You immediately wonder, upon writing the title “You Know You Are a Perfectionist When,” if the letter a in the word are should be capitalized.
Upon writing the sentence, “You immediately wonder, upon writing the title ‘You Know You Are a Perfectionist When,’ if the letter a in the word are should be capitalized,” you realize it is grammatically incorrect and rewrite it to say:
Upon writing the title, “You Know You Are a Perfectionist When,” you immediately wonder if the letter a in the word are should be capitalized.
Upon writing all of the above sentences, you realize you have, most likely, seriously confused your readers, and you reread those sentences, wondering whether they are, in fact, even remotely intelligent/comedic.
You debate whether or not to use a slash between intelligent and comedic.
You decide it will have to be okay for the moment if you’re even going to get to considering the value of those beginning sentences.
You are still unsure whether the letter a in the word are should be capitalized.
After you look it up online, read about it on www.dummies.com and decide that the letter a in the word are should, indeed, be capitalized, you wonder whether www.dummies.com is a reliable source for grammatical rules.
After thinking this thought, you wonder if that is a stupid thought, that of course www.dummies.com is a great source for grammatical rules, or any kind of rules or information, considering the popularity of the book series.
You consider reading about www.dummies.com and the Dummies book series online, to see if it’s really legitimate—maybe it’s not all it’s made out to be, maybe it’s full of lies, maybe the people who write them are the actual the real dummies—but then you remember you have to finish your list.
You reconsider that thought—how can your list about being a perfectionist come from a true perfectionist if she doesn’t follow truly perfect grammatical rules from a truly perfect, legitimate source for grammatical rules?
You realize all of this is stupid—of course the letter a in the word are is capitalized, you idiot!—what were you thinking?!—you were an English major, for peety sakes!—and as you think these things you realize the inordinate amount of time you’ve taken to simply perfect the title of your list about being a perfectionist.
Although much of you thinks it’s okay you’ve taken so much time because at least now you know your title is perfect, another part of you feels highly frustrated because you didn’t follow your schedule—according to today’s schedule, you were supposed to get this entire task done in ten minutes. You’ve taken twenty.
You get angry at yourself and go eat some cake.