BASIC GRAMMAR FOR IDIOTS

Okay, so I don't expect much from Fictionpress. It is a site predominantly for angsty pre-teens, and at nineteen years old I am basically a veteran. But here's what baffles and angers me about it: it's supposed to be a site for people who love writing. How can you love writing and yet have no knowledge, let alone respect, for the very basics of the English language? I know grammar at nineteen years old, and I knew it when I was thirteen years old, too. Age is no excuse. I am appalled by the quite frankly embarrassing butchering of English I see on Fictionpress on a daily basis.

Here is a guide to grammar for idiots. I know that the people who read my blog are generally lovely, intelligent people who can spell, and so this is not directed at you. It is more of a generic angry rant.

Emma's guide to basic grammar for idiots

1. "It's" is a contraction. It means IT IS. If you write, "the cat licked it's paw", you are in fact saying, "the cat licked it is paw". THIS MAKES NO SENSE.
2. On a similar note, you can't just shove apostrophes into random plurals. Egg's. Dvd's. Pillow's. Sorry, the pillow's what? These are the only two functions of an apostrophe: to signify a contraction, or to denote possession. Stop using them for other things. Apostrophes are not like sugar, which you can sprinkle randomly all over something to make it nicer.
3. You're = YOU ARE. Your = POSSESSIVE PRONOUN. Learn the difference. It's really not hard. I'm not asking you to memorise the periodic table here.
   
4. Capitalising Every Word In a Sentence Does Not Constitute Formal Writing. It Is In Fact Incredibly Irritating And Makes You Sound Like You Are Talking Like a Robot. Please Stop it Now.
5. You must always capitalise 'I'. I learnt this in Year One. If you are still writing "and then i went to the shops", I think you have a lot of catching up to do and perhaps need to be demoted to aforementioned year. In fact, please remember to start your sentences with capital letters in general.
   
6. You can't just randomly change tenses halfway through a paragraph or sentence. If you don't understand why this is, I wash my hands of you, but let me get the ball rolling by telling you that we do not live in a completely incoherent time-warped world where the present can become the past in an instant. This is one of the basic facts of existence, let alone grammar.
   
7. Why do some people not realise that if you pose a question you must end it with a question mark or else it will sound like you are an unbearable person who talks in a monotone all the time.
8. I don't understand why people seem to hate question marks, and yet they love exclamation marks - so much that they deem it acceptable to either make every sentence an exclamatory one, or to use six all in one go. You cannot write, "And I couldn't believe how handsome he was!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" without sounding like a squealing fangirl at her very first boyband concert.
   
9. Okay, I apologise for the caps lock, and I am aware that this in itself is bad grammar, but I need to use it to express my sheer outrage at this last point. Here goes: YOU CANNOT SPEAK IN INTERNET SLANG IN YOUR WRITING. THIS IS COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE. YOU ARE CREATING A PIECE OF ART, NOT CHATTING TO YOUR BEST BUDDY ON MSN. IF YOU THINK CREATIVE WRITING IS SUCH A WASTE OF YOUR TIME THAT YOU FEEL THE NEED TO CONTRACT "YOU", A SIMPLE THREE LETTER WORD, TO "U", THEN YOU SHOULD NOT BE WRITING, AND SHOULD ACTUALLY BE BANNED FROM BEING NEAR A KEYBOARD OR ANY KIND OF WRITING IMPLEMENT EVER AGAIN IN YOUR LIFE. THIS IS THE ULTIMATE DISRESPECT TO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND I DIE QUITE A LOT INSIDE EVERY TIME I SEE ANYONE DOING IT.
   

Breathe, Emma, breathe...