Your friendly neighborhood grammarian here

College Confidential Community
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<p>Hi everyone. You may know me. I'm UCLAri. </p>

<p>Did you also know that every time I see the same grammar/spelling/usage mistakes on this site over and over again, I see spots? I call them "rage spots." Help me to help you not cause me to lose hours off of my life every time I read your posts.</p>

<p>This is doubly true for you hotshot "top 25" applicants and students.</p>

<p>-- Acronyms: How to not misuse them--</p>

<p>Acronyms, according to Wikipedia, are "formed using the initial letters of words or word parts in a phrase or name."</p>

<p>NATO -- North Atlantic Treaty Alliance
IBM-- International Business Machines
CAL-- ??????
MAC-- ??????
HAAS-- ??????</p>

<p>You see, "Cal" is not an acronym. It's an "abbreviation." According to Wikipedia, an abbreviation is "a shortened form of a word or phrase. Usually, but not always, it consists of a letter or group of letters taken from the word or phrase. For example, the word "abbreviation" can itself be represented by the abbreviation "abbr." or "abbrev."</p>

<p>"Cal" is short for California. As in the University of California. "CAL" is...well...nothing. It's a misuse of precious acronym resources. "HAAS" doesn't even make sense! It's someone's name! Oh, and "MAC" usually refers to "media access control." "Mac" is short for "Macintosh." It's a kind of Apple. Get it? Oh, and it's not "APPLE."</p>

<p>Along those lines, I don't care what the UCLA sports logo looks like, it's "UCLA." It's not "Ucla." </p>

<p>--The word "definitely"--</p>

<p>There is no "a" in "definitely".<br>
There is no "a" in "definitely".<br>
There is no "a" in "definitely".<br>
There is no "a" in "definitely".<br>
There is no "a" in "definitely". </p>

<p>--"Your" and "you're"--</p>

<p>"Your" is a possessive pronoun. "You're" is a contraction of "you are."</p>

<p>--"grammar"--</p>

<p>When correcting people's "grammer," it is best to spell the word properly. It's "grammar."</p>

<p>--"its" and "it's"--</p>

<p>One is possessive, the other is not. Can you guess which one is? That's right! The first one! And that means, by a simple process of elimination, that the second one is not.</p>

<p>"It's a boy!"
vs.
"It's got its foot stuck in a trap." (notice my clever use of both in this sentence.)</p>

<p>Do not waste precious apostrophe resources.</p>

<hr>

<p>This is just a stub. I really hope to see more ideas of things that people get ticked off at around here...I'm sure it'll be a long list. Let's make this a good educational experience for all!</p>

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<p>:)
this is why you originally got my vote for supreme ruler of the cafe.
YOUR AMAZING (hehe)</p>

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<p>FYI, MAC is an acronym for Mid-America Conference for football. ;)</p>

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<p>Hah. Duly noted.</p>

<p>:)</p>

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<p>You should run for president, I'm also a big supporter of proper grammar!</p>

<p>You could call it the Grammar Party.</p>

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<p>I would vote for you.</p>

<p>My friend and I wrote an AIM story in which we morphed into grammar correcting superheroes. It's awesome.</p>

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<p>Thank you... reading grammatically incorrect sentences makes me cry inside. I'm known by my friends as the obsessive subject-verb-agreement-corrector. I'm even worse with spell-checking.</p>

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<p>There's a lot of confusion between it's (it is) and its (possessive) even among obviously well-educated parents who ought to know better.</p>

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<p>There's also a lot of incorrect good and well (or adjective and adverb) usage.</p>

<p>I would vote for the Grammar Party. My friends use incorrect grammar just to annoy me.</p>