Speed_Gibson

one of my biggest ones has already been mentioned - ending a sentence with a preposition, or using them incorrectly.

A good example of something that really irks me is the song from SClub7 (?) I believe that has the line:
"No matter where life takes me to, I will always be with you"

fallen_angel

funner = more fun

Eoywn_Vala hates that so much cuz shes an english major and im earth science. hehe i do it just to bug her

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from the Havens I have fallen. . . to the earth as a mangled form. . . writhing in pain, my wings torn and bloodied. . . I have one purpose, only one goal. . . to find you and love you, for I am your. . . fallen angel

mrsandman

EKcetera

EKspecially

median not medium

liberal not asshole

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debaser

Hanged vs. hung. That drives me nuts, and no one uses them properly.

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torgone

I work with a guy who misuses and overuses the word "literally." He literally uses it in literally dozens of inappropriate situations, and that literally drives me crazy.

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LewisCouch

Poor grammar is something up with which I will not put. The most annoying is anyone who queries, "you know?," every other statement.

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Jonsgirl

I am sick and freaking tired of seeing people type without using any sort of punctuation/ capitals!! In emails, or various threads here, in memos even! For the love of god, people! It's not rocket science, it's not even bottle rocket science.
Here watch me [punctuation]: [holding shift key] LOOK KIDDIES! I CAN USE BASIC ENGLISH GRAMMER RULES!
See, it's tres easy.
Frankly, I think it makes peole who type like that look illiterate. Is it that they're just too lazy? Are they in such a hurry that they can't spend .000001 more seconds to put in a period or a comma or a capital letter? I wonder if they talk in a dead mono-syllable voice, or did they just never learned how to write.
how about this everyone here tries to type like this for one day and see if anyone can understand them i dont think it will work but everyone is welcome to try just know that i will hunt you down and staple an english primer to your freaking forehead why is it so difficult spelling i can fogive im a horrible speller but at least i try you know i have to really really try to type like this i keep wanting to use silly things like apostrophes the things that look like a comma only theyre above the letter and periods which we use to designate the end of a sentence
LIke this.


I'll admit that I have been guilty of this on occasion. And I get annoyed with myself for doing it.

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Giltwist

*coughs and sheepishly looks at his most recent thread*

My typographical skills are usually exemplary, but I do tend to be a bit excitable. Sorry. I did edit in an apology when I noticed what I had done.

On a related note, can you edit thread titles here?

StormBerlin

This is somewhere people come to express opinion and the like with freedom, they deserve not to use corect punctuation. Deal with it.

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Bust_Action

I can't believe no one has mentioned "your" and "you're" yet. That one makes me want to destroy the earth.

Being a support technician for several ISP's "down south", I get to listen to grammatical errors all the time. But one of the things that really gets on my nerves in when people pronounce "on" like the word "own". It's "ah-n" you backwoods imbeciles!

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Your favorite band sucks.

tedrlord

Bob the Angry Flower's Quick Guide to the Apostrophe, You Idiots: http://angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif

I used to get a bit annoyed when people ended a sentence with a preposition, but it's not really a strict rule. There's also that quote someone mentioned earlier: "Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with I will not put." I believe it was from Churchill, but that's what they say about every quote.

Also, I read something interesting about people's tendency to say things like "um" and "like" all the time. Apparently it's a more or less necessary part of language; a sort of placeholder in a sentence without which conversations don't move as fluidly.

DrJekyll

Geez, you people are more prescriptively anal than me. I agree with the spelling comments for the most part. Numbers/letters as words and misused apostrophes bother me. However, this whole "ending with a preposition" thing isn't so bad. Churchill's Quote

Bust_Action, you say that as if to imply that people in the south are inferior or make more mistakes. You fail to understand that people from around the country make all sorts of gaffes. You assume that your dialect is the "correct" one and that everyone should conform to your standard. One of the most basic principles of linguistics is the fact that languages/dialects are equal.

As for 'who vs. whom', it's a case of language evolution. (http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/who.html)

Finally, if you want to read about some more common errors and non-errors, check out http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/index.html

Jonsgirl

And we have a right to be annoyed be it. Deal with it.

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But it won't be today, and it won't be you.

rebecca

Reason is because.....enough said. Having an English major for a brother has really increased my pet peeves in this area. What I hate the most is when my profs make more mistakes than he does.

KnifeMissile

Well, I have many pet peeves over grammar but most of them have already been said. So, let me turn around and say some things that don't bother me...


Actually, this is the same phenomenon as flammable and inflammable. Both words (in both cases!) exist and mean the same thing. Go figure...

I think someone else also mentioned this one (it's a long thread and I can't find them) and it's a pity because this is simply a difference between American english and British english, where it's not necessarily wrong to place punctuation outside the quotes.
I find it ironic that anyone can dislike English english (more ironic than a rainy day...).
Canada gets to be an amalgamation of the two.

Oh, and spived2 also mention this "a" and "an" peeve. I'm not sure how well known this is but words following "an" needn't necessarily start with a vowel. For instance, I prefer "an honest person" to "a honest person"...

Can you tell I'm not American?

Actually, many people have complained about this. Do a page search for it...

How do you feel about people misusing the term "by definition"?
By definition, people who drop out of school can't get good jobs!


The only complaint that I have that I don't remember reading in this thread is lack of punctuation. More than once, I've had trouble figuring out what someone on TFP is trying to say 'cause their post was ambiguous due to a lack of punctuation, commas in particular.

Personally, I like making up words. It's a testament to how language works. Even if you've never heard my made-up word, you can still know it's meaning. Beautiful...

tedrlord

That still conforms to the vowels restriction, since the H in "honest" is generally silent. There's a lot of argument over the silent H among those without much else to do. Some people like to just drop the H whenever they see it, while others steadfastly pronounce it, so depending on where you are, different words may use either "a" or "an."

Redlemon

Not familiar with meh, but feh is good Yiddish slang, and has been around a long time:
My current peeve is "actually". People are using "actually" everywhere for no apparant reason. It doesn't really add anything to most sentances where it is used. I consider it the "like" of the 2000's.

maddemon802

I don't know if this one is technically correct or not...it just drives me mad when some says that they did something " on purpose" or "on accident" or "by accident"...seemd it should be done "accidently" or "purposefully" can you be "on" a purpose???
just my two cents!

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Tophat665

Someone already mentioned very unique. Unnique can be modified, but not intensified. Somehing may be nearly unique or truly unique, but nothing that is truly unique is any more unique than any other thing that is truly unique. There's one and only one of each.

What gets me is redundancies: close proximity (or, better yet, near to close proximity), revert back, approach towards, cash money.

Even worse is the redundant acronym: ATM Machine, PIN Number, 8 AM in the morning, and the ever popular RSVP, please. If you don't know what the acronym means, just call it what it is, and autoteller, an id number, or 8 in the morning, and, for the love of Dog and all that is Hairy, don't use acronymns in foreign languages. RSVP = respondez sil vous plait = reply please.

Feh is fine, so is nu. Don't mess with yiddish. Funniest sounding lanuguage ever.

On the flip side, there are things about correct English grammar (actually, more spelling than grammar) that really smack my package.

More than one ox are oxen. More than one fox, foxen? No foxes.
More than one goose are geese. More than one moose, meese? Nope, still moose.
One deer and two deer are the same, but try and convince the guy who pulled you over that the same applies to beer.
Index - Indicies. Matrix - Matricies. Codex - Codecies. But Kleenex - Kleenicies? They look at me like I'm mad. Xerox - Xerocies? That's a trick - it's xeroxen,

Swim, Swam, Swum. Present, Past, Past Participle. Not sting, stang, stung.

Drive, Drove, Driven. Not Dive, Dove, Diven.

The list is myriad. I am going to boldly split that infinitive whenever I want. And any time I want, I'll leave that participle dangling

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Redlemon

Just to let you know, the grammatical term for this is "pleonasm". Kind of the inverse of an "oxymoron" (which is NOT a pimple cream for idiots).

the_tyipist

I hate when people say "I could care less", meaning you care a little, when they mean "I couldn't care less".

yournamehere

Don't you mean, "more prescriptively anal than I."?

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If you want to avoid 95% of internet spelling errors:
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It won't hurt your fashion sense, either.

DrJekyll

haha. Maybe I should've put "myself" and fired everyone up. Seriously though, I would rarely use 'I' in that case when speaking. Thus, it stands that I'd probably use 'me' in such an informal setting. =)

Oh, and I agree with KnifeM on almost everything. Particularly, I prefer to put punctuation marks following quotation marks except in rare instances.

gal

I've got many, but mostly in my own language. What I find more annoying than actual erroneous grammar is pompous vocabulary. For instance:

acquire = get
utilize = use
initiate = begin
prior to = before
due to the fact that = because
consequently = so

It seems to be quite common in technical writing, especially with foreigners like me.

KnifeMissile

gal, It's interesting that you find find certain words to be pompous despite English not being your first language. Then again, perhaps that's exactly why you find them pompous. Anyone fluent in English might not even notice the difference between these terms. Either way, your English seems rather good. I've seen other Norwegians post on this board and you all seem to know English better than a lot of Americans here!

Now, are you saying that these people are pompous because they use one word when they could use the other or because you feel that these words can always be interchanged with the other?

There are times when one word is more approprite than the other. Even at times when they can be interchanged, English is a language of variety (just look at the sheer number of synonyms!) and it looks really bad to use the same word, over and over again. So, people might throw in more esoteric words when one has already been used, recently. Consequently, others might find this pompous but it is merely an attempt to keep the text lively...

DrJekyll

Most of those "pompous" synonyms "invaded" the English language through the more flowery French and/or Latin. Most of the less pompous that you mention are Germanic in origin.

Supple Cow

YES. This probably bothers me more than it does most other folks. When I say "well" to somebody who asks me how I am doing and they say "'well...' what?" I cringe.

Here are a few that haven't been mentioned:

1) saying, "Here's [number greater than 1]." "Here's" is a contraction of "Here" and "is" so the proper conjugation of "to be" in this case (involving a plural) is "are."

2) saying "itch" when you mean "scratch"--Wow, my arm really itches... "So itch it!"--AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

3) using "quote" as a noun--"This is a quote from Supple Cow." While I hope to be wise enough to be quoted one day, I do hope that the introduction to my quotation will be correct when it happens.

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Woody182

I definitely say accept/except, doesn't seem like that difficult of a concept to me...but hey.

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If I lose my way, will you choose me?
If I change my mind, will you change me?
-Smashing Pumpkins

charliex

hmm, i guess i'm of the ilk where i don't really mind mistakes people make or laziness, whatever it is. if they've got something good to say, that is more important.

its interesting reading some of the people who it quite obviously upsets, but yet their text has a number of errors, glass houses it seems

i do like to argue about it sometimes, and enjoy being the devil's advocate, other times i might be using my sub mini notebook

the only thing i like to pick up on as people saying 'its my forte' and pronouncing it 'fortay' (add however many a's needed) and not 'fort', but it doesn't bother me, its just an interesting part of the evolution that language is.

intelligence isn't about proper grammar. the person may just be poorly educated and that may not be their fault, tolerance is valuable commodity.

i also like to use lower case, perhaps i'm using a lower case only terminal to write this, or perhaps its just aesthetically pleasing to me.

there is one person in particular who seems very upset about it all, but has made a lot of mistakes in both spelling, usage and even the very thing they are complaining about others not doing, i'm still trying to figure out if its a spoof or that they are so mad they ended up making so many mistakes but i can still understand what they are saying, i'm intelligent enough to figure it out without even blinking, i've adapted and my ' key thanks me for it

C U L8R

diddagirl

hahaha..... I am guilty. I use the word literaly way too much. I use it in every sentance possible. Actually I even use it in sentances when it is completely inappropriate, but now its a habit and I cant drop it!!

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gal

I'm not saying that you always should use the simplest possible word.. It's just when I see that the longer words are chosen consistently over synonymous one-syllable words.

KnifeMissile

Supple Cow, tell me if you've encountered this. It's similar to some of your complaints.

People saying "cheque" when they mean "bill". As in "waiter, can I have the cheque, please?"

pazza

people who use words they dont understand in their sentances, it just annoys the hell out of me hearing words used incorrectly.

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The above thoughts are not necessarily the thoughts of this user.

VF19

I can't stand people who use plz or thnx or anything like that online (and its usually my asian buddies [nothing personal])

Oh and stuff like 'Doesn't it?' or 'Wasn't that' makes no sense
Does not it? Was not that? Who the fuck made these up?

Sho Nuff

confusing then and than

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I know Nietzsche doesnt rhyme with peachy, but you sound like a pretentious prick when you correct me.

nash

I've always learned to put a comma after the last item in a list. For example: Red, green, blue, and white. But now it's "correct" to omit the last comma. I don't really mind it but it's a lot easier to read, in my opinion.

Regarding the "don't end a sentence with a preposition": how should I rephrase the question "Where are you from?"

Also, should the first word after a colon be capitalized since the phrase (or whatever you call it) is supposed to be a complete sentence by itself?

yatzr

that's my biggest peeve right there. I learned the correct phrase from my older brother when i was little and started using it, and then I heard all my friends saying "I COULD care less". I even tried explaining to them that it didn't make sense but none of them seemed to get it. If you could care less, that means you have to care some in order to care less, so that really says nothing about your level of care other than the fact that you do actually care. The phrase "I COULDN'T care less" means you have no care at all. Granted, this is more of a logical thing than a grammatical thing, it pisses me off. I used to think it was just my dumb friends that said it, but then I heard it on tv, and now finally, someone feels the pain I feel.

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nastaX

I never EVER get "then" and "than" right. I always mix those two up for some reason, even though I know the right way to use them.

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dillerX

EeOh1

Amen, man, amen!

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Redlemon

I'll join you on that one. Also, I usually put the punctuation for the sentance outside of the quote marks, which "looks better to me", for the same reason.