Monday, February 23, 2009

Earlier today I sent some event invites on facebook for some of the upcoming out of town stuff. When you put in your gmail, it will pull up the option of sending to anyone you have ever messaged on gmail, since it saves all contacts. Anyways, a long time ago I wrote a Myspace Mutants blog about that Peter Pan guy down in Tampa. As part of it, I emailed him in hopes of getting more stuff to write about. Anyways, I sent an event invite, and, lucky for the world, this seemingly motivated him to join Facebook upon my invitation:

Friday, February 20, 2009

I am better than you.

Blogging is an interesting thing. There really is no set format, or rules. Some people take it really seriously, other people just make a series of bad jokes. As far as I am concerned, there is really only one rule to blogging, it is my One Commandment:
Know the difference between then and than.

Simple thing, really, yet sadly there are thousands of people out there who don't know the difference. In fact, I was reading an article at Time.com in which the author screwed up between then and than. I cannot think of anything that makes me question an author's authority faster than not knowing something that is taught in elementary school.

It isn't that I don't understand WHY people mix these words up; I know why. We, as Americans, have lazy tongues. We pronounce things in a manner which will require the least possible effort. In the case of than, this apparently means it is often pronounced by people as (my best phonetic description) "thun," i.e. "I am better thun you because I know what word I am actually using."

This lends itself to confusion for the uninitiated when writing, and they end up typing, "I am better then you because I don't know what word I am actually using." THEN IS NOT CORRECT HERE.

Then is a delineation of a difference in time, or a clarification of the order of events, such as, "We went to get sushi, then we grabbed some drinks."

Than is used as a comparison between two or more things, such as, "Amura is more expensive than Sushi Hatsu."

Honestly, if you are an adult, and you can't get this right after reading this, you are an idiot, and I have no qualms about letting you know this. It is inexcusable. This is something you were taught in elementary school. Get it together, moron.

Thanks for reading!

Next time, we will discuss the homonyms: there, their, and they're. Maybe.