I know! It makes me wonder sometimes when I see really bad spelling and grammar errors on here that these people are college educated and going to be doctors even though they make simple mistakes like that. I know it can be hard typing and I don't always type properly in emails and things like that but some of these mistakes are not just typos. It seems that some people are really that ignorant about their bad grammar and spelling. I'm surprised that this has not been brought up sooner; I have resisted the urge to correct on here many times.

This topic made me think about how I took home and retyped about a dozen of the forms from the SA clinic I worked at because I couldn't stand the spelling and grammar mistakes anymore. It was unprofessional and I could not hand them out the way they were.

My grammar pet peeves: there/their, effect/affect and your/you're.

Me too. Except I call it grammar/spelling police :)

There are way too many people on facebook with annoying statuses/'like's that show up on my newsfeed. I hate getting a million "Hi, I'm a boy and..."

Hi, I'm a girl, and I like to passive aggressively bitch about one or two individuals in my life by generalizing all men as disloyal pigs.

Discreet/discrete is another one that irks me. So does "wallah" or "viola" instead of "voila."

And don't get me started on people who can't type the words "you" or "you're" or "your." Seeing "u" and "ur" really chaps my hide. I refuse to respond to anyone who addresses me with either of those. And when I see "ur" it sounds stupid in my head--hurr durr durr. I automatically deduct IQ points from people who use it.
:boom:


My other bitch? People on forums who don't use the default font. Using purple Comic Sans size 5 bold with center alignment does not make me see the writer as unique or creative; it just makes me want to pinch their (tiny, shrivelled, pea-brained) head off. And I've noticed that the abuse of super-speshul-s'noweflaykke formatting is in directly correlation to the vacuousness and stupidity of the actual comment.

In short: stupid people use "special" formatting. Don't be stupid, kids.

The only grammar/spelling errors that really set me on fire are your/you're, there/their/they're, to/two/too, texting shortcuts (ur, r, etc.) and the most annoying of all: unnecessary apostrophes. O. M. G. When I see things like "Those dog's are so cute!" it makes me want to scream!

Out here in TN we have a lot of people that put things up "for sell". Can't tell you how much I hate that. Or people that want to "ax" a question.

I used to always laugh at this one sign my university had that said, "Please wipe footware before entry." It was there for years, but a few days ago I stopped by and they've fixed it.

Excuse me, but I floss all the time. On the daily, even.

Yes, us Tennesseans are special in that way. :D

Haha you think that's bad? My biology professor last semester mixed up effect/affect on his powerpoints ALL the time! And made many other spelling/grammar mistakes as well.

(I just want to clarify that I'm not bashing my old prof. That course actually helped me decide to pursue science.)

"for sell" or "axing" a question doesn't really bother me unless it's in print. That's just having an accent.


Heh, it's probably a typo but everytime I see someone say 'yada yada yada and viola!' I always get a picture of one of these and it makes me giggle.

http://www.baroquecello.com/images/viola.jpg

My cell biology professor told us that proteins can have different computations three times in one lecture. I stopped paying attention after that and just read the book and taught myself. All of my grammar pet peeves have been addressed already I believe. Let me just add in another "I hate text speak while on forums" opinion.

I hate the fact that my phone has auto correct, but doesn't automatically change "u" to "I" if I hit the wrong button. It's programmed to recognize text speak as correct. Drives me nuts.

As a completely random aside, I hate when people say "I could care less." Really? So you do care? Pretty sure the phrase you're looking for is "I couldn't care less."

Sorry, I'm a little cranky as my ear infection still isn't completely cleared up, and I got shot down from most of the clinics I contacted today.

Yeah I hate that one too. Also bristle at "should of" instead of "should have."

.

"Let's eat Grandma!" "Let's eat, Grandma!" Proper punctuation saves lives!

I have seen "For Sell" (and even "For Sail" once) on many realators marquee. I'm sorry but I'd never buy a house from those real estate agents!!

Not trying to offend. I know that people who did not learn English as a first language, or who grew up in a different country may not know all the spelling/grammar rules. Particularly since most of them have exceptions. I admit that English is a really hard language. As long as they try, that's fine. It is people who are ignorant about it that bug me. People who have grown up speaking and writing English their whole lives and make mistakes they should have learned in Kindergarten. Some fun books for grammar/spelling lovers: Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss, and Crazy English and others by Richard Lederer.

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead -
For goodness sake don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's dose and rose and lose -
Just look them up - and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart -
Come, come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I'd mastered it when I was five!
(by Richard Krogh) http://www.spellingsociety.org/news/media/poems.php

nice video TT :)

My favorite spelling/grammar/English mistakes: My sister's college English professor spelled weird as "wierd" and he didn't know what narcissistic meant, saying it meant "where you see yourself in the world" or something along those lines. I mean, I know my grammar isn't perfect or anything, but at least I don't teach others my poor habits.

A decent amount of the biology professors in my department use incorrect grammar at least once during the class. A few have more frequent mistakes. One of my intro bio professors had at least one mistake in nearly every lecture. He was an awesome teacher otherwise, but the grammar mistakes in the powerpoints behind him distracted me a lot from what he was actually saying.

English is a very difficult language. We have rules, but there are so many exceptions to them that it doesn't seem as if there are any grammar rules at all. The romance languages at least are very structured and predictable. Learning ESL I would imagine would very difficult.

How about some of the other common misconceptions that I have seen (even on this forum)?

For example, you might be so excited about something that you're totally psyched, but you will never be siked - that's not even a word.

A missile will home in on a target, and you may hone (or sharpen) a blade.

It is a MOOT point, not a MUTE point. A mute point would be one made by a deaf person, perhaps?

Breathe and breath, c'mon people.

Passed and past, COME ON people.

Are you feeling fazed by something, or merely going through a phase?

You can rack your gun... and then wrack your brain trying to remember where you put it?

You can try in vain to hit a vein... while sitting on a weather vane. Sorry, that one was difficult.

Speaking of weather (rain, snow, etc.).... I wonder whether I should mention it?

I grow weary when people say they are weary of something rather than WARY of something. My husband does this one all the time. Drives me nuts.

You can pique my interest, but a peak belongs on a mountain.

So I may mix up who's and whose - that's a tough one - or use a phrase like "spitting image" when it's technically "spit and image" just because it's become a habit now, but the things above drive me absolutely batty.

For anyone interested, this site is pretty neat:

http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/

True, true. It just doesn't make much sense. But we have a lot of phrases like that!

I thought sik was a word. Like, "if you don't eat your vegetables, I'm going to sik the tickle monster on you." Then the past tense would be "I got siked by the tickle monster." But it's sik with a short 'i' and not a long one.

Sic is a latin word for "thus"

[sic] is common in newspapers/magazines, and I think it has something to do with an archaic usage? Not entirely sure on that one.

"Sic 'em" is actually a derivative of "seek him" so that's techically slang too and should be on TT's quite comprehensive list.

As far as I can think of, there is no siK that means anything, just sic.

"sic" is used by publications when quoting verbatim, either spoken or written, when that quote includes errors (so the publication is not accused of making the mistake).

twelvetigers, that video went straight onto facebook for all my friends to watch and learn from. I loved it.

While we're still on the topic of grammar this is one I hear all the time that makes me want to jam a screwdriver through my skull: "I seen..." No. You SAW it happen or you HAVE seen it before.

I always use who's and whose incorrectly as well, so I generally just try and figure out how to reword the sentence so I don't have to use it and look silly if it's wrong.

Speaking of "it's": It's is the contraction of "it is." Its is the possessive form.

Um, if you can replace the word with "who is" or "who has" then you should use who's. Whose is possessive.

It's the same as the it's/its example you said.

How about redundancies? Homage to George Carlin

hot water heater, atm machine, pin number, free gift, prior history, bare naked, future potential, revert back, etc......

Mom's favorite: flammable, inflammable, non-flammable. Why 3 words? either it 'flams" or it doesn't

I also like to read the Sophie Kinsella novels, which are set in London. I'll admit to needing an "English to English" dictionary now and then.

Effect/affect is my biggest grammar pet peeve, so I always double check myself when I use either.

English was my second language, although now I'm more fluent in English than my native language, but I always have problems with pronunciation of words I haven't heard before (or I may just be stupid...:)). I used to say equivalent as "ee-qui-vay-lent." I've also had trouble with drug pronunciations (cefazolin as cee-fa-zoh-lin), so future fellow classmates please tell me when I say things wrong! :D

I'm sorry, this drives me crazy. It's the the contraction of it is. Its is possessive. I used to find it hard to remember until it was pointed out that its is like his and hers. I hate seeing an apostrophe used as plural. A facebook friend pointed out that " you only need to use an apostrophe for plurals in words that end in vowels such as photo's" I am so glad we have places like facebook to teach grammar.

Wow... I'm an idiot. I totally meant the contraction. I suck. Serves me right for making fun of other people's grammar. I definitely did NOT mean plural (and I can't even think of an example where it could be used as a plural since then it would just be 'those' or 'they' or 'things' or something like that. But I may just be being an extra idiot by saying that). I finally learned and remembered it from the stupid strongbad song "ooooh if you want it to be possessive it's just i-t-s, if you want it to be a contraction then it's i-t apostrophe ssssss".

And I can work through the difference of who's vs whose, I just choose not to. :P It doesn't come naturally to me, therefore I don't use it.

You're not an idiot. It's just that my mom is a teacher, and self appointed member of grammar police. I can't let her into one nearby produce market to buy greens for our rabbits, because they sell "roman letus".

I was helping an ex's family move. He said something about the "chester drawers" with a thick country slur.

Me: Did you just say chester drawers?

Him: Yeah (said with the tone that conveys I'm the dumb ass) They're named after that guy Chester. That's why they're called Chester drawers.

Me: Uh, actually they are called chest of drawers, often smushed into chest-o-drawers.

Him: Where the hell did you come up with that?

I think this was the pivotal moment I realized we just weren't going to work out.

Chester was a neighbor of Round John Virgin, the guy from Silent Night.

Growing up, my mom always pronounced the word "crooked" as "crookerd"... and so I did also. Until my entire first grade class pointed it out to me. I am still traumatized. :-/

:laugh::laugh: Bless my mother... who obviously learned from my late grandma... she always said "aluminum foil" as "Al-you-mini-uhm fohl" and instructed us to "nuhk" something in the microwave (instead of nuke... is that even something real?)... and my favorite... she called the breed of dog "Pomeranian" a "Pom-er-an-ee-uhm"... My grandma was my favorite person ever.

I don't know if it's a southern thing or a Texas thing, but since I moved down here I noticed a lot of people say "tump" when they mean "dump". For example, "Go tump that bucket of water so we don't get mosquitoes." It drives me nuts!

Not all people who don't use good grammar, or who don't spell words properly, are ignorant though. Some people, like me, are detail-oriented and care about all of that stuff. My fiance, on the other hand, is a big-picture kind of guy and couldn't care less about whether or not he spelled some word right. That doesn't make him ignorant, it just means that if he writes anything he should probably have someone like me proofread.

ETA: I'm surprised no one's said it, but "warsh" is pretty common around here. I've also seen "for sell" quite a bit, as someone mentioned. And you can't go to Missouri without hearing someone call it "Missourah". Riiiiight...

:thumbup: i like to think of the big picture too and if someone else has bad grammar who cares? is it affecting me? nooo. so i get on with my day. Am i the best with grammar? no. Am i smart? yes! if i need to write a professional essay or letter i can do it and not sound retarded. If someone uses bad grammar on a forum who cares, we dont even know if they are using shorthand or not. i def use short hand all the time, but once i noticed more people were grammar nazi's i stopped because i dont want to seem stupid. i dont think this makes the forum more friendly, i bet we're scaring away some lurkers now. And my last point, i post on here all the time but usually my posts are typed up in 1 sec. i'm a fast typer and when i want to write on this forum i just want to get my thoughts out i dont want to have to type slowly and check my mistakes.

you guys have taken over the rant thread with this! i know it's a rant, but have you noticed no one else has written their own personal rant since this long convo started. LET PEOPLE VENT! about non-grammar stuff lol

I reckon either usage could be correct. Actually, tump may be more correct in this instance. Dump implies that you're going to empty the whole thing out somewhere. Tump implies that you just want to turn the bucket over and drain the water out.

If someone told me to dump something I'd ask 'where?' If I was told to tump something I'd be like "cool. Love that word".



Actually, to be pedantic, I think it does affect me! I've started to notice that I start to use grammar and certain incorrect spellings the same way that I hate to see them used. My guess is just from seeing it spelled that way so often, I start to think it's the right way subconsciously. I think it has to do with how I visualize words in my head when I'm trying to spell them. See them on a medium like the internet so often and **** starts to go wrong.

My ex-boyfriend spelled Wednesday like this: Wensday. He's 23 and he got in an argument with me because his was of spelling is the right way. No wonder I dumped him.

He also believed that humans had 23 chromosomes and wouldn't believe me. I'm a biology major! He doesn't trust the internet because he swore microsoft.com would rip him off if he ordered an x-box live card, but on this issue, he told me to send him a website to prove I'm right because books are made of lies.

I'm serious.

I ran into him at a wedding over the weekened. He was being so stupid that I just wanted to dump him all over again. I had to drink to keep from screaming at him. He got "drunk" after two glasses of wine which annoyed me even further.

uhm....at the risk of sounding stupid: Don't we though? I guess you could say 24 if you count an XY combination as two separate chromosomes (instead of a pair) but I always thought 23 was the accepted number.


Edit: Oh unless he was saying 23 individual chromosomes and not pairs.

He swore we had 23 individual chromosomes in our somatic cells AND sex cells.

Haha I will go ahead and rant about something other than grammar.

My new house and roommate are tolerable, but I could not live with her here for more than I already have to (a year... one month down!).

The house is on a hill with no trees on the eastern side, which means the house heats up quickly in the morning and stays warm all day. With a guy downstairs, we don't want to freeze him out, so we don't have the a/c on much, which means it's consistently 80 degrees in our house. Thank goodness I invested in a good fan. Besides the temperature, whoever built the house in the 60s or 70s or whenever decided to put carpet in the bathroom. Talk about the potential to grow nasty things.

My roommate herself is not the most clean of people. Last week there was red sauce dried in the sink for nearly 5 days. There were 2 biscuits sitting on the counter all day yesterday, and are still out now. The cutting board sits out all day every day without being cleaned. The counters are covered in crumbs. Pans sit on the stove without being cleaned for more than a few days.

Her dogs are a pain on top of this. My dog is calm, and I admit that she jumps up, but she doesn't scratch, bite, or slobber all over. Hers jump and kiss and lick and scratch and are just plain gross. I've been headbutted more times than I can count, and my lip has bled from it. On top of this, they bark at every little thing and drink out of the toilet. They also aren't put up at night... meaning they can run all through the house and outside as they please ALL DAY LONG. Freaking annoying... I keep a baby gate up in my door at all times, which my dog can jump over as she pleases, just so they don't eat her food, steal her toys, or drink her water.

:thumbup: :thumbup::thumbup: lol - you actually TOOK the words out of my mouth. Thanks for speaking up. ;)

:thumbup: While I did chime in with the things that bug me the most, I have to agree with this. My husband is very carefree and extremely creative. Things like spelling and grammar do not matter to him. He types quickly and doesn't worry about it, while I will obsess over where a comma should be placed. However, I would take great offense if anyone called him ignorant because of it. He's very intelligent, he just has different priorities. Obviously, if he's writing a professional e-mail or a script he'll have me look over it.

And to keep with the original purpose of the thread, I'll add my own rant. Living 6 hours away from my husband is AWFUL. He left Sunday night, I already missed him during the drive home from the airport, and I won't see him for another month. Going to sleep the first couple of nights without him is rough, so I'm really tired as well. Add the 100+ (103 yesterday!!) heat here lately and I'm just all grump.

My husband spells it 'doller' on his checks. Lol.

No hate here - I know it's not the end of the world. It's good to realize that you've been spelling or saying something wrong, though, because there's always someone ready to pass judgement.

In the rant section... I hate reining new people on busy days!

Nobody was stopping anybody from ranting about anything else in this thread, chill out.

Is it so bad to want to read posts that are supposedly in our native language without feeling like we have to run them through Babelfish???

I admit I ramble a lot and my sentence structure is less than ideal, but I try pretty hard to get my ideas across in a way that people can read and understand without having to interpret a huge block of unformatted AOL-speak on top of it. I'm sorry but when people don't at least make an effort, I don't tend to put any effort into reading their posts either.

You know I love ya, BlacKAT, but a lot of times looking at your posts makes my eyes want to bleed. :meanie:

lol i was actually pretty chill when i wrote that post, maybe reading the text came out wrong. just figured id step in for people who actually want to rant about something other than grammar...and if someone wants to make an angry grammar thread then continue the grammar rant!

ps-love how you compliment and shoot me in the same line haha i guess i should be happy i at least got a compliment from you!!! :laugh:

I want to rant that it's almost 4pm. I've been up since 5am. and I haven't eaten anything yet today.

:mad:

Also, I would like to apologize for any poor grammer I have released into the forum. I do know the different between its/it's and there/their/they're, but I assume that I probably have let them slip before, simply out of laziness (I am a lazy, lazy person) so for any unknown grammer faults, I'm sorry and I'll try to be better. :)

(reading all the rants made me a little self-conscious!)

Tell me about it!

I just watched The Pianist, which I have never seen before. I can not get over it, I am so profoundly shaken, distraught, and angry!

I moved into my apartment the first week of May. It was supposedly "renovated" but I think the people working on it smoked while inside the apartment. So it smelled when I moved in. After 2 months, multiple complete Frebreezings(Extra Strength) of the carpet, candles galore, new air filters, scented air filter gels, bottles of air freshener... THE APARTMENT STILL STINKS! And, ipso facto, I STINK! My clothes and my hair smell like cigary old man, and my friends don't want to come visit, even when i offer to cook dinner... because my damn apartment stinks! I'm so freaking angry! :mad: