Word of the day:  Grammar (Gram’-er)  “the study of the way the sentences of a language are constructed, esp. the study of morphology and syntax.”

One of the nice things about doing my own blog is that I can write about whatever strikes my fancy at any given moment. Today I have to hit upon a few of my pet peeves about proper English usage. I certainly accept and have no problem with an idiomatic and colloquial style of writing. I can happily end a sentence with a preposition if it avoids a more convoluted sentence structure, but there are a few things that just grate on my nerves, somewhat like the proverbial old chalk on a blackboard. Screech! Screech!

My top prize has to be a draw between the correct use of  its and it’s and the proper use of the first person pronoun. I am not sure which makes me crazier, but let’s just start with it and it’s. This one is so very easy to fix that no one should ever make this mistake again. The possessive form of the third person pronoun is its with no apostrophe. In the same manner, the possessive form of her is hers, also with no apostrophe. If you use it’s; it is a contraction, a shortening of two words into one with the use of an apostrophe. An easy way to tell if you are using it’s correctly is to use both words, it is. If your sentence doesn’t make sense with it is, you should probably be using its without the apostrophe, e.g., The dog was chasing its tail versus it’s a beautiful day!

My other contender for top honors is the use of I, me, and myself.  Most people seem to do fairly well with I. It seems to be me and myself that give many people fits.  Myself is a reflexive pronoun; it is used when you do something to or for yourself: I treated myself to a hot fudge sundae, or I accidentally hit myself with the hammer when I was trying to hang the picture. If you are the object, use me. The dog bit me. The prize was awarded to John and me, not John and myself. Susan and I conducted the training session, not Susan and myself conducted the training session. I’m not sure where the excessive use of myself has come from, but I suspect a false sense of modesty and a hesitancy to use me?

OK, Lynn, off of your soapbox for now! For some future blog, I may hit upon the past participle (ate and eaten, saw and seen, among others) or the use of the possessive with a gerund, but that may be too high-tech for today. If you really want to check yourself out on contemporary usage, a great resource is Common Errors in English Usage by Paul Brians.   I also suspect the use of the autocomplete function on our many electronic devices and the numerous inherent errors in the spellcheck and grammar functions in our software contribute to many unwitting mistakes for all of us. Sometimes our fingers just take on a life of their own on the keyboard and type the wrong word when we do indeed know better.  I find I make oh, so many more errors on my iPad than I do on my PC with a conventional keyboard.

The other classic reference for grammar is The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White. I’m so weird that I actually requested the leather-bound 50th anniversary edition for a Christmas gift several years ago! Now I realize that everyone may not be this far out in their reading interests, but it is a great resource for improving both your written and spoken English usage. In today’s competitive business world, your proper use of language may make or break an opportunity for you. I hope this little monologue helps you to condition yourself to the importance of using the English language in its best form, and if I offended you, I do apologize in advance.

©2015, Eclectic Grandma

Check in next week for “The White House on Willow Brook Road” with scorpions, chiggers, and World War II!