Let's start with the title of the blog. I tried repeatedly to come up with a name for the blog that was available. It seems that I must be the last person on earth to create a blog. All the ideas I had were already taken. Then I threw in the word "too" and it worked. That figures. Huge pet peeve of mine.
Why is it so difficult for people to learn the difference between "to" and "too?" Most everyone can use "two" properly but it's as if the word "too" is nonexistent. One extra letter. Learned in elementary school. Middle school at the latest. How did these people graduate high school and go on to higher education? The rest of the course would come to a screeching halt while I retaught basic grammar if I were a professor at that level and received a paper with a sentence like, "Tom Joad was respected by his family and the workers, to."
One day last week, my eight-year-old daughter wrote me a silly note and used the word "too" properly. I was so thrilled. Eight years old. I think she's brilliant and above average but not necessarily a child-genius. Actually, I was so proud I took a picture of the paper and posted it to my facebook account. My friends probably thought it was lame of me but secretly I was hoping they might learn from it.
Speaking of facebook, I know I make plenty of errors in spelling and grammar. We all do. We type too fast, our fingers hit the wrong keys, whatever. It does not take long to figure out which "friends" make typos and which ones slept through fourth grade.
Really, I'm setting myself up for attack for even blogging about this. I'm guessing I've made several mistakes in this post alone. I am a terrible speller. My punctuation is usually good but I have to make a conscious effort to slow down on the commas. I know I don't always stick with one verb tense throughout a writing. I was not an English major.
All I'm getting at is it's not that hard to use "to, too, two" correctly. Very simple. No weird exceptions to the rule. Just in case you are one of the kids that had the flu when the lesson was taught, here is how you use the three words...
To, Too, or Two?
To is a preposition which begins a prepositional phrase or an infinitive.
Too is an adverb meaning "excessively" or "also."
Two is a number.
Examples:
- We went to the farmers market. (prepositional phrase)
- We like to eat locally grown produce. (infinitive)
- We bought too many cucumbers. (meaning "excessively")
- We bought asparagus, too. (meaning "also")
- We bought two types of tomatoes. (number)
So... I like it when people use "too" when appropriate. That's all. Don't get me started on "your/you're" or "there/their/they're." We'll save those for another day.
