I HEAR you, screech-owl! I was about to start this thread precisely because I heard someone say “nuc-you-lur” today. GRRR! “Anyways” gets me, too.
I also hate “Me and him went to the store.” You mean, “He and I went to the store?”
And “I could care less.” When people don’t say it sarcastically, it doesn’t make sense. They mean, “I couldn’t care less,” but they’re too lazy to add that extra syllable.
My grandmother also puts “r” in “wash,” which is especially annoying because I live in Washington state. :rolleyes:
The was/were thing gets on my nerves, too: “There was a dog and a cat on the porch.” That’s not the best example, but I heard a newscaster on NPR make a mistake with was/were yesterday. Luckily for him, he corrected it the second time he did the story.
I have more – I majored in English, after all – but I can’t remember them right now. Lucky you!
I don’t know if this counts as word usage, but I detest official signs and letters that use improper “adspeak” spellings like “thru” instead of “through”. To use an example from right here in Chicago, the emergency evacuation procedure signs in the CTA “L” cars instruct riders, in case of an emergency, to pass “thru” the cars to the first or last car. AAARRGH!
I’m afraid we’ve lost the nauseous/nauseated battle. I believe most dictionaries these days give it as an accepted definition. “Momentarily” has also, I believe, become accepted as meaning “in a moment” rather than “for a moment.” Ah, well, we don’t have a dead language. I’d just rather we didn’t abuse it with such abandon.
When people say “I could care less.” Don’t you mean couldn’t? Ghaaa.
Another one my english teacher pointed out. People often say “I liked how you said…” as opposed to “I liked that you said…” which is sorta describing how you pronounced the word or what you did with your voice.
BTW, maybe I’m a moron, or maybe it’s that I never learned key shortcuts for PCs, but could someone tell me how to bold text when you’re posting stuff on the net? Help me out here.
Saying “artic” for “arctic”. I once saw this “silent c” show up in a different word. A handwritten sign was advertising a Siamese (or some such breed) cat for sale. It was described as “exoctic”.
As robinh pointed out, the use of orientated in place of oriented seems to be on the uprise.
Also, I just spent the day in a class where the instructor repeatedly used the phrase “wordsmithing” to connote writing and editing. I managed not to scream and shove pencils into my eardrums, but I was sorely tempted.
This isn’t really a word peeve, but I’ll post it here anyway. I hate it when people use quotation marks incorrectly, especially for emphasis. For example, the university from which I recently graduated puts banners up on the dorms at the beginning of each school year. The banners say:
Ashton Hall "Welcomes You"
Now, this is an institute of higher learning; you’d think they could use quotation marks correctly. “Ashton Hall says, ‘Welcome!’” would be fine. But this makes it sound like Ashton Hall doesn’t really welcome you, they “welcome you.”
Also, I’ve seen countless signs that say something along the lines of:
We have the “best” prices in town! "Come on in!"
Hello! Use italics, folks! Or bold letters, or a different color, or something – NOT quotation marks!
From my mother-in-law I always get the full treatment. It’s always, "So I says to him, I says. . . " or "I says to her I says. . . " or "She says to me, she says. . . " or “He says to me, he says. . .” All through the story. It’s her version of quotation marks.
And, by the way, where I’m from, it’s not “youze,” it’s “youze guys.” English really suffers from the lack of the distinctive second person plural. Just goes to show that language abhors a vacuum.
What really makes me insane is when the particpial phrase at the beginning of a sentence doesn’t refer to the subject. “Uncertain and afraid, the tornado left the citizens of the town in turmoil.” Excuse me, but who is uncertain and afraid? The way you have written this sentence, it would be the tornado.
Every time I grade a writing assignment, it seems like there’s one mistake made over and over by a large fraction of the students, so that I wish I had a rubber stamp saying, “The plural of spacecraft is spacecraft, not spacecrafts,” or “Don’t put periods in N.A.S.A. and J.P.L.” And there are the ever-popular “your/you’re,” “there/their/they’re” and “its/it’s” stamps.
And, I’ve said it once but it bears repeating: An apostrophe does NOT mean “Here comes an ‘s’!”
Again, a little off subject, but the names of beauty salons often make me groan. “Sheer Brilliance” or “Mane Attraction”. I guess it sort of lends itself to the business, but geez, “To Dye For”??
My mother just got me with “anymore” at the beginning of a sentence. “Anymore, we don’t go to the movies much…” I’ve heard her do it 3 or 4 times that I can recall and it always makes me want to rip my ears off. I have heard this a few other places too, and it seems to be popping up with greater frequency.
I have a friend who calls her vinyl collection “alblums.” The first time I heard it I thought she misspoke, but the word has come up in random conversations over the years, and it’s always the same.
Actually, what’s actually been driving me up the wall over the past year or so is actually the overuse of “actually” as a general purpose intensifier. It’s not actually as prevalent or as aggravating a filler as “like” or “you know”, but it actually makes my hair literally stand on end.
Yes, that’s another irritating usage: my hair didn’t actually–or literally, either–stand on end, although it tries to when “literally” is so increasingly misused.
Hee. A friend and I once amused ourselves for about an hour in the train station joking about this. This and misplaced apostrophes (this particular friend and I started talking because of a mutual dislike of Cheeto’s. I want to what the Cheeto owns). For people annoyed by this, you should go to http://www.juvalamu.com/qmarks/ …it’s SO funny. Someone on that site recommends that, if you see misused quotations marks around an entire phrase (as in: “Have a nice day” or “No smoking please”), you should take it upon yourself (either mentally or with a pen) to attribute the quote, thereby creating “No smoking please” – Abraham Lincoln and “Have a nice day” – John Lennon.
“Save up to 50% off…and more!” What the hell does this mean? Seriously.
There are so many misuses of language and punctuation that bother me. I don’t believe I could even begin to list them all…at least, not without my head exploding.
The absolute WORST is using 's to denote the plural of something. I am SOOOOO sick of seeing Now hiring all shift’s, or We have computer’s for sale! And even seeing decades referred to as the 1980’s kills me.
And would someone please explain, “The more you buy, the more you save”??? Doesnt that basically say, “The more money you get rid of, the more you are keeping”?? Isnt that contradictory? I mean, say you want to spend $20 on something and get a five percent discount…that means you will pay $19…then, you decide instead to get something for $30 with a five percent discount because you will “save” more, you are paying $28.50…which is way more than the original $20 you were going to spend!! So youre NOT “saving” more, youre SPENDING more!
And has anyone ever heard your driver’s license referred to as “them”? When I first got my license and I told someone about it, they asked, “So when did you get them?” I have heard this many times…I figure people hear the “s” sound at the end of the word “license”, and they think that means it is plural. I would love to know if anyone has heard this before.
And I would also love to know the difference in “further” and “farther”…I think that “further” is used waaaay too often when “farther” should have been used instead. I think it is correct to say you are “furthering” your career, but incorrect to say “John went further than Mary did.” Any ideas?
