Confessions of a Grammar Nut

Happy Grammar Day, everyone!

As a teacher--specifically a 4th grade English teacher--I pride myself on having decent grammar. I think it is an essential skill to have, especially as a teacher. Every year, I teach my students about nouns and verbs and subjects and predicates. And every year, as I strive to instill in these 4th graders the ability to speak and write coherently, I watch on Facebook as the adults in the world use poor grammar. I watch as people on Tumblr and Twitter and Instagram use incorrect grammar, and it genuinely confuses me. I mean, I realize that social media is not a cover letter or a resume, but come on, people! How hard is it to just use good grammar?

So, in honor of Grammar Day, I present to you my grammar pet peeves!

Pet Peeve #1:  I vs. Me

Oh, this one. This one bothers me so, soooo much! I can't tell you the number of times I've seen someone post a photo and caption it, "My boyfriend and I." Grrrrr. I always teach my students to take the other person and the conjunction out of the phrase and see if it still makes sense. Would you say "this is a picture of I?" No! You'd say "me." So, yes, even though it sounds funky occasionally, sometimes "me" is the correct pronoun to use.

Pet Peeve #2:  Prepositions

I suppose this isn't so much a pet peeve as a complication to being grammarly-minded. Ending a sentence with a preposition is a big grammar no-no, but it's almost impossible to rephrase sentences without sounding pretentious. I mean, "I don't know about what you are talking," sounds sooo very pretentious compared to "I don't know what you are talking about." 

Pet Peeve #3:  They're, Their, and There

I should also include "you're" and "your," too. I realize that it gets confusing when there are multiple ways to spell words, but they're all different. Their uses are not the same. Their spellings are not the same. Your responsibility as a speaker of the English language is to ensure that you're using them correctly. I mean seriously. Two of them are contractions, for heaven's sake!

Pet Peeve #4:  Too

When I was in seventh grade, I wrote a story for my English class. I remember writing the words, "The room was to dark to see," or something along those lines. I also distinctly remember my English teacher correcting me when I approached him and asked why he'd circled that. After all, I didn't mean "also dark." He explained to me that "too" is an adverb meaning "excessively," in addition to meaning "also." And to this day, I think of that when I write with the word "too."

Pet Peeve #5:  Confusing Punctuation

My final pet peeve for the night is something that frequently happens to iPhone users. The question mark and the exclamation point are right next to each other on the keypad, so I understand that sometimes when people want to put a lot of exclamation points, they accidentally press the question mark, too, causing their post/text to look something like this:  Last night was so amazing!!!!!?!!!!!! When I read a post like this, I can't help it...this is what is going through my mind:  "Wow! You're excited! It must have been amazing...wait, now are you confused? Are you unsure that it was amazing? Oh, but now you're sure again. Good, good."

A BIG thank you to all my English teachers! I hope you feel it was worth going through all the headaches of teaching grammar to the students in my class. I can say for certain that I took a lot from it. Especially commas. Mrs. DeFauw, I love you for helping me with the whole comma thing. 

What about you? Any annoying grammar things you'd like to share? How are you celebrating Grammar Day? I'll tell you what I'm not doing...I'm not grading English essays. Even though I think I do an okay job of teaching grammar, it's still not fun to grade.

~Stay Gold!