Do you ever get a little confused about when to use have and has? Does your speech pattern sometimes resemble Yoda’s? Do you really, really, really like cheeseburgers and can’t quite put together a sentence that properly phrases your love for this food? If so, you may have spent a bit too much time looking at cat photographs online. This can be a very serious problem, especially if you make your living as a technical copywriter or other wordsmith. This basic grammar guide (complements of your friends, the lolcats) can help!

• Have and Has – There are long, detailed explanations of when you should use each of these words available, if you are interested. However, the simple approach is that “have” is used when talking about me or you and “has” is used when talking about anyone else. “Have” is also always used with a plural subject. For instance. “I have a cheeseburger.” “You no longer have a cheeseburger because I ate it.” “The lady up the street has an empty bag because I stole her cheeseburgers.” “The city police have a case against me for cheeseburger theft.”
• Yoda Speak – First popularized by Yoda, many lolcats have the same problem. They tend to write sentences with the subject at the end. For example: “Eat your cheeseburger, I did.” Yoda, like the tricky lolcat, often uses auxiliary verbs at the end of the sentence–after the object and subject have been stated. This form is referred to as object-subject-verb form. While this is not technically a grammar mistake, it is convoluted and difficult to read.

Sometimes you might find yourself second-guessing the rules even after years of writing. It’s not just the “have” and “has” thing—it can be as simple as misplacing a comma or second-guessing whether “its” needs an apostrophe. And honestly, not every grammar flub will ruin your document. People can usually figure out what you mean, unless you go totally off the rails, in which case your only hope is distraction by memes.

Of course, the internet has made everything muddier. With texting, forums, and those rapidly vanishing Twitter posts, conventions get pretty loose. Folks pick up funky phrasing or spellings without even realizing it—until they try to write something formal and realize their default voice is basically one long inside joke. You’re not alone if you catch yourself accidentally sounding a bit like an overcaffeinated cat meme.

• Homophones – This is a common grammatical mistake among cat-like writers. While it is impossible to list all the homophones that can be mixed up, the key is to simply make sure you are using the right form of the word. “They’re eating their cheeseburgers over there.”
• Spelling Counts – There is no reason to spell as abysmally as an lolcat, especially not with today’s technology. Run your content through a spellcheck and remove all instances of “cheezburger, hai, teh and kyoot” from your documents before trying to publish them—unless your editor is a cat.

These are just a few of the grammar issues you should look for if you are suffering from lolcat overload. The most important thing is that you carefully proofread your documents. If you feel your content is so bad that your editor will never let it get past, try attaching a few cute cat pictures—perhaps the distraction will keep you out of the dog…err cat house?

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