As I alluded to in the previous post, Sarah had her All-Star soccer tournament this weekend. Out of three games, her team lost two. Which isn’t all that surprising considering they’ve had about four practices together. Individually they might be good, but soccer is a team sport and you can’t gel as a team with only four practices. But this morning’s game (the third one) the team played well. They won 2-0 and Sarah scored one of those goals.

But I digress in what I really wanted to talk about.

I’ll admit, I’m a bit of a grammar Nazi. Not that I’m perfect; I’ve made stupid mistakes as I’m sure many of you have, and I’d be completely unsurprised if there weren’t a couple in this post (double negative!). But I have a healthy respect for the language, and it drives me insane when I see ‘your’ or ‘there’ instead of ‘you’re’ or ‘their’. And it’s scary because I’m seeing college-aged kids who don’t seem to know the difference as well.

There’s another word that’s been driving me nuts in the way it’s being used lately, especially now that I coach soccer; the word is ‘verses’. The girls all seem to think that saying “who are we versing today” is acceptable. I’m constantly correcting them. And it was really driven home when I overheard one of the other parents ask the All-Star coach who the team was ‘versing’. The way she said it sounded almost mocking, as if she was fully aware that she was using it completely wrong (and I really hope she was). But how long before she stops mocking herself and using it naturally? I understand language is fluid and dynamic and is constantly evolving, but this is driving me up the wall.

Why do I let it bother me so much? Good question.