For the love of words

I have an obsession with writing which is probably painfully obvious to everyone that knows me. I also have an obsession with writing well, properly, in the correct way. I would never dare to try to claim that I write perfectly. There are many times I feel I’ve completely botched sentences, paragraphs or even the entire post.

Punctuation is probably the area I have the most trouble in. I’m not on a second grade level, but sometimes I wonder if I used whatever punctuation I’m lamenting over in the correct way.

One thing I don’t have an issue with however is apostrophes. I love them. I use them constantly. Apostrophes are a sign of possession. I read somewhere a long time ago (and cannot for the life of me remember where now) that in families with multiple children the oldest is more likely to use apostrophes while the youngest rarely uses them at all. I am the oldest; perhaps that explains my love of apostrophes.

Now knowing my love of apostrophes, it should be no surprise that I was intently interested in a story I came across this morning. The headline read: Its a catastrophe for the apostrophe in Britain.

Of course the first thing I noticed was the word ITS. It’s wrong. It’s means It is. Its means that ones something. For example I would say it’s not that big of a deal (It is not that big of a deal) or I would say the blue color is its signature color (the blue color belongs to that thing). I would not say it the other way around. It would be impossible for me. It would cause me typing pain.

Britain does not agree with me. They have been slowly removing apostrophes from street signs since the 1950’s. They believe they are confusing and old fashioned. What? How is punctuation old fashioned? Confusing I understand. Old fashioned, well, that just confuses me more.

Considering I will probably never make it to Britain it really doesn’t affect me but it does irritate me. It’s somewhat of a pet peeve of mine. Spelling and punctuation in general are things I attempt to pay attention to 99% of the time.

I read a lot of different things both online and off and I am constantly finding errors. I wrote a post on using Spell-check some time back but now I can’t find it so I’m assuming it was on my old Crazy Life site. That bites. It was a good one in my opinion.

The story from my news feed said the Queen’s English is now the Queens English. Not to me. I will always say it’s the Queen’s English thank you. I cannot and will not drop my apostrophes.

I wonder what’s next… Perhaps someone will decide we don’t need commas. After all they don’t do anything important except tell you when to pause while reading. That’s not necessary is it?