On or Off, but never In...

I grew up on an Island.

A great glorious little slice of heaven, in the South Carolina Lowcountry.

After being there over Thanksgiving, I was reminded about one of my age old grammatical pet peeves.

So, in the spirit of Consumer Reports' recent article on The Tops Things that Annoy Americans, I thought I'd share one of mine.

You can be on the Island.

You can be off the Island.

But unless you are volcanic lava from the center of the earth, you can NOT be IN the Island.

You CAN be IN Charlotte, or IN Denver, or IN Texas. Because technically you are either inside or outside the city or state lines. But an Island? You are either on it or off of it.

My husband finds this quite amusing, when we are going somewhere and I say

“oh it's just off island”

He likes to joke when we are there every time we go over the bridge “we are ON island now” and then…“now we are going off island” and he says it in his greatest cruise director voice.

Thank You Dear for making my Island experience much more enjoyable….where were you my whole life growing up?

Now, I know I have a ton of grammatical and spelling errors.

Like….

- always spelling “because” wrong -- I always want to type “becasue”

-or when I type a word ending in “ ing ” I almost always type “ ign ”

-I can never remember if it is affect or effect
      --Here is a tip to remember

-and I will never learn how to spell the word vacuum (2 u’s or 2 c’s?? thank goodness for spell check!)

-is it capital or capitol ?  this always stumps me and it's kind of important that I learn. 
      -- You wonder too? Here's your tip

But…

At least I know you can’t be IN an island.

PS—much gratitude goes to my sister who is my blog proof reader and calls me immediately if she sees a grammatical atrocity…she is way more smarter than me I. (Ha!)