This is not a badger's moustache,
or an excessively ugly pelican,
it's an apostrophe.
The king of punctuation.
And boy, is it being misused on a regular basis.
Sometimes, apostrophes make stuff possessive,
like if Tom has... say,
significant doubts about that last gram of bath salts.
The doubts belong to Tom, right?
So those are Tom's significant doubts about that last gram of bath salts,
and we give Tom an apostrophe.
If the noun already ends in an 'S',
like Dolores, and Dolores has... say,
some reservations about huffing a third can of
Lemon drizzle coloured Dulux paint,
then the apostrphe goes after the 'S' to make it possessive.
So, Dolores' reservations about huffing a third can of
lemon drizzle Dulux paint.
Apostrophes are also used for contractions,
like 'it's', which is just a shortened version of 'it is'.
You don't need an apostrophe to make it possessive.
For example,
if the cat shredded important financial documents,
then that's 'its mistake'.
If we give it an apostrophe, it makes it short for 'It is',
and the sentence is 'It is mistake' which is non-English!
Boy, commas are also tired of being messed around.
"Let's eat, kids!", which is a healthy exclamation while dining,
as opposed to "Let's eat kids!", stating rather explicitly-
you are, in fact, a cannibal.
However, commas can't just be cast in any old role though.
They aren't fucking- Matthew McCommahey.
and throwing in [breath] willy-nilly commas will lead [breath]
to a fractured [breath]
sentence.
Myself, I am on team Oxford Comma.
An Oxford Comma is the optional
(but not really optional)
comma one uses in a list.
Here's an example:
"Let me introduce you to my wife, my best friend, (Oxford Comma)
and my sister." Sounds reasonable enough doesn't it?
If you don't use the Oxford comma, instead you get:
"Let me introduce you to my wife, my best friend and my sister."
So yeah,
good luck with that you Targaryen freak.
Moving on.
Hey, who's this little chap?
It's a semicolon, the pretentious foie gras of grammar.
But it's not! It's awesome and here's why and shut up-
Semicolons are tip-top for joining two ideas that have equal weights.
For example:
Semicolons are useful; (semicolon)
They also desperately scream "I'm a university gradua-"
It can also link two clauses that stand alone.
Such as: "I appear to have trapped my junk in a filing cabinet; (semicolon)
I might not be joining you for mojitos."
We should probably also talk about confused pronouns.
"After putting the cat in the car, Rebecca drove it home."
Oh I- I see, cats are now drivable, are they?
How big is said cat?
How does one operate said cat?
Mine doesn't even acknowledge my existence,
Let alone double up as a mode of fucking transport!
Imaginary plural possessives.
Hey, what's you guyses thoughts about that?
We have no thoughts about that, because that is a grammatical abomination.
"I made a 360 degree change."
Yeah, okay. Let's just visualise that one.
In your previous life you were, say, kidnapping dalmatians,
and turning them into burgers,
but after some consideration you developed a conscience
and executed a full 360 change and
and that's a circle, you're still making dog burgers, Jesus Christ!
"I made a one hundred and eighty degree change."
"I could care less"
Which means presumably, you do still care,
and you have a lot more not caring to get done,
so that's great, but it doesn't really communicate anything.
"I couldn't care less"
"First come first serve"
"First come, first served"
It has to be served, otherwise that would mean the first people to enter the restaurant
would unexpectedly find themselves working there.
Affect and effect.
Usually, people mean the verb Affect with an 'A'
because it means to influence something,
like "Your face is affecting my peace of mind."
To effect is to bring something arround,
like "After seeing your face, the government effected drastic legislative changes."
I.e. versus E.g.
E.g. is for examples, like "drugs are bad for you,
e.g. heroin, cocaine, Stellaris, et cetera."
I.e. is used for clarification.
Drugs are bad for you.
I.e. you sit down to play a spot of Stellaris over lunch
and suddenly a decade has passed and you're now thirty-eight.
and you still haven't got up to pee, and it's not even the middle of the fucking game yet!
Their, they're and there.
Hm.. This one is easy enough.
Well, 'their' is possessive.
If a troop of leprechauns is closing in on your position
with laser guided fusion powered sniper rifles,
then that's 'their' assault party.
If it helps, a good trick is to remember that 'their' is spelt like that
is because its.. right.
If we're using the contraction of they are though, such as the leprechaun assault team is here,
and 'they're' going to go full on Jules Winnfield when they get inside the house,
we use the apostrophe 'R' 'E' form,
because again, it's a contraction of 'they are',
And if we're using the preposition, such as:
"Shit, i lost the assault leprechauns, where are they?
Oh, just crouching sinisterly behind the wheely bin,
over there,"
then it's 'E' 'R' 'E'.
And finally, if you're curious, then your interest is Piqued,
if you say something nice, its a compliment,
but if it brightens someones day, then it complemented it,
and if someone insists on breaking the above rules, despite knowing exactly how they work,
well, fair enough.
after all, it's their language too, right?
No!
You aren't allowed to freestyle with traffic laws, or math!
So why language?
Need I remind you that political tensions are running high?
That a global pandemic could spring up at any time?
That the bees are rather poorly at present and we don't know why?
We're balancing on the bloody existential cliff edge here,
so with all that in mind, just
fucking
'I' before 'E' except after 'C',
alwight?