Katie Holland: There, their, they're ... it'll be all right

SPELLBINDING: Knowing your ABCs can be testing at times. PHOTO/FILE

THE BLACKBOARD was on the pavement for days and each time I walked past I died a little inside. "Sale on New Zeland wines", it said.

I raged to my flatmates, workmates, friends and anyone who'd listen. It's a wine shop. It sells a lot of New Zealand wine. How hard is it to spell New Zealand correctly? Just look at a label!

Finally, on about day five I could stand it no longer. It was a matter of national pride. Extremely politely, with my best "Excuse me, so sorry to bother you" British-like manners, I popped in and just let them know about their error - just to help out.

WAR OF WORDS: ARE BASIC WRITING SKILLS DEAD?

They didn't take it well. It got awkward. I skulked out, the blackboard stayed and I was forced to buy my wine at Tesco for the rest of my London days.

I've been known to reject a restaurant because of mistakes in menus and, in the days when I could afford to be a little more picky, I broke up with a boyfriend partly because he was a terrible speller.

Okay, maybe that was the least of our issues, but his complete disregard for correct spelling and grammar was a regular source of frustration; not least because he refused to play Scrabble with me.

In retrospect, I see the lack of effort and attention to detail when it came to words was indicative of a similar attitude in other areas of his life.

I am not prejudiced. Some of my best friends are terrible spellers. They can't help it. They were born that way. I love them, regardless. It doesn't make them stupid and most of them use spellcheck, which is all I ask.

Grammar crimes are all around us; as are grandma crimes, but that's another column.

People talk about being absolutely guttered by losing the World Cup or Zayn leaving One Direction (oddly, the first two examples of guttedness that came into my head). Unless they are actually lying in a gutter somewhere in despair, of course they're actually gutted.

The Black Caps should of won. No, they should have won. Damn Aussies.

Random capitalisation of randomly selected Words. Or even worse, Putting A Capital Letter On Every Word or EVEN WORSE EVERY LETTER.

Let's not even get started on your and you're or their, they're and there.

Apostrophes can be tricky, and I admit I slipped up occasionally as a newbie reporter with its and it's. So I tend to give non-journalists a bit of slack when it comes to them. Oh, who am I kidding? Apostrophe crime drives me crazy. In an illogical twist, personal social media usage is exempt. Using numbers in place of letters and complete disregard for vowels is never okay, not in any circumstance. But the odd misplaced or missing apostrophe, lack of capitalisation and typos may be excused. After all, when you're rushing to post on Facebook what you just had for lunch, allowances must be made for speed. I'm not completely unreasonable.

And now, this column will be checked several hundred times by myself, my editor and any other grammar nazi I can find. As will every single thing I ever write again in my Rotorua Daily Post career. When I slip up, as I inevitably will, I fully expect you're smug mocking.

(Yes, I realise that should have been "your". That was a test.)