I shudder when I hear people say “12:00 p.m.” when they mean “Noon.” So many people do not realize that both 12:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. mean midnight.
Got a cite for that, kemosabe? Wiki backs you up when you say noon isn’t 12 pm, but it refutes you when you say midnight is both 12 am and pm. Apparently noon and midnight are neither am nor pm in the strictest sense.
What? I always thought 12 am was noon. It is the next in the series of 10 am, 11 am. Just logically 12 am should be noon. I realize I may be wrong in this, but it makes sense in my head.
I really don’t get how (or why) both would mean the midnight.
“12 a.m.” literally means “12 before noon”, so it can’t be noon itself. I don’t understand what’s so hard about writing “12 noon”.
(And 12.01 am is one minute after midnight; 12.02 am is two minutes after midnight; etc.; so 12.00 am should be midnight as the end of that sequence.)
The one that makes me cringe is ‘affect’ for ‘effect’ and vice-versa. That and people who go around constantly loosing things.
The number of grammatical pet peeves you could mention is almost infinite.
Oh, I think it’s more than infinite…
No it doesn’t; it *rebuts * you.
“Rebut” means “argue the contrary position”, which is what Wiki does here.
“Refute” means “*prove * to be wrong”. A Wiki quote is not *proof * of anything.
An example of one of *my * pet peeves!
OMG, does this drive me crazy, too. I just posted about it in a Pit thread the other day. The thing that drives me the most crazy about it is that people do it because they think using “me” in that sense makes them sound uneducated. A friend of mine said to me, “It just sounds so hillbilly…me and Buford went to the store.” Right, it does sound hillbilly…because THAT isn’t the correct way to use the word ME! “Me” is a direct object. It’s not correct to say “Me and Buford went to the store,” but it IS correct to say, “Mom drove me and Buford to the store.”
I’ve noticed a general trend of avoiding or minimizing the use of the word “I,” and I’m not sure where it comes from. Often there are posts that start, “Bought the new Harry Potter book today…” or “Picked up my kid after the first day or school…” Why not say “I bought” or “I picked up”?
Sometimes it’s a sentence where the dropped pronoun could apply equally well to “I” or “we,” and you don’t find out which until later in the paragraph.
I wonder if this has something to do with not wanting to appear too egotistical by overusing the word I. Perhaps substituting “hopefully” for “I hope” has the same cause.
Thank you. No, seriously. I’ll remember that.
Less stuff, fewer things. It seems like very few people understand the difference anymore and just use “less” for everything. Like nails on a blackboard.
I never understood the hate for modifiers of absolutes (more perfect, etc.). Sometimes, emphasis is needed, and those modifiers are a simple, economical way to get that done.
“Please wait until the ride comes to a complete stop.” One word–complete–accomplishes a lot: “Seriously. This thing will take your arm off.”
Mine: the ups. Cleanup, Bootup, Setup, etc.
Generally, if it’s a noun, it’s all one word: “Sally made Bob deal with the cleanup.”
If it’s a verb, it’s two words: “Sally made Bob clean up.”
I just thought of another one. The local Giant supermarket constantly advertises food items at “Better than half price” when it means “Less than half price.” I think most people would interpret “better than half” to mean “more than half.”
You know what irritates me? People saying that something can’t be “more unique”. Anything larger than the molecular scale is unique, but some things are more unique than others. Every single grad student’s desk is unique, in that they all have slightly different arrangements of atoms. Even the two empty, unused desks in my office are unique, in that sense. But mine’s the only desk with several assorted Rubic’s Cube-type puzzles, a plasma sphere, a coin vortex, a jigsaw puzzle globe, a homemade lightsabre, a glass Klein bottle, a binary-coded clock, and a Star Wars light-up sound-effect yoyo. My desk is therefore more unique than most.
On the “12 PM” question: Strictly speaking, the exact moments of noon and midnight cannot be assigned to AM nor PM. However, whenever your clock is displaying 12:00 noon, it’s PM, and whenever your clock is displaying 12:00 midnight, it’s AM.
And I’ll understand the complaint about “fewer” vs. “less” when people start calling < the “fewer than sign”. 1 < 4, so one apple is less than four apples.
I prefer to leave out both the hyphen and the space and combine the words, like they do in German. Not grammatical, but makes a lot more sense. Ironingboard. Saddlesore. Familyoriented. Okay, not that last one 
It seems about 75% of companies have a hold recording that says, “all of our salespeople are with another customer”, or “all our salespeople are on another call” Really, all of them, with one customer? That must be one special customer.
As far as the fewer vs. less part, I was taught that anything that can be counted would be fewer, as in a fewer number of apples. You can have **fewer cups ** of sugar, but less sugar.
Disclaimer: It is my assertion that any grammatical error in this post is intentional, please don’t feel the need to point them out. 
But numbers aren’t things, they’re a measurement. So one apple is fewer (in quantity) than four apples but 1 is less (in magnitude) than 4. I will admit that they gloss over the difference in math class but it’s not illogical. (and, yes, yes, grammar evolves over time, etc. but it still bugs me)
(ETA: To expand on tremorviolet’s point…)
< is a math term, not an English composition term. It’s apples and oranges, if you’ll forgive the phrase.
1 is a smaller number than 4, so using mathematic terminology, it’s “less than,” but that’s before you apply the quantities to objects.
Sally has four apples. Mike has three apples. Mike has fewer apples.
Sally has four apples. Mike has three oranges. Mike has less fruit.
English composition needs both terms because it deals with things that can’t be quantified with numbers. Take traffic, for example. You can’t say there is four traffic on Highway 4 and one traffic on Highway 1, nor can you say Highway 4 has fewer traffic than Highway 1. Fewer cars, less traffic.
You think that’s bad? How about “Sally gave a blowjob to myself and Bob”.
:o :eek: :smack: