Grammatical Pet Peeves

This will be short. I spend my entire work day on the internet reading blogs, forums, news articles, and the like. I don’t have high expectations for grammar in forums, and I have similarly low expectations for blog comments. However, the content of the blog post itself, and especially of so-called legitimate news articles, has a duty to be grammatically correct.

There are so many little things that drive me absolutely batty when reading articles on the internet. From the smallest personal blog (errors are relatively acceptable here – I’m not that cold-hearted) to the largest “news” source (such as The Huffington Post), no site is immune to the sickness that is grammatical carelessness. Below is a short list of my biggest aggravators.

1. Its vs. It’s – There is a distinct difference. Its = possessive. The cat bared its teeth. It’s = a contraction meaning “it is.” Feel free to use “its,” as long as it’s used properly.
2. There vs. They’re vs. Their – There = a location. They’re = a contraction meaning “they are.” Their = possessive for something belonging to “them.” They’re standing in front of their house over there.
3. General Spelling Errors – Folks, every piece of software these days has spell check. Use it. Or dictionary.com. Or – gasp – an actual dictionary!

I know there are more, but they’re not coming to mind at the moment. I will update this post as I come up with more!

Feel free to add your own in the comments!