They're on their way there. See? It
isn't that hard.
I know I've probably railed about the
misuse of the different forms of “there” in the past, so forgive
me if I'm babbling babbles that I've already babbled. But there was
a meme going around on Facebook this morning in which someone posted
that people only join an organization because “there to stupid to do
anything else”.
Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we have
the very latest definition of the word “irony” right there.
I'm starting to wonder if this whole
“there/their/they're” problem is the latest version of the
“chicken & the egg” quandary. Are people just grammatically
stupid overall, and we notice it more these days because they post
everything they write on the internet? Or has technology—the
internet and spell-check—made people stupider, so much so that they
don't actually know which “their” to use here and there?
Some days, I just don't know.
Now, I make a lot of grammatical &
spelling errors when I write, as those of you who read this are no
doubt aware. I rely too much on spell-check, and each and every one
of these could probably use an extra round of proofreading, the time
for which is, unfortunately, limited. So I'm not claiming to live in
a glass house. I'm not claiming to be a perfect writer myself. But
if I were to post something accusing someone else of being stupid?
I'd make sure I wasn't an idiot myself.
But then, that's just me.
I'll shut up about this now, if for no
other reason than I have to go hang out with people who, I'm
guessing, actually DO know which “there” to use, if only because they're a couple of teams of
some of the brightest young people on the planet, who will be taking
part in another action packed edition of “High School Bowl”. It
starts shooting in about an hour, in fact, assuming the weather
allows them to make it there.
Just not their. Or they're.
No comments:
Post a Comment