeves doesn't mean that I'm perfect. There are some grammatical rules that still baffle me. I know that I mess up commas and quotation marks sometimes. And I've been known to use incorrect words from time to time. In fact, I just found out in the last several weeks that "snuck" isn't a word! That's pretty pathetic on my part.

Okay. That's enough about grammar. I could go on and on, but I won't. Besides, I probably have two readers that even have similar frustrations.