The one that grates my craw is “bare with me” – mainly because I don’t realize it’s a typo until I’ve already taken most of my clothes off.
This thread is painful to read.
I’ve tried to correct people on lose/loose and most of the time they insist that loose means to ‘not win’. It fucking does not.
I just remembered a Facebook status I saw the other day.
It read, “I hate men! They always think we’re at their beckon call!”
It makes me laugh to imagine her justifying it in her head… “Yeah, he’s like, beckoning me, right? Sure… beckon call.”
It really depends on what you are using it for.
I am familiar with the phrase as a result of the BBC series To the Manor Born. It refers to someone who is upper-class or entitled. I was not aware of the other phrase “to the manner born” until just now.
You’re giving her way too much credit. Her inner dialogue is probably more like “well I’ve heard people say this and because I’ve never read a book in my life I have no idea what the words mean or how they’re written but this is what it sounds like.”
That’s not journalism, it’s Gizmodo. I don’t care what they call themselves, it’s just a fancy blog. I’ve seen plenty of amateurish articles at sites like Gizmodo, Engadget, LifeHacker and so on.
The sitcom title was a play on words. The main characetr has to move out of the family manor, right? If people are using “to the manor born” sincerely, it’s a mistake along the lines of “just desserts”, in that if you squint at it it can seem to make sense.
Bwahahaha!
Sorry! I just had to express my opinion about journalists being able to get anything right, be it factual or linguistic (a large part of them anyway).
Was he talking about furniture, perchance? I’m not native to the area I’m living in, and I don’t even know if it’s a regional thing, but the first time I heard “living room SOOT” I about emitted a brick. Would they ask for a deluxe hotel SOOT?
Agree about the lose/loose thing. We’re “loosing” the battle, I guess 
Pronouncing guarantee as GAR-antee (rhymes with car), as opposed to GARE-antee (rhymes with hair) is popular all over the place: like the British Isles, and Eastern Canada for example. Come to think of it, probably in Australia and New Zealand too.
That’s not a biggie at all.
We’re also loosing the lie vs. lay battle. You lie down, but lay something down. Yes, lay is also the past tense of lie, which makes it confusing. I grant that. Still, you’re friend is not laying there unless she’s a chicken. OK, I need to go lay down.
First ever post here. I am so glad I am not the only one bothered by this. Looking forward to reading this thread.
Sometimes I feel as though I’m the last person on earth to know that every day is two words when you’re describing how often something happens. I even had an English prof in college try to tell me that it’s always everyday. I also see *discrete *replacing discreet in privacy-related contexts. Some grammar checkers will catch the everyday/every day issue, but there’s not much technology can do about discrete/discreet.
I grew up with so many people misusing discreet and discrete, I still have to look them up any time I want to use them.
I have a friend who took a class in “discreet math”. I will leave the myriad of jokes as an exercise for the reader.
On Futurama, Bender’s dating service is advertised as being “Discreet and Discrete”
Less and fewer. Even a TV station is doing it now. “More movie, less commercials”. A news anchor doing a story about the pound stated “and now we’ll have less animals that need to be destroyed”. How the heck can a JOURNALIST not know?
GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! Fewer, FEWER commercials, FEWER animals. Unless you mean it in the mathematical sense and the movie has NO commercials. (Disclaimer, I make NO pretenses to understanding mathematical terms correctly, so that could be completely incorrect :D).
Confusing ‘less’ and ‘fewer’ doesn’t make sense unless the person doesn’t know what the words mean. I gay-ron-tee it.
Do I get to be the first person to wish flaming death on those who talk about something or someone being a certain way for all intensive purposes? Hot diggity.
This is the one that bugs me the most. Another one that I see alot is congradulations. I’ve even seen it abbreviated as congrads.