Why I Hate 95% of People

If you are a native English speaker, I'm talking to you.

Almost every day I see multiple grammar rules violated, in addition to some pretty atrocious spelling. I hear a lot of excuses. "But I'm on Facebook, it's casual, it's not important!" "It's just not fair that I'm getting penalized on my spelling and grammar on a paper that's not for English class!" "I'm texting!"

There are some errors that are attributed to typos and many rules that are violated, mainly via texting, as a result of character restraints. Which is cool. Via text or casual writing, I'm less concerned about the placement of commas and apostrophes, and more about general grammar and spelling. For people who mess up due to those reasons, this post is NOT about you.

To the rest of you: what the hell?! You're a native speaker. You have grown up, spoken, read, and been formally educated in English semantics since birth. How do you still not know the difference between YOUR and YOU'RE?

"Okay," you say, "I know the difference between those two words! But they sound the same and people get my meaning when they read it! It's not a big deal!"

WRONG!

If you know the difference and you're only missing one letter to change the word's meaning, why don't you just add the extra letter?

in the example of casual texting or internet usage (which means ignoring apostrophes):
"your dumb!" INCORRECT.
"youre dumb!" CORRECT.
"ur dumb!" CORRECT.

"its better then staying home all day." INCORRECT.
"its better than staying home all day." CORRECT.

"there not coming." INCORRECT.
"theyre not coming." CORRECT.

"when did you loose your keys?" INCORRECT.
"when did you lose your keys?" CORRECT.

"there are many paper's over there." INCORRECT.
"there are many papers over there." CORRECT.

"he play's the piano." INCORRECT.
"he plays the piano." CORRECT.

For further reference, check the Oatmeal: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/misspelling

I've compiled a collection of infractions of the English language I find on Facebook here: www.erredenglish.tumblr.com

While I've been yammering about simply remembering BASIC English grammar and spelling on the web, most importantly, I urge you all to remember them while writing papers. For any class, for any business, for any occasion that is not related to your friends and personal notes, YOU NEED TO USE PROPER GRAMMAR, SPELLING, AND PUNCTUATION.

Why, you ask? Because to literate people, poor application of those elements of English in your writing DETRACTS from your central message. No matter how good your ideas are, or how much research you did, if you continually force your reader to reread your sentences because you spelt a word incorrectly (that halted the tempo in the reader's head or that looked like another word with a different meaning) or had convoluted grammar and syntax, the reader will soon lose interest in your big ideas. I personally stop reading, or caring, about the contents of paper when I have to shuffle through the pages trying to dig out a clear sentence, and by that time I'm too angry to care about understanding your content.

If I was your teacher: I'D FAIL YOU.

Rebecca Black: Ridiculed Without Reason

You've all heard the song "Friday" and most likely seen the video as well on youtube. In case you haven't, watch this to get up to speed:



Anyway. If you have a normally functioning brain you should be able to realize that lyrically, and just simply musically, the song sucks. Other than the repetitious and catchy chorus of "It's Friday, friday" and the mere fact that it's existence is laughable, you're probably wondering why it's so popular. You probably think Rebecca Black is talentless and auto-tuned, that the song was penned by a five-year old learning the days of the week, and that the video is poorly made, awkward, and unoriginal.

Granted, all of these statements are true. Well, Rebecca Black probably can hold a note, which is more than I can do, but in terms of this song, her vocals are not that good.

But the last thing you should do is criticize the hell out of the poor girl, send her and her awkward dancing friends death requests, or spit any kind of vulgarity to these girls. As I stated before, you can but you probably shouldn't. Here's why.

1. She's 13 years old.
Come on, ridiculing a kid who's video went viral and hit multi-million hits by mere word-of-mouth via the internet? She didn't pay for that kind of promotion, nor create any of the related memes or gifs. People like me gave her that attention because of the ridiculousness of the video and song (and the fact that almost everyone was talking about it or singing the song). Additionally, her parents paid for the project - she wasn't signed for the label on talent, she probably had an interest in singing and the music factory agreed to make her a video (you know, for the giggles and the family's pride 'n joy) for a modest fee and put it on YouTube so her friends would watch it and see how "cool" she was.

2. She's not a famous recording artist.
The general public had no idea who she was until a week ago, let alone that a girl with her name was making any kind of music at all. You can't expect anything this previously unknown girl makes to be good on her first try. See #1 for more details.

3. She's not a recording artist signed to a prominent, credible, serious record label.
The video sucks. But how serious of a music company is this? The video was probably made by a bunch of new, fairly inexperienced filmmakers who are catering to the audience of preteens and under (who like flashy ridiculous things and don't care about bad graphics or quality filming or stories as long as a catchy song with people their age is playing) and who are just trying to learn the extent of the programs they have at their fingertips. They probably didn't count on this video spotting on vh1's top 20 video countdown or even surfacing from the depths of an MTV video forum, but the popularity of the video's bad quality brought it up to the public's attention. Now it has to compare with well-made videos of MTV. I know that there are great videos made for YouTube by fans but again, that's not the audience or standard the company was aiming to comply with.

Cut the girl some slack. She made a video for her and her family and friend's personal enjoyment and for reasons out of her control became extremely famous and, thanks to iTunes (come on people, you can't think of ridiculing the song if you actually shelled out $1.09 to put it in your iTunes library) got a nice sum of money too. If she was signed to a legitimate label not funded by rich parents, had produced a good song before that made her popular, or was at least old enough to drive a damn car, then there would be room to more freely criticize the girl's efforts.

It's the equivalent of having millions of people calling you out on that stupid dubstep "Weasley Is Our King (with rap interlude)" video you haphazardly created with two dirty old mops, colored disco balls, and your fat friend who "claimed" he had coordination, with your friends just because you were bored and then put on YouTube when you got drunk. "Come on bro," you'd say, "It was just a bit of fun!"

So guys, relax.

It's Friday :)