Do Schools Even Teach Proper English Anymore?

Everyone who knows me knows that I despise poor English, both written and spoken.  And now that I have a blog, I'm going to air a grievance or five about a few things.  Anyone reading this has a choice:  read it and learn from it, read it and ignore it, or close it and go do something else.

Now, mind you, I'm not the World Expert on English by any means.  But there are some very basic rules that some people either don't know, didn't learn, or just ignore.  In no particular order, here goes:

Plurals don't have apostrophes.  Never in all of my years of school did I ever see a teacher write a plural and put an apostrophe in it.  "There are a lot of car's in the parking lot."  Yes, I've seen that.  "Buy 3 donut's and get one free."  Seriously?  And while we're on the subject, the word "gets" doesn't have one either.  I've seen that and it drive me nuts.  "Whoever get's home first can unlock the door."  Failure.

"It's" means "it is" or "it has" and nothing else.  The possessive form of "its" is just that, "its."  No apostrophe needed.  While we're at it, the word "yours" and "theirs" don't have apostrophes either.  (Yes, I've seen those written with apostrophes.)

The contractions for "cannot," "do not," "will not," etc. DO use apostrophes.  It's most likely the result of text speak and IM speak, but contrary to popular usage these days, the aforementioned words do in fact need an apostrophe, unless, of course, someone with a lot more authority than I have decrees that the apostrophe is a punctuation mark of old and should be abandoned.

"Theirs" and "ours" DO NOT use apostrophes.  Again, I've seen these written with them.  Normally, a possessive word would have an apostrophe, but only if it is a proper noun (a name) or an object ("the boy's bicycle"), but these pronouns don't.

Mind you, I'm not apostrophobic or anything, but if you're going to use the darned things, use them correctly.

The term "a lot" is two words, not one.  That is, unless you mean "allot," which means to divide or distribute by share or portion.

There are many more written peeves that I could air, but I'll move on to the one spoken one that almost makes me want to throw inanimate objects at poor, defenseless creatures*...

"...and stuff like that (there)."  Lazy English at its finest (notice I didn't use an apostrophe in "its," huh?).  For whatever reason, more and more people are using this instead of just listing an example or two of whatever they're doing.  It's becoming the "you know" of the 21st Century (notice that the "it's" here DID get an apostrophe because it means "it is.")  I put the word "there" in parentheses because some people add that to the phrase, making it all the more annoying.

Am I too picky?  Perhaps.  As everyone knows, I like to have a little fun with the language at times.  And the way the English language is set up, it's ripe for heckling.  I am guilty as charged with making up my own words and mangling others.  But I do that for fun, not for lack of knowing what is correct.  When Diana was little and learning the language that she will use to communicate for a lifetime, I always told her that "if you know what is wrong, then you'll know what is right."  Today, at age 20 (as of today in fact), she does speak and write quite well.

* No, I wouldn't actually do that because I like most critters and wouldn't want to cause them any harm.