Web Standards, Accessibility & More

Yes, I’m a web programmer/coder, but I also have a keen eye for punctuation, grammar and spelling. I don’t expect the general public to have Harvard-like writing skills, but come on, there’s got to be some kind of level of acceptance! These are the things that get me the most. (By the way, my degree is actually in communications, and I’ve done some professional tech writing also, so I can say these things…)

In case you’re not sure, the points below include mistakes on purpose; I’m feeling twisted.

1. Why don’t people put question marks at the end of sentences. I hate that!
2. People say and type the hyphen instead of a dash-very naive. Didn’t anyone take typing in High School? If you are unable to create the proper dash symbol (—), then just use two hyphens. Remember, a hyphen is used either to join words together, or to indicate a word division at the end of a line.
3. Commonly mispelled misspelled words:
   1. calendar — programmers especially need to learn this!
   2. their/they’re/there — Possessive is “their”, and the contraction of “they are” is “they’re.” Everywhere else, it is “there.”
   3. its/it’s — The apostrophe marks a contraction of “it is.” Something that belongs to it is “its.”
   4. separate — Note that the Es surround the As.
4. Apostrophes. Its bad when I remember that in the 80’s, all of my fellow student’s paper’s were wrong.
   1. Indicating letters missing. The apostrophe replaces the text. So, “cannot” is “can’t”, therefore “remember the 70’s” should be “remember the ’70s”.
   2. Indicating possession:
      1. This is the boy’s glove. [One boy owns this glove.]
      2. This is the boys’ glove. [More than one boy owns this glove.]
      3. These are the boys’ gloves. [More than one boy owns more than one glove.]
5. AND OF COURSE, WRITING IN ALL CAPS IN REALLY OBNOXIOUS.