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Sunday, February 03, 2002 Today I take a moment to address a few spelling mistakes often seen around the web: LIGHTNING -- that electrical discharge from the sky that parties with thunder? It's lightning. Lightning. NOT lightening. Lightening is when something gets or is made less heavy. Thunder hangs out with lightning. YOUR/YOU'RE -- YOUR means it belongs to you, as in "I didn't buy that -- that's your turbo-molecular pump." YOU'RE means "you are," as in "Hey, watch it, you're spilling yak urine all over my brand new Beatle boots!" THEIR/THEY'RE -- same drill as with your/you're. Except with this one there's the added complication of THERE. "There" means "not here." It doesn't mean "they're" or "their." To sum up: their = it belongs to them; they're = they are; there = not here. So there. LOSE -- when you lose something -- as in fail to win or fail to keep track of or suffer loss or deprivation (of something or someone) -- you LOSE it. You do not loose it. Lose. Not loose. Got it? Loose means something doesn't fit right, as in "Hey, hand me that staple gun, would you? My boxer shorts are loose." And one common punctuation goof-up: APOSTROPHES -- in general, you don't use 'em to make words plural. For example, here's a genuine sentence from another website: "Here are some of the one's I've seen around." Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. That would be "some of the ones I've seen around." If you stick an apostrophe in there, you're making it a possessive (as in "That's Bob's particle accelerator.") or you're making it a contraction (as in "That copy of the Fetish Times? That one's Bob's"). Am I being clear enough here? Rule of thumb: you almost never need to use an apostrophe to turn a singular noun into a plural noun. Examples: more than one rant = rants (NOT rant's) more than one rant-writing crackpot = rant-writing crackpots (NOT crackpot's) more than one life-changing multiple orgasm = life-changing multiple orgasms (NOT orgasm's) more than one disastrous blind date = disastrous blind dates (NOT date's) more than one crank ranting about more than one writing error = cranks ranting about writing errors (NOT crank's, NOT error's) Right. So. Next time you come across a webpage or an e-mail with some excruciatingly basic writing errors, remember: lighten up, it's there problem, not your's -- try not to loose your cool over it. rws 9:52 AM [+] |