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The DFN Weekly

Spelling And Grammar Do Count

By

Wenchy

Adult Copy

Grammar. We all hated it in school. We all had teachers that looked like Bea Arthur and sounded like George Patton. We conjugated verbs until we thought we would die, and dangled our participles until our gray-haired instructors wanted to scream. I know we all had to suffer through it, but now I’m beginning to suspect that a multitude of people either failed that course or received their grades and promptly forgot everything they learned.

I will admit to being 100% anal retentive about proper grammar. In my “real” life line of work, a grammatical error could result in a lawsuit with me listed as the “Plaintiff,” which I prefer to avoid. Therefore, I have developed a zero tolerance level for grammatical errors. There are truckloads of books and web sites available on the subject, and yet the number of glaring errors seems to be growing.

I have two pet peeves in this arena, and they bother me enough that I was driven to write this article about them. The first is the use of the word “your” in place of “you’re.” I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen, “Your going to love this!” or “Your not going to believe your eyes!”. WRONG!

Allow me to clarify. The word “your” indicates possession, as in “your eyes” or “your lost traffic.” The word “you’re” is an abbreviation of sorts for “you are,” as in “you’re not going to believe this” or “you’re not listening.” So, how do you differentiate between the two? When in doubt substitute! If you can put “you are” into your sentence and have it still read properly, use “you’re.” If you can’t, use “your.”

Sounds ridiculously simple, but run through your site and check it out. For instance, you come across “your not going to believe this” somewhere in your site. Where “your” is, substitute “you are” and if the sentence still makes sense change “your” to “you’re.” Learn this, use this, and I guarantee you’re never going to mix them up again.

My second gripe is this. There are three versions of “there/their/they’re” for a reason, folks. There is no one-size-fits-all option here. Another little tip from my fourth grade grammar teacher. “There” is location, “their” is possession, and “they’re” is action. For example, “There going to use they’re money over their” is WAY wrong!

Let’s sort this out, shall we? “There going” is incorrect because “there” indicates location. Similarly, it does not indicate possession either, as they cannot own “going.” However, “they’re” indicates action, so “They’re going” would be the right one.

Next, “they’re money”? By process of elimination you should arrive at “their” as the right fix for this one. Finally, “over their” is obviously incorrect. Use the hints and fill in the blank, and you should arrive at “there.” It doesn’t take long to apply the hints, and the results will definitely help your site look more professional.

Two other quick notes, and these are pretty frequent as well. I’ll cut right to the chase because there is basically no way to do this gently. First, the companies who pay you for flying their banners are your “sponsors.” Second, “definitely” learn to spell “definitely” because the misspellings of that one are “definitely” making me insane! (Hint #1: There is no “a” in the word “definitely.”) (Hint #2: These are in your spell checker, people... use it on every page!)

Listen, folks; professionalism should be a way of life, not just a Brownie button we chose to wear. It’s all fine and good to have a library full of books on HTML, Perl, Java, and CGI, but keep in mind that your surfers will never see that part of your site. Every webmaster’s primary concern should be that which the surfer can see. The first impression is a lasting impression, and if a surfer checks out a site and sees it peppered with incorrect grammar and spelling errors what conclusion are they supposed to draw about the rest of the site?

The errors I mentioned above are quite common and, in my opinion, there is no reason for them. Use the hints I mentioned just like you would use your spell checker before you post your pages. Your surfers will thank you, your checkbook will thank you, and I will be forever in your debt :-)