One of my pet hates is people who are just incapable of speaking basic English..

Now, I’m not saying I’m anywhere near perfect (I speak like a twat on MSN messenger, but then again, you’re not usually required to be formal when instant messaging) but at least I try when it actually matters…

The following are one of the most commonly misused words:

There = eg. Over there! There’s (this means there is but we’ll come back to that later) a mouse there!

They’re = They Are eg. They’re not nice people They’re total imbeciles.

Their = Something belonging to them/him/her. eg. Where is their one? Their shoes are nice.

Please try to remember that.

Now, another often forgotten member of the english punctuation family!

Say hello to the apostrophe (often misspelt apostrophy): ‘. Now this little mark:

Replaces letters: as you see above, they are becomes they’re . The apostrophe replaces the *space* and the “a”. In words such as don’t (do not), can’t (cannot) and won’t (will not) it does (pretty much) the same.

Now wait! Not only does it magically do that, but it also shows that something belongs to someone! eg. A host’s website (A website that belongs to a host). Note: It works for names too. “Mary’s frog. Kangie’s drink.”

Now, if we look the above example, you absolutley cannot under any circumstances use “hosts”. Hosts (an “s” without an apostrophe) means more than one host. eg. “Look at all the hosts!”. Nor does “Marys frog. Kangies drink” work. Not in the slightest. Sorry.
Of course this work the other way… you shouldn’t just shove an apostrophe before every “s” at the end of a word, as that can also be wrong! Such as: “The cat has a fish in its mouth” would be correct. “The cat has a fish in it’s mouth” is WRONG. The cat cannot have a fish in “it is” mouth so please try and learn the difference before I kill you all. You wouldn’t put “He’s over there” or, “It’s your’s”, so don’t start with its.

I would add that if English is not your native language, then you have a good excuse, but there’s no need, as most foreign people I talk to can speak better English than alot of English people.

On a final note, here’s a list of words that do not exist, and what you should use instead of them (that’s the ones in bold) in order to sound coherent in any way:

1. hoo/whoo/hu/whu = who
2. wat/wot/wut = what
3. wen = when
4. lyk = like
5. wnt = want/won’t (how do you expect anyone to know the difference?!)
6. r = are
7. u/yoo/yu = you

I’m afraid I haven’t included them all, but at least that will get you started. (For the love of god, abbreviations are supposed to reduce the amount of letters you type, so if the abbreviation is longer, or of equal length to the orginal word, you are categorically stupid )
Lastly, (and this really is the last I shall say on the matter!) websites demand professionality. If you want to look like a little kid, type like one; if you want respect, type like an adult! It’s not hard! Dictionary.com is a great site, so USE IT.