If you saw that headline and thought, “is he stupid, or just being ironic?” the answer is both, but mostly, I’m just being ironic.
Neil Gaiman, a renowned short fiction writer, once said, “Picking up your first copy of a book you wrote, if there’s one typo, it will be on the page that your new book falls open to the first time you pick it up.”
This has since been referred to as Gaiman’s law. Why am I telling you this? Because, there is little doubt in my mind that after ranting and raving about people making egregious spelling and grammar mistakes, I will inevitably find a typo in this article after it goes to print.
With that out of the way, let’s talk about your spelling and grammar. Candidly speaking, it sucks, America. Americans have apparently decided to do away with the English language, and replace it with hieroglyphics on their iPhone and the inability to spell the word, “definitely.”
It is not spelled, “defiantly,” by the way. You did not “defiantly” enjoy your vacation to Cabo. The definition of “defiant” is that you were uncooperative or noncompliant, and you cannot be noncompliant while you’re sipping booze out of a coconut at a ripoff resort! I’m only a little bitter.
There are countless videos on the internet of people calling out morons for their atrocious misspellings, overuse or underuse of punctuation and the inability to finish sentences. My personal favorites come from a youtuber named “Jacksfilms” who hosts a series called, “Your Grammar Sucks.” YGS is not for the faint of heart or the weak-livered grammar nazi, because some of the comments he reads drive me to drink.
It’s here I should point out that I was raised by a middle school English teacher, so if she ever reads this: hi mom, things are going great, no I don’t have plans for grandkids any time soon, yes I’m drinking responsibly and eating healthy, and yes I’m making lots of friends. Is she gone? Okay.
Having been raised in a household that prided itself in not making spelling errors on Facebook posts, it can be hard for me sometimes to resist the urge to correct people’s writing on social media. I’ve gotten better, but there are still times when I look at some sappy couple photo that reads, “your my everything, your my rock, your my one and only,” and reply, “you’re an idiot for not using ‘you’re’ correctly, and also he’s cheating on you.”
Now look, I realize no one likes a grammar nazi, but the fact is that in a world where constant communication is the norm and information can spread almost as fast as light, people need to be able to spell words correctly and use proper grammar. This is simply to ensure that nothing gets taken out of context and that no one misinterprets what someone says.
So here now are some quick tips on spelling and writing better so that next time you want to profess your love to your boo on Instagram, you can do so and have him actually understand what you’re saying.
– Tip number one: unless you mean that you actually acted in defiance, the spelling you are looking for is, d-e-f-i-n-i-t-e-l-y.
– Tip number two: if you are trying to say “you are” something, but don’t want to be bothered with that extra space or the letter “a,” it’s “you’re,” not “your.”
– Tip number three: coinciding with that, if it belongs to you, it’s “your” property not, “you are” property. Because you’re not property, you’re a human being and you’re beautiful just the way you are.
– Tip number four: the same rules for “your” and “you’re” apply to “they’re (they are)” and “their,” while “there” is used to indicate where something is at a given time.
– Tip number four: always use spell check, even if the only thing you’re typing at a given moment is a YouTube comment about how much the video sucks.
And last, but certainly not least,
-Tip number five: read aloud what you’re going to type as you are typing it. If it sounds wrong and looks wrong, it’s probably wrong. Or, if it sounds wrong and looks wrong, it’s also probably one of the president’s tweets.
