Tuesday, 12/7

I have to go do a TV show in a bit. Before that, I have to go clean six inches of snow off of Loraine's car, and make sure it can get out of the driveway okay. So with both those in mind I'm gonna take the easy way out and leave you with something from five or six years ago, but something that seems to be more and more in need by people on the Internet each and every day.

Back with something new tomorrow!

(jim@wmqt.com)

*****

(as originally posted 11/7/16)

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 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 lacking 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 less carefree about being correct and accurate, 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, four 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.