Grammar Is Fun?

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Grammar can be fun. But let's face it. It can also be hard and confusing. For one thing, there's just too many nuances to a lot of it. And then there's the age old argument between whether it's an issue of proper grammar, or illustrative of the author's voice which makes something proper. Three writers come to mind who had very notable "voices" that were hardly necessarily ever grammatically correct, but were still correct in terms of the writers who wrote the words. H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Alan Poe and Mark Twain, for example. Is it "It's a sunny day today?" Or is it, "Its a sunny day today?" I guess some might say it could be either, either. It's is a contraction for "it is," and its is a pronoun. Day is a noun, and its refers to "day" in much the same way you might say, "His day is a sunny day," referencing what is sunny. In the one example, the day is. In the other his day is. Confusing? Yes. I have trouble with it myself, trust me. lol When to use a or an is a little less confusing. If the following word has a consonant you use a. If the following word uses a vowel, you use an. A house. A vacation. A car. A justified act. A mouse. A computer. A dial-tone. A situation. Conversely, an intimate moment. An idea. An omen. An acronym. An underlying comment. Of course, if the consonant happens to SOUND like a vowel, such as in the word hour, in which the H is silent, you use an. "I'll see you in an hour." "He was an hour late." "The play was running an hour behind schedule." To make it even more confusing, take the letter U, which is a vowel. If you say the hard U sound, you use a. If you use the soft sounding U, you use an. A unicorn. An umbrella. A utopia. An unusual thing. I could provide a million examples and exceptions, which again is what makes it both fun and confusing, as well as makes it hard to always get right. Needless to say, even if you get it wrong, invariably someone will let you know.