As a lover of language, I try to speak as well as I can in my native tongue. While I acknowledge that I am not always perfect in my speech, there are aspects that I am careful not to mess up, while others seem to frequently bungle them. For example:
1) Using the proper homonym in the proper situation.
Too many times have I received messages on my phone or in my inbox relaying messages such as: "Their on there way." I have never understood why homonyms are such a problem for people (although, I did have a teacher once who thought homonyms and homophones were different things). These days though, I'd wager that part of the confusion comes from not being exposed as often to the correct usages, or being taught to recognize the distinctions when one IS exposed.
2) Using the CORRECT terms.
Here's a question: in the problem 1+1, what are you doing with the two ones? If you said "plussing," you are wrong. You are ADDING them, thus, 1+1 is an ADDITION problem. The same goes for subtraction and multiplication problems. We do not "minus" numbers, nor do we "times" them. We SUBTRACT, and we MULTIPLY. The verbs are in the words, people. Come on.
(I have a whole other rant on the use of slang to talk about body parts, but I'm not secure enough in my internet repudiation to post it for a grade.
3)Spotty punctuation.
I'll keep it simple. If you're asking me a question, put a question mark at the end. Otherwise you come off, depending on the question, as either snotty, demanding or just plain clueless. I'm sorry, but I'm someone who was taught to read with feeling. That being said, in summary, punctuate to show the way it would sound if you said the words rather than wrote them.
That is all, unless someone in the near future comes up with a new way to drive me verbally over the edge which, given MY crazy friends, might not take as much as you'd think.
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