There are many rules that govern our writing and language use. Ever useful, sometimes changing, and occasionally bizarre.

There are some rules I just can’t seem to learn. My brain refuses to let them in, and I have to look them up every single damn time I need to use them. One of those is the lay/lie/laying/lying differences. Grammar Girl comes in handy with that one.

But most of the time, as a proponent of writing correctly, I do a decent job at spotting errors in grammar, punctuation, and spelling. And this is true:

This is an actual thing in my dining room. Mom bought it for me. 

Even so, there are a few rules that are just dumb and I’m less strict about.

Dumb Rule 1: All right, alright, all-right

That last one isn’t real. I just wanted the McConaughey reference.

I was stubborn about this one for a long…