This post is a rant against myself. One of my petpeeves is when people misuse words like their and they’re, or you're and your. It's basic grammar, and why people don't comprehend that is beyond me. I think the education system has definitely become lazy as well as the parents who raise their (not they're, not there) children. But that's another post.
However, I’ve recently been catching myself misusing contractions as well. Shame on me! For example, "There's a million things I'd rather do today than go to work." Let's examine that sentence. If I expand the contraction, I'm saying "There is a million things I'd rather do today than go to work." Let’s take out the hyperbole to reduce the sentence even further. "There is things I'd rather do today than go to work." There IS things??? No. No, Darrin. There ARE things. Plural, not singular. Thing is singular; things are plural. I should have stated, “There are a million things I’d rather do today than work,” assuming there’s no such contraction as there’re. And I’m too lazy to look up that rule.
I do this often in emails. "There's too many issues with this.” No there aren't. There ARE not too many issues with this. Just one issue. And it is that I can't seem to differentiate singular and plural objects of a verb. Get it right, Schwizzle!
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