I can't take it anymore: A Rant

Okay, it's too much. I can't take it anymore.

People everywhere are using an apostrophe, followed by an "s," for a simple plural word. It is POSSESSIVE!!! A word is missing like "is." It is not used to make a simple plural word!

How much of this have you seen lately?

A thread here is titled, "Do you have double or triple features dvd's?"

Huh? It's DVDs. Now, I'm not picking on that poster, because I see this type of thing everywhere!

I've seen "professional" bloggers use the 's inappropriately. I've seen it on signs in my school by supposedly educated people. I believe I even saw it in an advertisement one time.

Soon, it will somewhow descend into an appropriate use of the apostrophe. That idea makes me sorta nuts.

AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!

To be honest, I was hoping to use some quotes to support my rant, but now that I'm talking about it, I can't find the specific quotes. But you've all seen them, haven't you?

I've wanted to scream about this for some time now. Thank you.

I know, it really annoy's me too.

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Annoy's me more.

Hehe, now you're doing it.

Congratulations on making 1,000 posts, by the way.

Wow, I didn't notice I made 1,000 posts. Thanks for noticing.

Ironic it included the apostrophe s.

Congrats on the 1000... but the subject of your rant doesn't bother me... I'm terrible with punctuation so am probably guilty of doing it myself...

It bothers me a lot more to see Los Cereales on my box of cereal...

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Inappropriate apostrophes bug me too. It really gets me when a person or business pays a professional sign company good money to make their sign or banner, and the sign company goes and screws it all up with bad grammar.

Ah yes, that deserves its own rant.

EDIT: That was in response to Caitlyn's post.

But yea, 1badgmc, I agree. I see this all the time and I wonder why people don't understand grammar rules anymore. There's a reason they are there: so we can communicate in a clear manner with each other!

Same with spelling. Spelling matters. Why do people think it doesn't matter?

Yeah, it deserves more than a rant in my book... my great grandparents weren't allowed to speak their own language and forced to learn English... and English is supposed to be the official language of America... so my cereal and everything else should only be in English... and if anyone doesn't understand it, then they need to get one of those little dictionaries and start learning the language... we shouldn't have to learn theirs unless we want to... and the same goes if I moved to a non English speaking country... it'd be my responsibility to learn their language... not them mine.


Now spelling.... spelling does bother me... especially when someone has spell check red lining the word in question and they just ignore it...

So true. I can forgive a simple misspelled word now and then from typing to fast or fat fingers or whatever, but blatant disregard for all rules of grammar and spelling does nothing other than make it harder for the person reading to understand and make the writer look uneducated.

Whenever I send a text message, it takes me longer than most people because I don't buy into all that chatspeak crap. Aside from "lol" and 2 or 3 others, I don't use any of it at all. I send my messages in fully spelled and punctuated sentences.

I live in Texas and it just gets worse and worse. You wouldn't go to a non-English-speaking foreign country and expect them to cater to your language, so why should we have to cater to anyone else's.

OMG, I love you.

I have this real problem with ignoring grammar and spelling, even in text messages! And I'm a teacher, lol. My students soon figure out that if I see a "u" or a "2" or anything of that sort, they get their paper thrown back at them without a grade!

They learn fast in my class. LOL!!

As to the other rant, well, I teach in a school where I can't even converse with about half of my students' parents because they don't understand English. Meetings require translators. Kids lie to their parents because the parents don't understand the language. Parents turn over all the power to the kids.

And I often feel that people put a guilt trip on me for not learning Spanish. I'm supposed to "understand" why they aren't learning English. Why? If I went to France, I'd have to learn French, right???

And why with all the immigration in this country, is suddenly Spanish everywhere? On food, answering machines, instructions?

In a comment to Caitlyn, I said "don't get me started!" HA!

Me, too. I, am especially, guilty of trying, to put comma's everywhere.

(The apostrophe was for you, Tramp. )

A funny language story:

We were in Chicago a few years ago. We went to McDonald's and my brother-in-law ordered some breakfast burritos. They gave him his order and he asked for some picante sauce. The Mexican kid behind the counter just looked completely dumbfounded..."What's that?" he asked. My brother-in-law said, "Hot sauce!" "OH!"...and he hands some packets to my b-i-l. We look at the packets and they say "Hot Picante Sauce" on them.

You know which ones chap my hindquarters?

The ones who don't know the difference between your and you're.

I guess that technically refers to a misplaced apostrophe.

Don't forget to, too and two.

You speak the truth, Sir Toose. That is another annoying habit of writers.

The other one that gets me is not understanding "their" "there" and "they're."

And well.. It happened again.

It matters, but we all mess up/make mistakes. I've seen a few people on this board correct others. I've seen those same people make mistakes. When that second part happens, it puts a little smile on my face. I mess up. I know I mess up. Just don't irritate me about it.

It's different when someone is purposely making mistakes, or wanting their posts to look bad. (You know who I mean, Harry, and you best stop plus repping him, just to piss me off! ) Then there are those who won't take the time to put caps on anything in their posts. Do you have short pinkies? Stretch those damn things down there to hit shift.

As far as it being for something professional/something other than this board . . . If they're dumb enough to pay for a banner that is inaccurate, then their business deserve the attention it brings them. The only billboards I've seen with errors on them, are those that are posted on-line, as jokes. Those photos are altered for the internet.

We have that option here? I don't have any red lines showing up under my words. How do I get that?

p.s. You don't want to get me started on that . . . "If you speak English, press one." ****!

I'm taking too long to post my reply, so I have to keep adding to it.

I'm one of the few people left who won't use "and" or "but" to start my sentences. To me, it's as if you're starting your sentence in the middle of a thought. "Conjunction Junction, what's your function?"

From an on-line site . . .

If you're anything like me, for years and years you avoided using "but," "and," or "yet" to start a sentence. This often resulted in run-on sentences or short, choppy ones. The good news is that the rules are changing and it is now considered acceptable to start a sentence with a conjunction.

I'm not a fan of this. I don't like that the rules are changing. The same goes for hyphens. Those rules are changing, as well.

If it "ain't" broke, don't fix it.

1badgmc, you just reminded me of something else that irritates me. Your b-i-l reminded me of when people shorten movie titles. The problem is, I usually won't know what movie they are talking about, so it irritates me. I've seen LOTR a million times, so of course I know what that movie title is. However, it's pretty much the only one I know of.

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Yeah, I know the feeling there too. It's no big deal if the entire title has been written out completely once or twice in the post and then the abbreviation is used for following instances, but you can't start a post talking about IJATTOD and assume that everyone in the world knows you're talking about Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Exactly! However, it may make an interesting game, in the game section.

I already know I'd suck at it.