Even Your Best Friends Won't Tell You

Or is that just what friends are for -- to tell you that there's something green caught between your front teeth before you walk into a room full of people or to mention that your deodorant seems to have failed before you leave for that all-important interview?

As an ex-English teacher, I am always jarred by faulty punctuation and misspellings. I'm not one of those folks who carry around Magic Markers to correct signs but I do notice and it does bother me.

The blogosphere is full of such mistakes and, for the most part, I just shake my head and move on. I would never correct a stranger -- it's not that big a deal.

But what about when it's someone who's a friend? And a fellow writer? There have been instances of agents or publishers reading the blogs of prospective clients. So if you're an aspiring writer, posting your work in a public place, isn't it to your advantage to have it error-free?

I bring this up because I finally got up my nerve to correct someone I know -- privately, of course. Comments are NOT the place for such. And I think this person is still speaking to me.

One of mistakes I see most often is addressed on the first page of this invaluable reference book,
Here it is:

IT'S means it is, as in "It's a cold day in Hell."

ITS (no apostrophe) is possessive, as in "The dog rolled its eyes."

And, for the most part, plurals don't need apostrophes. As in "They threw the eggs (not egg's) at the busybody, ex-English teacher."

And misspellings! The spell check feature isn't perfect but it's worth using every time before you post, even if you're a pretty good speller. (I just found out I'd misspelled -- or mistyped -- apostrophe. You can imagine how much I don't want to make a mistake in this particular post.)

Enough for today. I won't even mention how people, including newspaper reporters and TV anchors, misuse the verbs lie and lay.

I'll just let sleeping dogs lie.