| It's 5 a.m., English assignment due in 7 hours and the | | | | apostrophe in show's". Now if blogs had been around |
| spellchecker on my Macbook is contradicting my | | | | in the 18th century then Samuel Johnson, curator of |
| instinct. Do I rely on my intelligence or obey my | | | | the first dictionary, may have probably sent me a |
| laptop? On one hand if I follow my nous and it fails | | | | twittering message of disgust at the blunder. |
| me I could be the guy my tutor will eternally know | | | | However I thought people were past that. |
| as "that one who doesn't know the difference | | | | For today's modern reader finding spelling errors and |
| between s' and 's". However if I were to substitute | | | | telling someone about them functions to feed their |
| my ineptness with the intel of a Mac then I would | | | | ego. In their mind they are probably thinking "I am |
| probably have to put a reference at the end of the | | | | better than you because I know the difference |
| work out of guilt. | | | | between onto and on to". Nevertheless in my case |
| I'm certain most students have these situations | | | | there are always two excuses you can use in your |
| similar to mine when it comes to late night work. | | | | defense. To my friends I say "who is the one who |
| To me, as an English student, there is that added | | | | does English at university?" and to the ones who |
| pressure of making work sound coherent, concise | | | | study English I just say "typo". |
| and most importantly correct. Ultimately if I make a | | | | From timed essays in class to assignments at the |
| grammatical mistake or a spelling error then all my | | | | death of night, the English language is a very delicate |
| "mates" are ready to let me know about it. | | | | creature. However if someone finds that "jade" hasn't |
| A clear example of this is incarnated in the critical | | | | been capitalized in Heat magazine it's not going to kill |
| reaction to my first blog. The "blogism of fire" | | | | it or, worse, stop the printing presses. So when it |
| started when a fellow linguist and "friend" | | | | comes to my work please judge the beast by it's |
| commented on my Facebook "can you please put an | | | | content rather than its skin. |