I see a lot of words on the Web.  A lot.  Now, I’m no fan of textspeak, but it does have its place.  In texting; in Facebook status updates?  Not so much.  In actually writing?  Not at all.

Sometimes it’s hard to resist the urge to make corrections on those seemingly ignorant keystrokes that result in near-unreadability:

“Tomarrow is the big day!”  What the heck is this, a cross between a moment of time and a tomato?  That’s what it looks like to me.  C’mon, people, this is basic spelling: To.  And morrow.  Tomorrow.  Marrow is a substance inside bones.

“I like this to!”  To?  To what?  Do you like this to eat?  Or to wear?  What do you like it to do?  Oh, you must mean you like this “also”, or that you “also” like this.  That would be “too”.  “I like this too!”  In fact, you like it so much that you actually double the “o”. 

“My paper is do today.”  Do what?  Say what?  Is your paper going to do something?  If you write that paper like this, you will probably get a bad grade.  “Due” means a time of reckoning, a due date if you will; something is scheduled to be turned it or recorded or whatever. 

“I no you from high school.”  Um, did you actually GO to high school?  Or is this caveman-speak for “I don’t know you”?  A derivative of this is “I new that!”  or “I got a knew car today!”  Really?  Cool – a car that knows things!

Truely.  Drop the “e”.  Yes, definitely drop the “e”.

“I loveeeeeeee you” or, as it’s most often used, “I loveeeeeeee u!”  This says, aside from the most obvious misspelling, that you “lovie” me when you probably actually mean that you love me, with wild exaggeration.  So if you absolutely have to emphasize “love”, use caps or something…anything.

“Imma gone kick your butt” or some version thereof.  “Imma”?  I presume that this means “I am” which of course sounds nothing like “Imma”.  Unless it’s pronounced with a long “I” in which case it still doesn’t sound like “I am”; I suppose if you add an apostrophe after the “I”, making it “I’mma” but…naw, really, don’t use this unless you want to sound like an idiot.

As for the second word in that phrase, “gone”, what’s up with that?  “Going to” is the proper replacement, or even “gonna” for heaven’s sake, which has made inroads as commonly accepted slang.  Actually, if you think about this, “Imma gone” kind of sounds like a person named Imma is gone, has left, has died, whatever.  Be sure to say it slowly, with a sad face.

Past and passed.  Time in the past has passed.  Get it?  Let’s try this: past as in “it happened in the past”; passed as in “Aunt Norma passed away”.  I suppose, if Aunt Norma passed away last month, you could say she passed away in the past.  Or maybe that was Aunt Imma.

This morning I saw a picture of a sign; nearly every word was followed by “’s”.  Bad, bad, bad!  Just because something is plural it doesn’t mean it needs an apostrophe unless it’s possessive – and even then, it doesn’t always qualify for an extra “s”.

For example:

Good Eat’s!

Sport’s Nut’s!

We Repair Car’s While You Wait!

Okay, you get the idea, right?  “Eat’s” doesn’t own anything, and neither do “nut’s” or “car’s” or “sport’s”.  Now, if the signs said:

“Johnny Eat’s Restaurant”, that would mean that a guy named Johnny Eat owns a restaurant.  Which would be weird, yes.  Or, if you said:

“Sports Nut’s Bar and Grill”, that would mean that the bar and grill is owned by a sports nut – if, of course, it was several sports nuts, you’d have to place the apostrophe after the “s”, not before it. 

There’s just no good example to fix that last one.  Cars are repaired, period.

Here’s another reason not to use an apostrophe: when naming decades.  I see this one a lot.  “1960’s”, “70’s”, and so forth.  The only time to use an apostrophe with these types of “words” is to show ownership, such as “The 1980s’ styles included big hair, feathered bangs, and powder blue eyeshadow.”  If you are referring simply to a decade, skip the apostrophe and say “1990s”.

And one more common faux pas regarding an unneeded apostrophe: “do’s and don’ts”.  Now, it seems correct because, after all, the word “don’t” gets to have an apostrophe, right?  And saying “dos” just looks funny…or Spanish.  But no, no, no!  The correct phrase is “dos and don’ts”. 

Now, where to put that pesky apostrophe on a word that already has an “s” on the end?  Of course, when you’re showing it to be possessive that is!  For most words you can simply tack the apostrophe on the end; for a few of them, you have to add an “s”.  Here are some examples:

“Johnny Eats’ Restaurant” – in this case, Johnny’s last name is Eats, not Eat.  And of course, if there were no apostrophe at all we’d be saying that Johnny ate a restaurant, right?

“Zebras’ stripes” – this refers to the stripes of several zebras, or at least more than one zebra; if referring to one zebra, the apostrophe would go before the “s”.

Apostrophes can trip up writers quite a bit, but if you take time to brush up on the “rules” and remember your possessives, you can clean up your work in no time at all.