Susan loves this email that she recently received from her Aunt Eileen:

Here's another quote for you: "Take care that you never spell a word wrong.  Always before you write a word, consider how it is spelled, and, if you do not remember, turn to a dictionary"  Thomas Jefferson to his daughter Martha.

I thought of you when I read this since your sister has said how you do not react well to misspellings, or poor grammar.

Hope you are having a nice day.

A Small Example Of What It's Like To Have Susan As A Friend

Susan sent a text to her long standing pal shortly after the death of his father:

There is a grammatical error in your father's obituary, to whom may I complain?

Susan's pal responded with the contact information of the responsible party and asked her to relay what she had discovered.

Of course! I love any opportunity to educate.

Susan communicated with the responsible party and by the time she checked back it was fixed.

Susan has just about had it with the amount of apostrophes she finds where they don't belong. She's perplexed at the widespread misuse of something that is so elemental in writing. Apostrophes are used to indicate that something belongs to somebody, such as Susan's exasperation. They're also used to help make one word from two words, such as didn't we all learn this in grade school?

I know that Susan went over the apostrophe thing in a previous post and doesn't understand why she is being made to revisit this topic.

There's a particularly sweet and adorable blogger who adds extra apostrophes all the time, which is very unusual because Sweet & Adorable has a substantial readership and someone should have brought it to her attention long ago. If any of Susan's bloggy pals think that she's referring to them, she's not. Although some of her bloggy pals do indeed commit this annoying sin, Susan is positive that Sweet & Adorable is not a reader.

Susan knows she's not perfect with the grammar herself and can tolerate a bit of constructive criticism. She's all about self improvement.

I Feel Badly

Susan has noticed that people say 'I feel badly' all the time, even smart people with good jobs. Jobs on TV.

When someone says that they feel badly, what they're really saying is that their mechanism for feeling has been compromised.
They're bad at feeling.
Sorry man, can't feel. I don't know, it's just bad.

These people might think that badly sounds smarter than plain old bad. If so, then Susan feels bad for them.

Strunk & White's 'Elements of Style' advises us not to 'dress words up by addling -ly to them, as though putting a hat on a horse.'
Susan agrees.

Susan would like to help steer people from using badly in an improper manner by asking them to consider that if one can feel badly can one also feel goodly?

Your Invited To Look Stupid

Susan gets TWISTED in the worst way when she encounters poor punctuation. I mean, she gets totally f*cking crazy about this sh*t. Crazy!

Aren't the basics of punctuation taught in elementary school?

How is it that grown people who learned to speak and write English as their primary language don't know what apostrophes are used for?
If Susan has one apple and Jane gives her another then would Susan have two apple's?
No, she'd have two bloody apples!
Only if the apple owned something would it need an apostrophe.

Susan's TWISTED state extends to contractions, or the lack thereof, like the one she saw today printed on an invitation.
The very first word was a deplorable abomination, it read;
'Your invited to' blah, blah, blah.

Your.

Not you + are, which = you're.

Your.

Your invited to blah, blah, blah.

Doesn't anybody proof-read anything?
Particularly if they intend to mail it to everyone in their address book?

Holy crap, Batman. Susan needs a cocktail.