Poor usage of spelling and grammar drives me nuts, especially with those folks whose native tongue is English. Arrggh.
People with cellphones glued to their heads while attempting to negotiate a lane change on the 401 at rush hour, or a left at a busy intersection.
TV networks like TBS Superstation who casually butcher movies with its brutal [i]eight minutes of film, five minutes of commercials/i] pattern. Especially when they edit out content simply to jam more ads into a given time slot. Death to these culture-shredding vampires.
People who say "Nucular" when, in fact, they are saying "Nuclear".
Since we all seem to be annoyed by minor gramar issues, can anyone tell me if the use of commas in my first sentence/paragraph is correct. It is my assumption and understanding that the use of "in fact" is an aside and addition to the sentence and, therefore, is blocked by commas.
The secong paragraph should be read in your best Rex Murphy voice. Which, by the way, adds to my second pet peeve. People who, like Rex Murphy, take 500 word to say what can be said much more clearly in 50. Superfluous is the word I believe.
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The word 'got' is a legitimate word. The way people sometimes use it leaves a lot to be desired.
Whenever I hear someone say something like "I got to go" I cringe. It should be "I've got to go." I need to look up why though as it's been a few years since high school. I know that "I got to go" would be acceptable if someone had asked if you were able to attend the opera or some other event that you thought you might not have been able to. "Did you go to the opera?" "Yes, I got to go."
Dictionnary defines Have got to as a colloquial form of Have to (originin unknown, perhaps s.o. has a bigger dictionnary...). Not to be confused with the preterit of to get. Example at the opera above is a correct use of to get. In all other cases, try to replace with 'have to' and see if it works/sounds right. Isn't grammar bags of fun?
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One more thing. No offence intended to previous posters.
Using the word "like". It was funny in Finding Nemo (You are all like, whoa. And then you were like WHOA. And then you were like whooooa.).
Please come up with a creative way to get around using 'like'. When I sometimes catch myself falling into this common pattern, I slow down and rework my sentences to support alternatives.
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“Maybe some day somebody will call me "Sir" without adding "You're making a scene"!!”
-Homer Simpson
My biggest peeve is people who don't think it important to spell correctly on the internet. In particular, proper use of loose and lose.
I'm with you on this one as well. I'd actually broaden it to include any form of communication, not just the internet. I once had a manager at work send me an email that I could barely understand. It was full of spelling mistakes, random capitalization, and, apart from commas up the yin-yang, no other punctuation. When I explained to him that his email was unclear and difficult to understand he turned to me and said, "So what? Spelling don't matter. You know what I meant." To which I replied, "If I had known what you meant would we be having this converstaion right now?" He just shook his head as if I were the idiot and walked away. This was a man who was making a six figure salary yet he failed to recognize the importance of proper communication skills. Scary.
The other one that you hear all the time is this, "There's a few things I want to go over." Shouldn't that be "There *are* a few things I want to go over???" I hear this all the time on the radio, on the TV news, everywhere. Since when did singular and plural forms become interchangeable?
Hey, I never claimed to not be the bane of someone else's frustration. In fact, aside from almost always miss-spelling "alot", I also know I have trouble with:
its, it's and its',
someone, somebody, everybody
and others that don't come to mind at the moment.
Ain't the English language grand?
Spelling, punctuation (not quite as much but it's all part of the same thing) and overall butchery of the English language is pretty annoying.
My writing style is, apparently, not exactly proper. Like that last sentence. Or that last sentence. Or this one.
But style is different than spelling and punctuation, and we pretty much have to tolerate a wide variety of styles these days.
I blame advertising. Little, if any, commerical copy would pass my Grade 5 English teacher's scrutiny without corrections.
Our beloved computers have to take some of the flack as well. Words like iTunes really don't exist in a proper world of English.
I'm willing to concede that English is a living language, and evolves as we use it. So, if iTunes ever becomes proper and accepted, fine. Some other grammatical errors will never be accepted (I hope).
As for my other peeves:
Using windchill temperatures on the radio and TV exclusively. I don't mind if we get both. If you go from the house to your car in the attached garage, and then to protected parking, you haven't experienced the windchill temp for even a second. How cold was it then? Nobody knows.
What if I want to know if my car will start? Windchill has no effect on cars left overnight. I will admit that the wind will cool a car off faster if you've had it warmed up by driving recently; but it can never go below the actual air temperature no matter what. Ever. The windchill temp is most certainly not the air temperature.
I actually heard my TV announcer tell me it was -100 F in Maine last week. Give me a break.
Sorry to the guys who complained about people who just babble on and on. Guilty.
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