Pertaining to grammar and punctuation I have learned many of the basic things: comma use, contractions, conjunctions, nouns, verbs, adjectives and so on. In fact, I have known these basic terms since grade school. Getting into middle school and high school, I began to learn more complicated grammar and punctuation such as, citation, quotes, headers, footnotes and correct structure for an essay paper. I believe I have gotten those imbedded into my head pretty well and can even say I enjoying doing the technical grammar and punctuation within a paper.

In a most recent lesson, I learned about the new way to use apostrophes. For example, having a name end in “S” and instead of using “ ‘s”, just an apostrophe is used. I had no idea there is an old way and a new way to begin with. I can understand why this is coming into affect because today words are becoming less complicated and pronouncing words need to be quicker. Technology like texting, I am sure has had help in this transformation. Also, one thing I have learned that I will never forget is writing in past, present, or future tense. I have written papers that bounced from past to present and my tenth grade English teacher sat me down and gave me a personal lesson in doing that and I have never forgotten that to this day.

In middle school, my English teacher had the class each day start out by grammatically correcting a sentence that was incorrect on the board. From continually correcting the sentences, grammar has become a pet peeve of mine. Peer reviewing or rereading a paper of my own checking sentences for grammatical errors is the first thing I do.

How can a hyphen turn two words to mean something completely different from what they meant in the first place?