…Or else!

Sometimes you need to know only one word to find a situation hilarious.  In this case, it is  universally understood (and strategically placed, I should add) “Stop”.  When your students understand a joke in a foreign language, even as simple as this one, they are empowered by this sensation: the English language is no longer just a theoretical construct but rather a practical tool for communication and enjoyment.  Do not forget to have fun in the new language to nurture this feeling of joyful discovery!

Here is another one for you: have fun!

If you guessed that the error is confusing your and you’re, you guessed it right.  The pervasiveness of this error is just mind bogging.  This error is common among both college graduates and  people who never got their high school diploma.  Why do people make this error?  I think the reason is laziness and discounting the difference between the two as something insignificant.  The reasoning goes something like this: they sound the same, and the context will help the receiver  of the message to figure out which one I mean, so why should I bother to spell them correctly? A close second is the “there, they’re, and their” confusion.

The ironic part is that non-native speakers learn to differentiate and use these words correctly relatively quickly.  This type of error is rare beyond the beginning level of English acquisition.

I don’t know about you, but when I see a native speaker making errors as basic as this, I can’t help but wonder whether this person is  also sloppy about other things in life…

When we list a few items one by one, we separate them with a comma:

We invited Roosevelt, Washington, Lincoln.

What if the last two items are joined with the conjunction and?  Do we still need a comma? In many languages, like Russian, Spanish, Greek, German, French, the comma before the conjunction is not the norm.  In English, however, opinions among writers and editors differ on whether to use the comma between the two final items.

1) We invited Roosevelt, Washington and Lincoln.
2) We invited Roosevelt, Washington, and Lincoln.

 The final comma before the conjunction and is called a serial comma or Oxford comma.

In American English most style and punctuation guides mandate the use of this comma because it helps avoid ambiguity (confusion).

This funny cartoon demonstrates how we could understand the sentence without the final comma.  Did we invite the rhinoceri and two people?  Or did we invite two rhinoceri who have human names?

Runs in the family refers to a genetic characteristic that many members of a  family have.  This idiom is frequently used as a joke about families.

 Take a look at this one.  Insanity does not run when it visits this particular family. Why? My guess is Insanity likes this family because they are so insane, that even Insanity itself is curious about them.  Hilarious!

Bald eagle with a bold attitude!