Tuesday 22 May 2012

There, their, they're...

Some may find this post criticising, boring or too academic but one of my pet hates is the incorrect usage of words... "there", "their" and "they're" being prime suspects! 

Correct usage.... "They're over there with their toys".

With the increase of text-language and slang used in normal conversations, sometimes I worry that my children will grow up without the basic skill of how to spell and use correct grammar.

A good way to remember where to put commas comes from the sentence, "Let's eat Grandma"....

OK, OK, "Let's eat, Grandma" sounds and looks much better!  See, punctuation really does save lives!

And the violent panda that lies within us all, "Eats, shoots and leaves"!



My daughter's only 7 years old and reading very well for her age.  She can understand punctuation and knows where to pause and take a breath!  My son is starting to read and from the beginning, we have shown him how to read and use the full stops and commas correctly.

Needless to say, I have checked and double-checked today's post and cannot see any mistakes - if you find any, please comment!  I promise that I will take any corrections well!

Although I must admit, one word I always have to double check is "stationery" and "stationary"!

4 comments:

  1. With my son the other day we were writing a letter to his friend in Scotland and we were doing the ' between words. I pointed out to him that if you join two words together, then the ' replaces the letter that is missing. I.E You are becomes you're with the ' replacing the a. That's how I remember how to use the ' I'm the same with grammar and my husband drives me mad on facebook as he never uses ' he uses ; instead!!! Drives me mad and is also how all my friends can tell if her frapes me or not. I HATE text speech and I won't even use it when I'm writing a text, even if it does mean I send two texts instead of one!!! I also think it's a shame that some schools don't do more with spelling, such as spelling tests or bee's. My spelling is terrible because I didn't learn or have spelling tests in school and now I can see my children going the same way!

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    1. I fully agree... they should bring back spelling tests or bee's. And, yes, that's the same apostrophe rule I use - the ' replaces a missing letter. Helpfully, the same rule applies in Welsh too!

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    2. Ahhh I didn't know that about the Welsh! See you learn a new thing every day LOL. I was reading an article in the paper today and it was saying how so many people are reliant on spell checkers as well, and it amazes me how many people don't realise that something which has been flagged up by the spell checker was spelt correctly it's only been flagged because the spell checker is set to American English and they don't seem to like the letter U as much as we do (I think they were trying to distance themselves from British English) ((See I use British because it's not just England, it's Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as well LOL))

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    3. Here's an example of the Welsh version... "Mae hi yn hoffi nofio" is written "Mae hi'n hoffi nofio" so the "y" is replaced by the '!

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