I am pretty committed to not being perceived as an overly annoying dweeb, which requires active suppression of various instincts and urges as they arise. For example, I often choose to not harmonize with various tones occurring in the environment around me: car horns, air conditioners, dismissal bells, lawn mowers, and the like. When I think of a silly joke or pun, I occasionally pause to ponder whether I am in an appropriate social context for sharing it. And when I encounter an egregious and wholly avoidable grammar or spelling error, I usually refrain from correcting the offender. The internal conversation generally goes something like this:
Does this error offend your sensibilities?
Yes, it does.
Is it a serious breach of the syntactic conventions we all hold dear?
It is!
Will you improve the situation in any meaningful way by giving in to your pedantic impulses and correcting the error?
(With resignation): No.
I have managed to find other outlets for my zeal for accuracy in language, such as proofreading wedding programs and wall hangings and other printed materials, and reporting my findings to my wife, who is patient and kind. Today, I will use this lowly Substack as an outlet to discuss four errors that I find to be particularly distressing.
Apostrophes
I want to live in a world where people do not use apostrophes to make words plural. Do you want to make a word plural? This is usually a simple matter, and it almost certainly will not require an apostrophe. Apostrophes are perfectly nice little pieces of punctuation, but we should be content to let them serve us where they are most useful: in possessive nouns, letter omissions, and other odd situations that may require them for clarity.
Definitely
There’s not much to this one; just spell it correctly. It’s not “definately,” it’s not “definetly,” and it’s definitely not “defiantly.”
Compound Words
The existence of a compound word is not sufficient cause to insist on joining its constituent parts into a singular unit every time they appear next to each other in a sentence. You may have a checkout time at your hotel, but when it is time to leave, I must insist that you check out. If you are grateful to have been included in something, it might be appropriate to write, “It has been an honor to be a part of this group.” If you are grateful to have been included in something, and you want to express your gratitude in an incoherent and disgusting way, you might try, “It has been an honor to be apart of this group.”
Joint Possessives in the First Person
Consider the following conversation. It is an imaginary conversation, but it could happen to anyone.
Hey, I noticed you didn’t RSVP to Mary and I’s dinner party.
Sorry, I forgot. Unfortunately, I can’t make it.
What a bummer! Why not?
You should have said “Mary’s and my dinner party.”
This feels like an overreaction.
I don’t make the rules; I just enforce them.
We could argue all day about whether grammar is adequate grounds for refusing an invitation to a social event. But we can all agree that none of this would have happened if the gentleman co-hosting the party with Mary had not used this abominable attempt at a possessive pronoun. Let us reflect and learn and incline our ears unto wisdom and our hearts to understanding.
Thank you for enduring this unnecessary post. It was prompted by a very grim Apostrophe Plural Situation I encountered on Facebook today. We all find our own ways to cope with unpleasant situations, and unfortunately, I chose Substack today.
Stay vigilant!