I hate me some homophones. They’re/There/Their, and Then/Than are the worst offenders with the Write/Right duo giving them a run for [del]they’re[/del] [del]there[/del] (sounds of unintelligible muttering in an unsavory tone) their money.
I know they’re different words that just happen to sound the same, but they trip my crap up. Apparently I think of words in sounds, so when I type my brain just goes and fetches a combination of letters that make that sound and that’s it.
So while, phonetically there is no difference between writing a letter and righting a letter, grammatically there is a huge difference.
So one way leaves me an erudite and articulate pundit, and the other a drooling moron who probably needs to shower. I seldom notice the drooling moron ones until I can’t do anything about them, except vow revenge.
When I’m English dictator, homophones will be first against the wall.
The difference actually isn’t grammatical–it’s semantic (because it’s lexical). In fact, in this particular example, because both are grammatical, the two phrases could conceivably be confused, in that it’s possible to right a letter in the sense of “correcting” it.
Anyway, you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself if you make an error such as between their/there/they’re. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not an indication of lack of education or that one is a “drooling moron” for making such oversights. It’s just a lack of proofreading or sign that a person was writing in great haste or with laziness. It’s just a spelling error.
Who/whom and lay/lie. I have to look them up every damned time. Someone on the dope even gave me an (at the time) excellent mnemonic for lay/lie, which of course I promptly forgot.
There are others, and usually, I simply refuse to use my “trip ups” in conversation, instead I’ll use whatever alternative word or phrase will work.
I finally figured out the lay/lie thing after I took a foreign language and actually learned what “direct objects” and “transitive vs. intransitive” verbs were. But I still get messed up on the past tense. Laid, lay, lied, lain, whatever. I have trouble with past participles. It’s all OK until you stick that “had” in there. Had swum? Really, English? And while we’re at it, get a neuter form, too, so we don’t have to keep writing “he or she” when talking about a generic person of unidentified gender.
I did well on whatever SAT II it is that tests grammar. But I did the whole thing by plugging the multiple choice options into each sentence and then muttering it under my breath and picking which one sounded the best.
We do have a neuter form: it. It’s not English’s fault if you don’t like applying it to people.
Apostrophes get me. I’m usually pretty good about it’s and its and I can make Jane and Dick possessive but it takes one or two rewrites to decide whether it should be Sis’ or Sis’s. And if Moses is involved, I tear out my hair because I can never remember whether I’m on the lone apostrophe or the apostrophe S side for historical figures.
This error is the very one I thought of when I read the OP. I was a college graduate teaching my first class when a student pointed out my mistake in using “whomever” in a similar sentence. Thank heavens that I told her that I would double check and get back to her. She was pleased with catching me at a mistake and being right and I learned how valuable it can be to be willing to admit mistakes in a classroom.
The neuter pronoun is not animate. That is just as much a part of English as anything else. Fortunately, the word “they” exists and has been used in the singular since the 17th century, at least.
My bugaboo is commas before quotes. It’s one of the few places where I have to stop and try to remember the rule (something about it being necessary after a verb of declaration, but not elsewhere). It never made sense to me in the first place, since, if we replaced the quote with absolutely anything else, the comma would be unnecessary. Let’s just get rid of it.
I get “I am awake” and “I woke up,” but… basically any other usage sounds wrong to me. Unless it’s right. Fortunately it doesn’t come up often, and I can always use “get up” if I need a workaround.
