Tuesday's Grammar Tidbit

Okay, most of you know I'm an English teacher. Some of you even know that I'm a "little bit" OCD when it comes to grammar, punctuation, etc. It comes from having proper pronoun usage and subject-verb agreement drilled into my brain as a small child--and while, boy, I'm thankful that my parents were concerned about it, it's also a curse. The smallest grammar error creeps under my skin and festers there until I'm compelled to point it out or bite a hole in my tongue to keep from saying something. Because here's the problem--I like having friends. So, I'll vent here and refrain from naming names.

I just read one of my daily blogs, written by a professional writer who gets paid real American cash dollars to publish her daily views on life, who gets to stay home with her young child (when she's not on a book tour promoting her latest publication) thanks to the money she makes from WRITING , and she misused the word it's. Ugggh.

It's, for those of you who don't know, is only acceptable to use when you mean to say "it is". It's a contraction for those two words, and the apostrophe represents the ommitted letter i. One should never write something such as "The dog was wagging it's tail." The possessive pronoun that IS acceptable in that case is just plain its, without the apostrophe. I know it's tricky, because to talk about a person owning something, the apostrophe is needed; for example: Tamara's blog was boring as all hell today, because she rambled about stupid grammar." But ohmigosh--a professional writer? She should KNOW BETTER!

--Tamara