What I have learned

            So far this semester I have learned about the difference between “its” and “it’s”. As a high school student, I took a creative writing class and vaguely remember encountering this situation. I wrote a horror story for Halloween about a haunted insane asylum where a mad doctor was living. Like I said, I remember writing something along the lines of “It’s footsteps could be heard from the floor above” but was confused because that didn’t look right to me. As a student, as well a writer, I knew that “it’s” was a contraction for “it is”. I had no idea that there was a correct word to use instead though: its. I kind of thought about it, especially since there was a green squiggly line reminding me that using “it’s” in the sentence was incorrect but “its” just looked silly to me because I had never been taught it before.

            Another thing I have learned in this class is how often publications make mistakes themselves or choose not to follow a rule. I always assumed that if you were going to be a journalist or an editor you needed to be perfect at grammar; it was this thought that prevented me from wanting to be an editor for a publishing company. It was that collage exercise that really made it apparent to me; seeing in black in white how many publications used weird grammar.

As a kid from the technology generation, I have wondered if having been exposed to so much technology, especially things like Microsoft word or texting spell check, if that is one reason why my grammar isn’t that great. Being reminded of your mistakes so easily and then having an immediate solution for it, as what Word does, makes it second nature to have a computer fix your grammar and spelling mistakes for you instead of thinking about why it’s wrong and how to fix it yourself; one of its programmed purposes is to do this for you. This is one reason why I wasn’t very surprised about how many students use texting abbreviations in essays or such bad grammar.

Finally the last thing I learned so far in this course is how to use punctuation to change the meaning of a sentence or paragraph. It was that exercise we did in the first week of class that made me realize this. For some reason it had never really occurred to me that you could change your grammar to change your meaning but when we did that exercise it dawned on me like “Oh duh! Why have I never done this before?!”. I especially liked the discussion when Stephanie presented how they changed the dear John letter; theirs was very creative and humorous.

Other than these examples I can’t really think of other specifics that I have learned. As a high school student, especially now as a college student, I know the importance of grammar. I just hope that in this class I can continue to keep learning different things to be able to grow as a writer and become a great teacher.