English Pet Peeves

[thorme]

What are the grammar and/or spelling errors that most annoy you?

I'm no expert on English, but there are some habits that really get to me.

1.  I'd rival Bill Gates if I had a nickel for every time I've seen someone spell the word as "ridiculous".

2.  I see a lot of folks say something like "I'm a bit weary of adding xyz into my deck" - meaning that they have reservations about the idea.  Folks, either use "leery" or "wary", but please don't use "weary" in this way.

[Jacob Orlove]

You LOSE a game. You do not LOOSE a game. I see that one often.

[Razvan]

I just hate "LOL". You have no idea how much it angers me when people use that word, ad nauseum. You could say, I am weary of it.

[Bram]

The age-old its vs. it's.

I think this one is actually easier for foreigners since they tend to write down words 'by the rules'. If the rules are easy, like in this case, there'll be few mistakes, whereas for native english-speakers, it's intuitive and hence more prone to error.

[Zherbus]

.............horrible........ ....abuse.......of...an..elli psis.....which bad people think add dramatic pauses.

[rvs]

.............horrible........ ....abuse.......of...an..elli psis.....which bad people think add dramatic pauses.

I so figured you were going to mention how people cannot spell ZherStarShip.

[Bram]

I hate erroneous usage of the word 'so'. And systematic abuse of the word 'like'. And people who start a phrase with the word 'and'.

I once murdered a man for saying: 'And I like SO owned him!'

[Dr. Sylvan]

Hmm. Probably the worst is affect/effect, followed closely by there/their/they're*. Abuse of ellipses is also insanely annoying, because when I read, I pause in my head for the ellipsis, and then I am let down by the worthlessness of the following statement. Also, people misspell "rogue" a lot (as "rogue").


* : Amazingly one of my articles has an error of this type;** I think Knut doesn't even edit mine anymore. ;)

** : Oh, I hate how almost no one uses semicolons appropriately. Comma splices are everywhere.

[The Atog Lord]

I hate split infinitives. I hate it when someone uses "she" if the gender of the pronoun is unknown. I'm less likely to get upset at starting a sentence with a conjunction, because this is acceptable in Latin.

[Bram]

Also, people misspell "rogue" a lot (as "rogue").

LOL! Sorry. I mean: I'm laughing out loud. I never saw that and for some reason 'rogue' tickled my funny bone. 'I played a rogue deck' sounds quite gay.

Oh, I hate people who use the word 'gay' for homosexual. Stop stealing our swear words to describe your sexual preference already!

[Saucemaster]

I hate split infinitives.

Even as some grammarians (Alford, cited above; Bache, 1869; Hodgson, 1889) were condemning the split infinitive, others (Brown, 1851; Onions, 1904; Jespersen, 1905; Fowler and Fowler, cited above) were endorsing it. In the present day, all reference texts of grammar deem simple split infinitives unobjectionable. (Compound split infinitives remain controversial; see Special situations below.)

H. W. Fowler later wrote, in his 1926 Dictionary of Modern English Usage, that writers who avoid split infinitives are "bogy-haunted creatures". Curme's Grammar of the English Language (1931) says that, not only is the split infinitive correct, but it "should be furthered rather than censured, for it makes for clearer expression". The Columbia Guide to Standard American English (1993) notes that the split infinitive "eliminates all possibility of ambiguity", in contrast to the "potential for confusion" in an unsplit construction. The American Heritage Book of English Usage (1996) states: "The only rationale for condemning the construction is based on a false analogy with Latin."

My personal pet peeve is when people go out of their way to AVOID the split infinitive, thereby creating unnecessary ambiguity.

[Jebus]

Your vs. You're

There
Their
They're

[Bram]

I hate it when people refer to 'socks' as 'sox'.

[Hi-Val]

Mine are all based on pronunciations.

Suffice sounds weird if you say "suh-fi-SUH" so don't do it.

The emphasis improperly placed bugs me as well. It must be an Ohio thing. If you get a permit, it is pronounced PER-mit. It's a noun. If you are allowed to do something you have been per-MITed. I pick it up and it hurts my ears. It happens a lot with the verb/noun split card words.

[Bram]

Over here, I hear many people mispronouce 'Blood Moon'. They make 'blood' vowels sound exatcly like the 'moon' ones. Try it out.

The strangest thing is that it actually makes more sence that way.

[Matt]

Poor capitalization irks me more than poor punctuation and spelling, possibly because it's so easy.

[Jebus]

Magic related...what's with this Arcbound Ravenger bs?

I also see a lot of people put "H" in front of the word "ability" making it "hability".  This is mostly from Europeans from non-English speaking countries.  I still haven't figured out why that happens.

[Magi]

Magic related...what's with this Arcbound Ravenger bs?

So it's NOT just a west cost thing!

I also hate it when people use "good" when the correct term is "well"

"I did good on that examination"

"I played good"

hrrrrr drives me up the wall

[jpmeyer]

I hate erroneous usage of the word 'so'. And systematic abuse of the word 'like'. And people who start a phrase with the word 'and'.

I once murdered a man for saying: 'And I like SO owned him!'

I'm still alive, actually

Despite being an English major, I really tend not to care about gross abuses of the English language.  Partially because I am like mad guilty of them.

[TracerBullet]

Ohh, you boys haven't touched on the real heart of all my pain- words that don't exist.



I'm talking about orientate.  I'm talking about regardless.  And I'm even talking about ironical, which may or may not be a word depending upon who you talk to (or, alternatively, to whom you speak).  All three were words said by my English 101 teacher, who consequently made my decision to go into another major.  He was terrible.

[ctthespian]

Ohh, you boys haven't touched on the real heart of all my pain- words that don't exist.



I'm talking about orientate.  I'm talking about regardless.  And I'm even talking about ironical, which may or may not be a word depending upon who you talk to (or, alternatively, to whom you speak).  All three were words said by my English 101 teacher, who consequently made my decision to go into another major.  He was terrible.

It's interesting Webster.com would seem to dissagree with you.  It seems all the words are listed in thier dictonary.  However, they do agree that regardless isn't a fully accepted word yet, stating that it's first usage was around 1927.

-Keith

[jpmeyer]

My American Heritage dictionary doesn't have ironical, but it has the other two.

[Azhrei]

Ironical is acceptable, if painful on the ears. It's less common than ironic and very few people use it, particularly since it's more difficult to actually say and has more letters to wrte..

I teach 9th grade English. None of you knows my pain.  NONE OF YOU.

It's even worse because I am probably the only person who has ever used his knowledge of English grammar and vocabulary to help with his Latin, and not vice versa.

http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html

This is the greatest thing on the Internet. Learn it, live it, love it.

[Gandalf_The_White_1]

Adjective vs adverb.  That LIKE SO PISSES ME OFF.

He runs fast.  I did good, etc, DRIVE ME INSANE.  A close second would probably be comma splices.

I have no problem with abbreviations or 1337, but many of the other things posted such as mispelt homonyms, screwed up contractions/apostrophes bother me as well.  

Little SPELLING mistakes in posts don't bother me very much unless they are excessive; we all make them from time to time and it is understandable.  When something is difficult to read due to excessive errors it is not.

[Machinus]

To emphasize that, I would say that grammar and construction errors are much much more annoying than spelling ones. If a person doesn't know how to form a proper sentence, that is much more irritating than if they misspell words. The english language is relatively flexible when it comes to construction, but very inflexible and difficult in terms of spelling.

[Shock Wave]

Ohh, you boys haven't touched on the real heart of all my pain- words that don't exist.



I'm talking about orientate.  I'm talking about regardless.  And I'm even talking about ironical, which may or may not be a word depending upon who you talk to (or, alternatively, to whom you speak).  All three were words said by my English 101 teacher, who consequently made my decision to go into another major.  He was terrible.

It's interesting Webster.com would seem to dissagree with you.  It seems all the words are listed in thier dictonary.  However, they do agree that regardless isn't a fully accepted word yet, stating that it's first usage was around 1927.

-Keith

"Irregardless" is listed in both webster and dictionary.com . However, both explicitly state that the word is improper or unstandard, and rightfully so. We already have the word "regardless", thus "regardless" serves absolutely no purpose. If you say the word, it just sounds wrong, as double-negatives generally do.

Here's one that drives me insane: "I seen this awesome movie last week..."

I hear a lot of juveniles/thug/thugettes use that terrible syntax. I know this is totally off topic, but I'm convinced that this hiphop craze is a serious factor in the literacy aptitude issues arising in the young generations of kids these days.

[dicemanx]

Two things that irk me, although they are more subtle errors:

1. Knowing when to use "I" vs "me". For example:

My friend drove John and I to the mall (wrong, it's "John and me").

2. The phrase "off". For example:

The ball bounced off the wall (it should be: "The ball bounced off the wall")

[Bram]

I really hate misuse of the word 'got.' I mean, c'mon people.

'I got an Ancestral for my birthday' is the only way to use the word.

'You got to be kidding' and 'I got game' are not correct. 'Having' is a cool verb, man. Use it.

On on more or less the same note: people who pronounce 'ask' like 'aks' really piss me off. Especially when they're not from the 'hood.

[rvs]

I think it's funny how Bram has 6 (!) posts in here complaining about the english language and its misuse, making up well over 20% of the whole topic.
It is also clear that he simply has NOTHING to do at the nuclear power plant, since he randomly overtook me in # of posts since the semester started. This is particularly ironic since everybody always complains how I have nothing to do when any given semester starts

At least I'm still the king of going off-topic.

[dandan]

I'll post here what I sent to Jacob Orlove in a PM (talking about using 'they' rather than 'he or she' - something very relevant in the Card Creaction Forum)

Jacob said
"While it it common to use "they" in that manner, it is not actually grammatically correct. We are not yet at the point where common use has trumped common sense for this particular case."

I replied
"You got me reaching for a few English textbooks

How English Works by Swan and Walter
"We can also use they, them and their(s) to refer to a single indefinite person"

Merriam Webster says
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=they

Note that it is very hard to avoid the pronoun in cases like

Nobody will believe me unless I show them the picture.
Some idiot has taken my bag and left me theirs!

Perhaps this is an English / American difference but it is both commonly used and correct in English rather than American English parts of the world. I suspect it is also correct in American too. I would be interested what Matt and Azhrei have to say on it as they are pretty hot on this sort of stuff.
Perhaps my point of view is just different because of the time I spent teaching English as a foreign language. In this application, the way English is used and should be used to sound as natural as possible is more important than what is technically correct (Do you teach 'He is taller than I' or 'He is taller than me'? I teach both and say the latter is more commonly used whilst the first is considered to be correct by scholars but sounds odd to most people).
Anyway this discussion has no place in the thread although it wasn't actually me who brought it up (see? Just how odd would 'it wasn't actually I who brought it up' sound, despite being obviously nominative?)

I would be interested to know if there is a definitive answer on this one, although common English tends to trample the wishes of wiser men without mercy.

Dandan"

Jacob pointed out that Skunk and White were against it but I'm glad to see Azhrei's wonderful English errors link backs my opinion. This is a grey gray area of English though.......

I hate anyone referring to English as British English (when comparing it to American English). What is this British English? English and Welsh, Scots Gaelic, Irish Gaelic, Manx and Cornish? Call it what it is, English English and if that offends your ears, use what is between them and just call it English.

I really really hate Dutch people being so good at English. Really. I'm not just saying that, I really dislike it. Just rub it in, show us how bad we are at languages! The Swedes are great at English but despite their near perfect English they don't understand double-meanings at all. Talk about how a farmer manhandled his cock and they'll have sympathy for the poor bird. The Dutch not only understand it, they use English in this way.

I can't believe nobody has mentioned the word 'loose'. Azhrei really has an impossible job trying to get kids to use Present Perfect and the opposite of 'win'.

I'll shut up now.

Edit - spelling is tech (especially in this thread), actually this one was more of a typo.