Incorrect

"It looks like a nuke-u-ler bomb got dropped on this place," I hear someone say when they are looking damage from the recent ice storm. I cringe.

Mispronunciation bothers me. Incorrect grammar bothers me. Incorrect punctuation bothers me. They don't just bother me, they kill me.

The internet is the worst place for English language errors. Facebook statuses are terrible. At midnight, I'm browsing recent status updates, and this is what I find: "[name deleted] thinks your getting fat; haha lolololololol."

First of all, there's the obvious confusion of "you're" and "your." Next, this Facebook user should probably be turned in to the authorities for semicolon abuse. Finally, what is the repetition of "lol" supposed to mean? "Laugh out loud out loud out loud out loud out loud?" It doesn't make sense! I lean over my keyboard and cry for a while, and eventually I decide that I can't change the world. If she wants to butcher the English language, she's just making herself look like an idiot.

The next day, my professor hands a paper back to me that I had written the week before. One sentence is circled: "The affect of this is to increase the validity of the author's main point." I don't even have to read his comments to see what is wrong.

You confused "affect" and "effect," Tyler? Really? You are an English major, after all. I slip out of class without anyone seeing me, and I duck my head as I pass people in the hallway. How embarrassing.

Eventually, I'll have to figure out that no one is perfect.


[Author's Note: I intend for this post to be my post for last week. I had this piece written, but I kept forgetting to post it. Also, thanks to apostropheabuse.com for the image.]