You're, Your, Yrrrr

I never did read Eats, Shoots & Leaves, the bestselling book on punctuation that came out last year. Despite having taught English and worked as a copy editor, I'm not that much of a punctuation stickler. But I gotta tell you, some mistakes just drive me up the wall. Foremost among them is the misuse of the word "your."

A few weeks ago I was watching a WWE wrestling match on TV with some Cambodians at a guesthouse owned by Brits. Nothing too odd there, except for the fact that I was even watching TV in the first place. Before one of the matches, the camera focused on someone in the audience holding up a sign that said: Your Pathetic.

There it was again: someone screwing up the simple contraction of you and are. You see it every day. Go ahead and check your e-mails and see what I mean. Apparently the vast majority of Americans (and yes, these are native English language speakers we're talking about) do not realize that there is a difference between you're and your. I honestly think all the people that write lines like "I hope your having a good time" don't even realize they are making a mistake. Perhaps these are the same misguided individuals that voted for Bush.

Well, it's a theory, anyway.