Why Grammar Still Matters

At back to school night every fall, I like to talk to parents about our writing program. I'm incredibly proud of it; my school produces writers who range from "solid" to "exemplary," and our alumni come back every year to say how well prepared they were for college level writing courses. Because I teach freshmen, I teach many of those fundamental skills at the outset, but the road isn't easy. It takes a great deal of practice to become a proficient writer, practice that my students get as they write paragraphs throughout the fall and essays throughout the spring. However, as any athlete knows, if you only practice a skill once a week at best, you're unlikely to improve. It's the daily practice you need.

And so this is what I love to tell my freshmen: you write more today than I ever did. It's true. I had to pick up a phone to find out the homework assignment I'd missed; writing a letter took a great deal of effort and really only occurred when thank you notes were required. I couldn't just text a friend to see what I'd missed in class or email a friend in England to wish her a happy birthday--but my students can, and they do. They write countless times every single day, though they rarely make the connection between the quick tweet about the essay I just assigned and the writing of the essay itself. Yes, there's a degree of brevity in their daily communications, but it's still a chance to practice.

If they have smartphones, it's even easier; spellcheck is a built-in feature that auto-corrects their every missive (sometimes with humorous results). However, while the spelling may be correct, the grammar may not be, and that's where the opportunity to practice comes into play. If they pay attention to those homophones, to those quotation marks, to those commas and apostrophes, they may just find their next grammar quiz scores slightly higher than expected. And, if they've got grammar-savvy recipients on the other end of those missives, they're also sure to impress. As I explain it to them, ignoring grammar when you type is like walking into an interview wearing ripped jeans and a holey sweatshirt, for your linguistic prowess is how you present yourself online.

Now, if you're reading this blog, chances are you're also someone who values the written word, who finds that sometimes things are better expressed through fingers on a keyboard than a tongue in a mouth. Perhaps you even write a blog of your own or participate in an online community or text more than you call. Maybe you're already a grammar superstar, but maybe--like my freshmen--you still sometimes tilt your head first to one side, then to the other, and then just simplify the problem by typing out "it is" rather than figuring out where that pesky apostrophe goes.

And so here, my lovely readers, are two of the most common grammar mistakes explained. Take 'em or leave 'em, but know that, if you already apply them or if you start to now, you'll suddenly be walking around your technological world wearing a snappy little outfit instead of those ripped jeans.

Your versus You're

The GIF above, of Ross explaining grammar to Rachel, is one that I frequently see posted online when folks get frustrated with improper grammar--and Ross has got it exactly right. Here's why: an apostrophe does one of two things: it creates a contraction or indicates possession. (It never ever ever makes something plural, but that's a lesson for another day.) In the "your / you're" case, the apostrophe is creating a contraction, which means that two words are being smushed together (contracted) by leaving a letter (or two) out. So, when you write "you're," you're really writing "you are" and just eliminating the a and replacing it with an apostrophe.

Its versus It's

The same basic principle applies to this one as to the previous one, but there's a little twist. Let's say I want to write the following sentence:

The car is lying on the car's side.

Grammatically, that's just fine; the apostrophe in "car" makes it possessive, as the car is the owner of the side. But it sounds a bit redundant, right? So let's take advantage of a pronoun to fix the problem:

The car is lying on it's side.

Seems logical, right? If "car's" in the first sentence was possessive, then "it's" in the second sentence should be possessive too, right? But here's the rub--you actually just wrote this sentence:

The car is lying on it is side.

Stupid complex English grammar, right? See, possessive pronouns never take apostrophes; it's the reason you've never seen "her's" or "his's" or "their's." By their very nature, possessive pronouns are, well, possessive, so they don't need a little apostrophe helped to show that. As a result, what you really wanted to write was this:

The car is lying on its side.

Here's the cardinal rule: any time you write "it's," you mean "it is." No exceptions, okay?