Follow posts tagged #possessive, #jealousy, and #overprotective in seconds.

“If you love a flower, don’t pick it up. Because if you pick it up it dies and it ceases to be what you love. So if you love a flower, let it be. Love is not about possession. Love is about appreciation.”

—Osho

Grammar. Basic? I think so

So because I want to lose braincells, I have been reading fanfiction. Why? Because I like to rot my brain with badly written literature. Which would be fine if I didn’t keep seeing the SAME basic grammatical errors. I’m no Nazi for grammar, I go fuckin comma happy in my essays and use fragments and run-on sentences as I godamn please. That’s called style, or so I was told.

However.

It - it’s (it is) ; its (possessive)

Who - who’s (who is) ; whose (possessive)

Ninja - singular/plural form ; ninja’s (possessive) - Ninjas is not a word.

Shinobi - singular/plural form ; Shinobi’s (possessive) - Shinobis is also not a word. considering this isn’t even an ENGLISH word, tacking on an ‘s’ doesn’t make it plural.

Remember elementary school, when you learn that moose is singular and plural? Well it’s something like that. K.

Past and Present Forms

Leap - leap/leaping/leaps (present) ; leapt (past tense) - leaped is not a word

Passive/Present voice

THIS has got to be the most common I read in roleplaying, fanficiton, fiction, essays etc. I had it drilled into my head by my old High-school English teacher, that should her students use this all-too-common mistake we would be flailed, skinned and set out on display.

Example:

Jane had walked to her car after she and Erin had spoken (replace it with talked to get the full effect of bad writing). She had started her car and headed home.

Why the FUCK his ‘Had’ so popular? Don’t you get annoyed typing, ‘she had he had they had blah had it had its as had in the dick had’. Irritating. Every three words is ‘had’. Passive present should be against the law and have the offender sentenced to death. End of story.

Esperanto: Lesson 2

Now that we have learned the pronouns:

mi (I)
vi (you)
li (he)
ŝi (she)
ĝi (it)
ni (we)
ili (they)
oni (one)

we can form the possessive adjectives:

mia (my)
via (your)
lia (his)
ŝia (her)
ĝia (its)
nia (our)
ilia (their) [ee-lee-a]
onia (one’s)

which are really adjectives because they identify (describe) the nouns they are attached to. Mia plumo = my pen. The ending “-a” on possessive adjectives follows the same rules about agreement as adjectives:

Mia amiko amas mian fratinon.
Miaj amikoj amas miajn fratinojn.

Stop being so possessive of your plurals

Apostrophes are odd little buggers. The crescent moons of the punctuation set. Shaped like commas, but uppity for wanting to sit a bit higher than the lowly comma, and rather clingy with the letters that come before them. Like some people I know.

But the apostrophe does a damn good job of taking possession of the nouns it hangs out with. The dog’s butt. The cat’s meow. The senator’s mistress. Once you throw down that little crescent, you know who’s boss.

Why then, do people feel a strange compulsion to add apostrophes to make something plural? They weren’t invited. They’re the party crasher of the noun world. Just because a noun wants to become plural doesn’t mean it wants to get all possessive about it.

The dog’s are ready to go? The cookie’s are damn good? The mom’s have had enough Chardonnay? What could these nouns possibly be possessive of?

If you’re an apostrophe abuser, it’s time to pluck them from your nouns like stray hairs from a witch’s chin. And whatever you do, keep apostrophes far away from verbs. A client recently sent me an email that said, “We want copy that bring’s the services together”. What the -?

Let it go. Just let it go. Walk away from the apostrophe.