The Grammar Police are After You...

I turned on my laptop this morning and started on my blog entry to notice a glaring error on yesterday's post. An erroneous comma. Now I know that sometimes I am in a hurry to complete my musings, it's getting late, I have been at the computer all day and my eyes are tired. I am sure if you trawl through previous posts you will notice one or two errors, spelling mistakes or a grammatical faux pas. But these are unintentional and I haven't noticed them. This morning that devilish comma was staring me in the face, big time. It had to go.


I like to think that I have a reasonable grasp of the English language. Writing text for exhibitions and putting together articles for journals on behalf of the Museum, or the Historical Association, has made me paranoid about spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. Of course, one of the worst culprits is the apostrophe. That little tinker can cause many heartaches in the Museum-world. 

Our mobile phone text based society is changing the way we write and structure sentences and sees the demise of the wee apostrophe. Some colleagues past have been quite tyrannical about the disappearance or mis-use of the little blighter. Of course, 'your' and 'you're' have caused many a heartache and I see 'your' being used more and more to replace the latter. Writing exhibition text can see many a deep and meaningful conversation between colleagues about should there be an apostrophe before or after the letter 's' at the end of a word. It can easily add an extra half an hour to a meeting. Putting words on public display means they are under scrutiny by visitors, who can be quick to criticise and offer their opinion. Museums try their best to get it right, but sometimes grammatical errors and the odd spelling mistake slip through despite all the proof reading. We're not perfect.

I can't help noticing when things are spelt incorrectly when I am out and about. Shops are notorious for slip-ups but their main concern is selling their product not educating the masses. Some of my friends are good at sharing bad spelling and dreadful grammar through their social media posts - I can understand why. I have been known to stand infront of a signpost and read it several times because I know something is not correct, but it takes several re-reads for it to be obvious. You may ask, why do I care? There is something about the flow of words. This is from someone who still prefers to read good ol' fashioned books rather than a kindle. To see the word on the page and feel the paper. And to make sure the words read correctly.

So, the comma went. I can't have the little blighter in the wrong place. Otherwise Let's eat, Grandma could turn into Let's eat Grandma. Not sure my Mum would be happy about that!

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