It’s encouraging to hear people talking about the Wet Seal store selling a tunic t-shirt with the lettering: “If your single, so am I.” The giant spelling gaffe has been highlighted in the news. This is good. After all, public awareness is the first step.
I can’t tell you how many intelligent adults I know who contract “you are” as “your.” Once again, this isn’t something they teach in college. Anyone who passed fourth grade should know this.
If you’re (you are, contracted) planning to purchase the Wet Seal shirt, I have two more pieces of merchandise to add to your (possessive pronoun) collection.
My parents and I have traded gag gifts for years; the tackier the better. The best ones are personalized with someone else’s name. Or have a spelling error.
One year for Mother’s Day, I gave my mother a hand-painted ceramic plate I found at the dollar store. She was gracious enough to have kept it all these years, and she submitted a photo for this post.
This reminded me of a conundrum my mother once had. She had bought a blouse at Chico’s that had all sorts of inspirational phrases and positive affirmations printed among various designs. When she got it home, she noticed one of the sayings was “Your beautiful.” She agonized over whether or not to keep it.
Yesterday, after she sent me the photo of the Mother’s Day plate, I asked if she could also snap a photo of the Chico’s blouse. She replied, “I don’t still have the blouse. I returned it because of grammatical issues.”
The apple doesn’t fall from the tree.
Word Nymph 
