As a person that is technically ESL (English as a Second Language; now known as ELL), I had to learn this absurd language – English – that has so many rules and equally as many rule breakers. I learned to speak the language when I was about eight years old attending Summer camp. I learned to write and read that next year attending third grade. It’s kinda sorta like being hurled off a cliff to see if I could fly, and flapped my arms through elementary and middle school, straight into high school. I would journal and write often and would be corrected just as much. So it staggers my mind, perhaps as a testament to the floundering education system we have in this country, that simple basic rules are either unknown, forgotten, ignored, or plainly misunderstood.
So to that end, I believe I’ve come up with a sure fire way of remembering this particular troubling confusion once and for all. While I don’t intend to come off as a grammar nazi, I find it troubling that so many of my peers, friends, and colleagues are still getting these homonyms mixed up (or maybe they just don’t give a shit, but I’m not in their head, so I’ll just presume rampant ignorance, lack of proofreading, or general misfiring of technology’s auto-correct feature).
1. There: there is not here, it is there.
2. They’re: they are not here. There! they’re there.
3. Their: we should take all their belongings while they’re there not looking.
#Getit? #Gotit? #Good! #ZenHard
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