One of the most common mistakes that I saw myself making was which possessive form to use; Apostrophe s, s and then the apostrophe, or just leave the s alone. I used the Owl Purdue Online Writing Lab and the 2015 AP Stylebook to try and learn the ins and outs to get it down. Did I do that right?
Anyway, I learned that apostrophe's have three main purposes:
- To form possessives of nouns.
- To show the omission of letters.
- To indicate certain plurals of lowercase letters.
The other struggle I have had is the differences between there, their and they're. This is one that I struggled with in my writing but it is simply out of pure laziness. My Mom was a High School English teacher, and it would drive her insane when I wrote emails home during my mission because I would always default to saying 'there' even when it was not correct. Don't tell my Mom, but I've known the correct form to use all along.
Their, is the possessive pronoun, hence the "I" included. There is in reference to a place or location. For example, "It's over there." Finally, they're, is just the contraction to use for they are.
For the mistake I found, I was actually surprised at how quickly I was able to find one. I was reading an article on Bleacher Report about The Top 3 NBA Breakout Candidates at each position. In the second paragraph I found this:
"While the Lehigh had previously product piled up double-digit scoring games down the 2014-15 season stretch with Wesley Matthews and Arron Afflalo sidelined by injuries, those two, along with three other Blazers stalwarts (LaMarcus Aldridge, Nicolas Batum and Robin Lopez), departed in one way or another the following summer."
It was supposed to be written, "While the Lehigh product had previous..." Even with the grammatical error, it was a good read.
I totally feel you on the quiz. I breezed through it and I thought I had it down. When I went back through it and checked a lot of my answers with the book I was surprised on what I had done wrong. I think after reading your post I need to check the Purdue page a lot more because I definitely need some work in that area.
ReplyDeleteI was the same way with the quiz. Sometimes mistakes can be found intuitively, but a lot of the quiz questions made me sit and ponder before choosing the answer - and even then I was often wrong. It definitely taught me to do my studying before attempting the quizzes! I also understand what you mean about using the right form of there/their/they're. Whenever I text my wife I don't necessarily care which form to use (even though I know the differences between them) and because she's a grammar Nazi it's drives her up a wall!
ReplyDeleteI agree with the quiz! I really should've been more careful and looked things up but I was too confident with my punctuation. I got a bad score and was frustrated.
ReplyDeleteI am so glad to hear that I wasn't the only person who struggled and learned from the apostrophes! I'm with Hanna in that I was really frustrated with myself for not double checking things! Thanks for the Link! I'm going to check that out tomorrow (I've book marked it).
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