1. The phrase "wherefore art thou Romeo" from Romeo and Juliet does not mean "where are you, Romeo?" as it is so often misinterpreted. It means "WHY did you have to be Romeo," which is Juliet bemoaning the fact that the dude she's hot for is a Hatfield to her McCoy, and she can never get it together with him, 'cause her whole family would totally freak. When I was younger, and less intrepid with my Elizabethan English skills, I made the same misinterpretation, and in fact wrote an entire horrible poem around the concept....which apparently impressed the hell out of my elementary school teachers at the time, but is now pretty damn embarassing to me.
2. Say it with me now: it's an apostrophe for a contraction, but possession needs no apostrophe in its spelling.
3. Speaking of apostrophe usage...it's the '60s, '70s, and '80s - NOT the 60's, 70's, and 80's. For the same reason as the whole it's/its thing.
4. "Would've" is a contraction for "would have," NOT "would of." Seriously, where the hell does that even come from?
6. And my own personal top grammatical pet peeve: "a lot" is TWO words, not one. "Alot" is a B and an L short of the thing you cast in an election, and that's as close as it gets to being a word.
Speaking of which, did you vote yet?
10.30.2008
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2 comments:
My grammatical pet peeve is your and you're being used interchangeably. Gripes me no end.
Oh, yeah, that one drives me nuts, too. I've just ranted about it at such length in the past...I feel like I'd be beating a dead horse to gripe about it yet again. But I totally feel you. Why is it so tricky to distinguish between contractions and possessives?!
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