John Topley’s Weblog

Do you want to know what the thing that irks me the most about the Internet is? Probably not if you've got any sense but I'm going to tell you anyway. Is it the pop–up windows that show themselves in front of whatever I've decided to read? No sir. Is it the deluge of spam that clogs up my mailbox and causes me to waste time deleting it and setting up anti–spam filters? Not even close. It's the poor punctuation! I don't think I can stand to read one more sentence where the author doesn't know how to use apostrophes correctly, or where “loose” has been written instead of “lose”. Or even worse, the increasingly prevalent “ur” instead of “your”!

I'm going to explain this only once because it's dead simple. If you write it's then that's a contraction of it is:

• “It's nearly time for my walk” thought the dog as it looked for its owner.

To contract the words you are then you need an apostophe to make you're:

• “You're eager today” thought the dog's owner, “Let me find your lead.”