I hate looking back at my grammar in previous conversations. Why, you ask? Because it used to be abysmal. I know I sound like a complete freak in saying so, but I don’t completely care. I’m one of them people that corrects other people’s grammar. For example:
Friend 1 – I’m going shopping after school!
Friend 2 – With who?
Me – WHOM.
Yeah. I can get rather annoying. Take one of my best friends for example. We were asked to write a quick made-up news report for Psychology. The reason for it is irrelevant, but all I do know is that she took dibs on typing.
We hit the first hurdle at the title. We decided to make up the article about a middle-aged man stealing a £83,935 Land Rover. So, when A typed: ‘Man Steals a £83,935 Land Rover!’ In one of them unprofessional looking word-art forms, I simply suggested that an exclamation mark at the end of previous said statement wasn’t completely appropriate for the situation. So, not agreeing with me, A decided to find me proof that they do in fact use exclamation marks in News Headings. She got no such results.
I was right, for once in my life. But, A was determined to prove me wrong, so she carried on in her failing attempt to be right. And she did find at least three, but as I so kindly pointed out, they were all appropriate uses: For example ‘Obama Won!’
Eventually, giving up hope of ever shutting up my whinging, A decided to just delete the exclamation mark, and all was well once again.
After that, it was all going relatively well until horror struck… She missed out an apostrophe. Now, I kindly corrected her mistake, and she fixed it for me. ‘Dont’ really just isn’t the same as ‘Don’t’, okay?
Now, this would have been a rather short and boring story if it had ended there. But oh, no. The sudden turn on ignorant grammar continued. Next, she put hyphens instead of commas in two places. I could feel myself slowly getting all flustered over such a small and simple, yet monstrosity of a mistake, which, if you think about it is rather ridiculous, yes. But to me, it’s normal.
Again, I so kindly corrected the simple, yet abysmal mistake, but no. She replied, “No. It’s meant to be hyphens, not commas.”
So I, now on the verge of explosion, replied to her response with, “No… There are meant to be commas there. If there are hyphens, the whole sentence doesn’t make sense.”
So, out came her Alice in Wonderland book that she’s studying for English, and she found a part in which there were two hyphens instead of commas, and gave me the whole I-just-proved-you-wrong look. But she didn’t. I wasn’t giving up that easily. The hyphens made sense in the book. I politely pointed out that it differs, but she wasn’t having any of it.
I could feel my anger beginning to rise. Why didn’t she just change the hyphens?! I thought I was going to go blind just looking at it. Some may call this an over-reaction, and I guess it was – But if you know me, you’ll know that even the simplest of mistakes completely infuriate me.
I took a deep breath and sat there in an angry silence for a few more seconds, when she missed a full stop at the end of a paragraph. This was getting too much; She was doing it to purposely infuriate me. She was trying to ruin my life.
So, when she was done, I corrected the rest of her mistakes. But she still wouldn’t change the hyphens to commas so, when we handed in our work at the end of the lesson, they were still there, and still are. Now, every time I open my book and see that piece of work, the hyphens are flashing at me like neon signs.
And that is how hyphens caused me to have a complete emotional breakdown in the sixth-form common room.
Friend 1 – I’m going shopping after school!
Friend 2 – With who?
Me – WHOM.
Yeah. I can get rather annoying. Take one of my best friends for example. We were asked to write a quick made-up news report for Psychology. The reason for it is irrelevant, but all I do know is that she took dibs on typing.
We hit the first hurdle at the title. We decided to make up the article about a middle-aged man stealing a £83,935 Land Rover. So, when A typed: ‘Man Steals a £83,935 Land Rover!’ In one of them unprofessional looking word-art forms, I simply suggested that an exclamation mark at the end of previous said statement wasn’t completely appropriate for the situation. So, not agreeing with me, A decided to find me proof that they do in fact use exclamation marks in News Headings. She got no such results.
I was right, for once in my life. But, A was determined to prove me wrong, so she carried on in her failing attempt to be right. And she did find at least three, but as I so kindly pointed out, they were all appropriate uses: For example ‘Obama Won!’
Eventually, giving up hope of ever shutting up my whinging, A decided to just delete the exclamation mark, and all was well once again.
After that, it was all going relatively well until horror struck… She missed out an apostrophe. Now, I kindly corrected her mistake, and she fixed it for me. ‘Dont’ really just isn’t the same as ‘Don’t’, okay?
Now, this would have been a rather short and boring story if it had ended there. But oh, no. The sudden turn on ignorant grammar continued. Next, she put hyphens instead of commas in two places. I could feel myself slowly getting all flustered over such a small and simple, yet monstrosity of a mistake, which, if you think about it is rather ridiculous, yes. But to me, it’s normal.
Again, I so kindly corrected the simple, yet abysmal mistake, but no. She replied, “No. It’s meant to be hyphens, not commas.”
So I, now on the verge of explosion, replied to her response with, “No… There are meant to be commas there. If there are hyphens, the whole sentence doesn’t make sense.”
So, out came her Alice in Wonderland book that she’s studying for English, and she found a part in which there were two hyphens instead of commas, and gave me the whole I-just-proved-you-wrong look. But she didn’t. I wasn’t giving up that easily. The hyphens made sense in the book. I politely pointed out that it differs, but she wasn’t having any of it.
I could feel my anger beginning to rise. Why didn’t she just change the hyphens?! I thought I was going to go blind just looking at it. Some may call this an over-reaction, and I guess it was – But if you know me, you’ll know that even the simplest of mistakes completely infuriate me.
I took a deep breath and sat there in an angry silence for a few more seconds, when she missed a full stop at the end of a paragraph. This was getting too much; She was doing it to purposely infuriate me. She was trying to ruin my life.
So, when she was done, I corrected the rest of her mistakes. But she still wouldn’t change the hyphens to commas so, when we handed in our work at the end of the lesson, they were still there, and still are. Now, every time I open my book and see that piece of work, the hyphens are flashing at me like neon signs.
And that is how hyphens caused me to have a complete emotional breakdown in the sixth-form common room.
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