Premise: using the wrong word will get you booted off the premises

Here's another pet peeve: using "premise" singular to mean a building or property. YUCK! Retail types do this all the time. "I want the shipment to be on premise by Tuesday." YUCK!

"Premise" singular is an idea, an argument, the foundation for a theory. If you're talking about the building or property, it MUST be plural "premises."

Speaking of pet peeves

10 Words You Need to Stop Misspelling

Commas!

Here are a couple of great reference pages about comma use.

Terribly Write's Top 5 Comma Errors
Purdue Online Writing Lab Extended Rules for Using Commas

My pet peeves recently—aside from (shoot me now) apostrophes in plurals—are commas between month and year when no date appears and commas between subject and verb.

Wrong: It is not January, 2010.
Right: Okay, it is January 2010, but only if you write it correctly.

Wrong: Being alone in your obsessions, can be aggravating.
Right: Being alone in your obsessions can be aggravating.

A quickie note about commas

Yes, it's pet peeve time again, punctuation category.

No comma is necessary when writing
only the month and year of a date.

Correct: May 2009
Icky: May, 2009

Developers of software clocks and calendars often get this wrong. Don't let them fool ya!

Pet peeve of the day: apostrophes

I haven't ranted about grammar and punctuation in quite some time, and I'm sure you've all been missing it. So, here we go.

Plurals do not need apostrophes!

Can I just say that again, louder? This is a big pet peeve of mine.

PLURALS DO NOT NEED APOSTROPHES!!!!

Thank you.

Correct: She took her ten dogs for a walk.
Icky: She took her ten dog's for a walk.

Full disclosure: In informal writing, I sometimes break this rule for acronyms. For example, I have a hard time writing "She knows her ABCs," even though I know it is letter perfect. So, I might be inclined to let it slide if you were to type "She knows her ABC's," although I would still NOTICE that damned apostrophe.

For readability, I also sometimes settle for "yes's and no's" instead of the "yeses and noes" that is correct but awfully weird looking.

Contractions need apostrophes!

Let's take let's. In case you were unaware, let's is short for let us. It gets an apostrophe in place of the letters we drop when we contract the two words into one.

Correct: Let's go for a walk.
Icky: Lets go for a walk.

Conversely, lets is a form of the verb to let and does not get an apostrophe.

Correct: She lets me go for a walk.
Icky: She let's me go for a walk.

Note: Verbs only get apostrophes in contractions or if you're waxing Tom Robbins-poetic about the usefulness of a particular verb: Her vocabulary found little stimulation in get's heavy workout that day.

I have previously ranted about it's and its. And don't even get me started on you're and your or they're, their, and there. Oops, too late! But I'll try to keep it simple: Only the contractions get apostrophes.

Possessives need apostrophes, and be careful where you put them!

Here's a quick lesson in possessives. If you are talking about a single person or critter or object, it is apostrophe then s.

Correct: David's dog, the dog's collar, the collar's buckle

If it's a plural that already ends in s, just tack on the apostrophe.

Correct: the Maiers' house, the animals' habits, the bananas' ripeness

When in doubt, see if you can write around the apostrophe.

Words that need apostrophes can be written another way.
"David's dog" can become "the dog belonging to David."
"The bananas' ripeness" can become "the ripeness of the bananas."
"You're funny" can become "You are funny."

But there is no easy, not-silly way to write around "She took her ten dogs for a walk" or "She lets me go for a walk." If you can't write around it, it doesn't need an apostrophe.

End rant.

Scenes from a Mexican restaurant

Table 1 - a booth in a quiet corner of the restaurat
Our actors: a family of four
mom, dad, 2-month-old baby boy in a carrier on the floor, 4yo girl

7:45 p.m.
Mom: "Eat your dinner. How many times do I have to tell you?"
Girl: (mumbles)
Dad: "You're going straight to bed when we get home."
7:50 p.m.
The 4yo is standing on the seat in the corner of the booth.
Her head barely clears the back of the booth.
Mom: "Sit down."
Mom: "I need you to sit down."
Mom: "Eat your dinner."
7:55 p.m.
Mom: "Do you want a mushroom?"
(this was the only thing I heard the mom say that wasn't an order)
8:00 p.m.
Mom: "I told you to sit down."

Table 2 - a 10-top nearby
Our actors: an extended family group
Nearest us are 4 boys about age 10, probably cousins.
They are watched closely by a mom-type.

8:00 p.m. - as they take their seats
Mom-type: "First, let's get out the antibacterial lotion."
8:05 p.m. - as the boys are served some mild salsa, just for them to share
Mom-type: "No double-dipping. Now, here's what you do. You dip the chip, then you turn it. Hold the spot you bit before. Then dip again."

Now let's return to Table 1
Let's imagine what the same girl might have experienced tonight if she'd been born into an unschooling family. She would have been as safe, as polite, as well fed, but there would have been real conversation, laughter, a sense of adventure about the food they were eating. The Mexican waiter might have been invited to share a word or two of Spanish. The dad might have made goofy faces at her across the table. The mom might have stroked her hair or pulled her close for a one-armed hug. The murals on the wall would have been noted, discussed, daydreamed over.

The girl might have been willing to speak above a whisper.

And back to Table 2
Unschooling parents worry about germs, too. We dread having sick kids as much as the next person. But can we get real for just a second here? If one of those boys is germy tonight, there's no avoiding the others coming into contact with said germs. When kids socialize, contact is part of the deal. They wrestle; they have thumb wars; they do high fives, low fives, and on-the-side fives; they do "Oh say, oh playmate" and make cat's cradles; they hug, poke, touch, tickle, tap, and bump. They exchange hats. They hang each other's spoons on their noses.

This is the good stuff, people. This is what a childhood dinner out with your cousins is all about.

Besides, 48% of respondents in a recent poll on MSNBC think the "flip the chip" double-dip is bad, bad, bad. How can nearly half of us be wrong?

Oh, wait, I forgot for a minute what country I live in.

Ten pet peeves

It's been a while since I ranted. Can't go too long without a good rant! Of course, I'm feeling too good to do it right. Five minutes ago, I set my mood (at right) to "Mixed." And then our STUN Movie Night came together so I know we get more good times tonight, and now I'm all chipper (even if I do have to clean house now).

So maybe I'll skip the rant and just list some pet peeves. This is by no means a comprehensive list.

1. When mothers threaten their children, especially in malls and other public places. Most recently overheard threat: "Stop doing that or you won't get your cookie." gack

2. When the scissors have not been returned to their drawer in the kitchen. We probably own eight pairs of scissors, yet I can never lay hands on one.

3. When people don't show up for meetings at work.

4. When people on message boards get pissed off over the advice they receive instead of simply ignoring what they don't like (or better yet, thinking about what was said).

5. When people hog the left lane. I know I might have mentioned that one before (like a dozen times), but it bears repeating.

6. When people say "so-and-so and I" when they should say "so-and-so and me." The trick: If you would use "me" if there were no so-and-so, then you should use "me." For example, "She went to the store with so-and-so and me" and "Send the e-mail to so-and-so and me" are both correct.

7. Same as above but substitute "myself" for the "I".

8. When I make grammar and spelling mistakes, especially mistakes that get published. (Did you know I have been known to flush with shame over and hurry to edit two-year-old blog posts?)

9. When Wendy's (and it always seems to be Wendy's) gives us the wrong food. "They f*** you at the drive-through!"

10. When I set out to make a list of ten items and can only come up with nine.

What unschooling looked like in the middle of the night

I usually try to avoid making a big deal of the schoolish moments that happen in our house, because it tends to make non-unschoolers (schoolers?) think that unschooling *only* works when schoolish moments happen. But this was too cool, so I have to talk about it.

Last night, Chloe confessed that she isn't sure she's acquiring skills marketable enough to land a job when she's old enough. We talked about her options some, then I made an offhand comment about her abilities as a proofreader. One thing led to another and we were soon huddled around the computer playing with words. I typed out a series of flawed sentences, then Chloe corrected them. It was so fun! We played with changing punctuation to completely change the meaning of a sentence, and we found some badly written paragraphs on the Internet that she and I fixed in different ways. This went on until three in the morning!

Here are a couple of examples that made her laugh. The first I borrowed from a recent discussion of punctuation on Grammar Geeks.

Woman without her man is a savage.
Woman: without her, man is a savage.

Real men don't eat spinach, but I like it.
Real men don't eat, Spinach, but I like it.

I discovered to my delight that Chloe knows how to punctuate speech perfectly, and she—normally the queen of lowercase—knows perfectly well that the pronoun "I" is always capitalized. What can I say? Such things are near and dear to my heart.

She told me one of her pet peeves from reading fan fiction. I will share it here in the hopes that somebody somewhere will see the error of his ways. She says fan-fiction authors often write spoken questions like this:

"Are you crazy" he asked?

That is very bad indeed, and I can only thank my lucky stars that I have never come across such wretched punctuating. Here is the corrected question:

"Are you crazy?" he asked.

With Chloe reassured of her skills, we talked about how this is one of the perils of unschooling: sometimes unschooled kids have little idea of how much they have learned. Kids in school get regular validation (or correction), and they are constantly compared to their schoolmates, so they have some feel for where in the spectrum their knowledge falls. Unschooled kids know that they are experts or budding experts in the areas they are passionate about (manga, music, karate, Swahili, whatever), but they don't always realize how much general knowledge they've acquired. So, Chloe had no idea she is an expert at grammar and punctuation, and she will tell you that she is bad at math, just after she's added a column of numbers in her head or worked a fraction problem effortlessly. We'll work on it.

A small rant about spelling and grammar checkers

I hate to break it to you, dear readers, but you can't trust your spell-checker. I've spent today writing in Microsoft Office Word and being disgusted with the number of things it tells me are wrong that are actually correct. Here are a few examples:

Word thinks "noninventory" is misspelled. Actually, Word thinks just about any word starting with "non" that doesn't have a hyphen in there is misspelled. This is simply not the case. The Chicago Manual of Style and the American Heritage Dictionary agree: "non" words are nonhyphenated unless:

• The hyphen is arguably needed for legibility (non-native)
• The "non" comes before an already modified compound
  (non-English-speaking)
• The non is part of a Latin phrase (non sequitur)

Watch out for this sort of spell-checker confusion whenever you're using a prefix. Chicago says compounds made from all of these prefixes should be closed (no hyphen, no space) in most cases: ante, anti, bi, bio, co, counter, extra, infra, inter, intra, macro, meta, micro, mid, mini, multi, neo, non, over, post, pre, pro, proto, pseudo, re, semi, socio, sub, super, supra, trans, ultra, un, and under.

Word has as much it's and its confusion as the next guy. Word told me that "it's" in the following sentence should be "its".

The file is not ready for review, but it's close.

This is simply not the case. That "it's" would only be "its" if I were talking about the close (of business, of the letter).

"It's" is a contraction standing for "it is." The verb that is tucked in there means "it's" tends to come before adjectives ("it's hot") or gerunds ("it's going to be another hot day tomorrow"). It's active or descriptive.

"Its" is about possession and always comes before nouns (although the nouns might be modified by an adjective first, as in "I was distracted by its faulty reasoning"). It's its own thing.

Word can't handle a little creative writing. Finally, Word is forever getting lost in my sentences and telling me my subjects and verbs do not agree, when clearly they do. Of course, this one might be just the tiniest bit my fault for writing such long sentences. :-)

Anyway, the point is, don't turn off the spell-checker or grammar-checker in your head. If you think the checker in your software is mistaken about something, you just might be right! Get a second opinion!

P.S. I should clarify something. It is not that Word actually thinks "non-inventory" is preferable to "noninventory." There are simply too many possible "non" words for all of them to be in Word's dictionary. So, it doesn't recognize "noninventory" at all, but when you type "non-inventory" instead, it recognizes "non-" as a prefix that is in the dictionary, and it determines that "inventory" is spelled correctly. I don't know why it doesn't recognize "non" as a prefix without the hyphen; that was evidently too much refinement for the developers to cope with.

I should also point out (or maybe I just want to) that if you previously had blind faith in your word processor's spell-checker, you're not alone! I've had professional writers and editors tell me I was misspelling a word because Word didn't recognize it. That's one for the pet peeves file.

Traffic pet peeves

Now that I'm back in traffic, I have to get a few pet peeves off my chest. I'm sure the brilliant and competent readers of my blog are not the offenders who so plague my commutes, but perhaps this list will be sent anonymously to a few cretins. ;-)

THE BIGGIE: Keep right except to pass!!!
I don't know why this is so difficult a concept for Washington drivers. Actually, I do know. It's because everybody stays in the left lane, so people are afraid to move right for fear they'll never be able to get back into the left lane again. From this fear springs traffic backups that stretch for miles.

Imagine what a change it would be if all the left-lane hogs moved right, allowing free flow of faster traffic and getting all those faster cars off the road sooner. Seattle's traffic problems would be solved! ('Cause adding more lanes sure isn't going to do it when people sit three or four or eight across, all doing the same speed.)

In a related topic: Being passed is not a challenge
I'm not sure if it's a reflection of the narcissistic nature of our society or what, but I have certainly observed that many people seem to take it personally when I pass them. They speed up enough that I'm no longer passing them, and sometimes they even go fast enough to pass me! Like commuting is a race or something. Like they and I have a relationship or something. Relax, people. I'm not trying to beat you, and I don't need to pass you. I just want to do my speed and get myself home to my family. If you want to go consistently faster than me, I will happily tuck in behind you.

In another related topic: Pay attention to your right foot
People who don't pick one speed and stick to it (as much as traffic allows) are a pain in the rear for the rest of us. If you don't have the skill to hold a steady speed, try setting your cruise control. And if you slow down for hills and curves, KEEP RIGHT EXCEPT TO PASS.

And in one last related topic: The freeway system was designed for speed
Curves that require slower speeds than the speed limit are marked. If they're not marked, you can do the speed limit (at least) all the way through them. And even on those tighter curves, loosen up a little! Learn how to "drive the line"! It's fun!

Think of the carpool lane as a fast lane
Too many people act like driving in the carpool lane is a treat they've earned merely by having the right number of people in their car. What are you, six? No. The carpool lane is supposed to encourage better traffic flow. It's not supposed to be a fourth lane for doing exactly the same speed as everybody else. If you aren't going faster than the traffic in the left lane (or the middle lane, or the right lane), move right!

Yield does not equal Merge, and vice versa
Many people seem to have been absent the day they taught traffic signs in Driver's Ed. Here's a refresher:

A Yield sign means you must slow down and prepare to stop if other cars are coming. It also means that YOU MUST STOP if other cars are coming.

A Merge sign means you should match your speed* to the speed of the traffic you are joining and get your butt out there. Do not expect the other drivers to match their speed to yours, and DO NOT STOP. Both practices will get you creamed.

* This means you will need to pick your spot and then either speed up or slow down to slide right into it. You do the adjusting. Here's a great instruction page for merging. Pay attention to step 4.

And to all you drivers in the mainline who think you have to slow down or even, science forbid, stop for merging traffic, KNOCK IT OFF! It's dangerous. I mean, of course you're going to adjust to someone who is merging poorly, but don't encourage them to merge poorly by being overly polite. You have the right of way.

There are worse things than missing an exit or exiting inadvertently
Did you know that the freeway in an urban area has an exit every mile or so? And did you also know that most exits lead to on-ramps that put you right back on the freeway if you so choose? Yes, it's a pretty cool system! So don't risk your own life or anybody else's over exit confusion. Take a breath, take the detour, and get where you're going safe and sound and barely a minute later.

If there's no room for me on the other side of the intersection, there's no room for you
We'll move off the freeways now to our gridlocked surface streets. Folks, if I stop at a green light and refrain from crossing an intersection because there's no room for me over there, that does NOT give you license to make your right-turn in front of me from the cross-street or cut in front of me from another lane. You will cause the gridlock I was trying to prevent, and anyway, it is still my turn! Until my light turns red, I get to go when the traffic moves, not you.

Take your freaking turn at the four-way stop
People in the Northwest are polite. I get it. I like it. But jeezum Pete, let's not get carried away! The rules at a four-way stop are simple and clear. You have the right of way when:
1) You are the first to arrive at the intersection, or
2) You and another driver get to the intersection at the same time but you are on his right, or
3) You've had time to make a complete stop and the driver across from you has the right of way and is crossing the intersection. (Your waiting for your "whole" turn to cycle around in this instance serves no purpose. The cross traffic has to wait anyway.)

To observe any rules but these, even for the sake of politeness, leads to nothing but confusion and delays and frustration. If it's your turn, take it!

Got other pet peeves?
Add them to the comments. We can all take this chance to let off a little steam.