Hello, I'm Squidfather. I'll be your grammar instructor for today. Pay close attention to my teachings, and you shall become much more understandable through the chat, forums and simply everyday life on the Internet.



Lesson 1: The Apostrophe.



" ' ", or an "apostrophe", is very influential in the world of grammar. It usually distinguishes possessive and adjective contractions of two words. For example, look at the word "It's". You may have been taught either "Its" OR "It's", but do not despair, for both are correct in different situations. "It's" is a contraction of two words, "It" and "Is". Therefore, the following sentence is correct: "It's getting closer.". The following sentence is INCORRECT: "Its getting closer.". "Its" is a possessive word, therefore the following sentence is correct: "The dog chased its tail.". If I said that "The dog chased IT'S tail.", that would be incorrect, because that means "The dog chased it is tail," which doesn't make any sense. This rule applies to most words containing an apostrophe, such as
"That's". One exception is the word "let's", which is a contraction of "let us". Therefore, "Let's have supper" means "Let us have supper". On the other hand, "lets" is a statement of permission. An example of this is: "She lets her kid play with guns.". Now, moving on...



Lesson 2: "Your", "There" and "to".



These are two very valued words, which we use a lot in the English language, mainly during casual conversation. As you may know, each of these words has multiple spellings and multiple meanings. I will proceed to explain them. "Your" is possessive, for example, one might say: "May I borrow your lawnmower, please?". However, many individuals use this word to address and describe another human directly, such as saying "Your stupid.". Actually, when using that sentence to describe yourself, you would be saying "My stupid.". That's because, as stated above, "Your" is possessive, meaning it relates to the ownership of a noun. To directly describe another person while conversing with them, it would be correct to say "You're awesome", because "You're" is a contraction of "You are". This means you can only use it in situations where you would say "You are". Now, let's talk about the "Three There's". You use "There" to refer to a place, e.g. "I love to go there!". "They're" is used to describe a group who you are not directly speaking with. Therefore, it would be correct to say: "SOPA? Yeah, they're stupid.". The last "there" is "their", a possesive form of the word. Example: "Their food tastes good.". Finally, for "to". "To" describes going to a place, like I just said. "Going to a place". Perfect example. Two is a number, it comes after one. "Too" describes an amount, such as "I had too much sugar", or "I went jogging too many times.". Now, I'll be moving on to another subject.



Lesson 3: The Start and End.



When starting a sentence, always use a capital. When concluding a sentence, always end with either a period, exclamation mark or question mark. A question mark signifies that the sentence is a question, such as "Can we go to the store?". An exclamation mark defines excitement, action or intensity in your sentence. Correct usage of the exclamation mark would be "Steve leapt to his feat, twirling his sword above his head!". Also, never begin a sentence with the word "And". It's bad grammar.



Lesson 4: Punctuation.

The uses of apostrophes, exclamation marks and question marks have been explained above. But now, I shall explain quotation marks, commas and periods. Quotation marks are used to point out something quoted, or something being said. They are also used to signify sarcasm. Commas are very important, and probably lead to around 70% of common grammar mistakes. Commas indicate pauses in a sentence, such as "The cat was running really fast, but the dog was running faster.".





That's really all I can think of to teach you about grammar. If you're going to post a comment on this article, be sure to use grammar!



-Squidfather. :)