The it’s vs its issue annoys me, and I do what I can to combat it. I cover in class on a fairly regular basis, but not more than once per semester. I’ll mention it when I wind up writing one or both on the board at the same time. I’m a math professor.
Period.
As it’s vs its doesn’t bother me too much, here’s my rant: why are people dropping the middle consonant in pronunciations? When I began to pay attention to it, it was “di-in’t”, now it’s “pitcher” for “picture” and “recanize” for “recognize”. Even talking heads on TV are saying this now. It really irritates me.
What grinds my gears is when my choice in a poll turns out to be the most popular choice. Grrr!! I hate being mainstream.
And using an apostrophe where you are trying to express a plural is even worse, as in “Back in the 80’s, we used to…”
Apostrophes are appropriate when pluralizing something like an acronym: NAZI’s.
Same with numbers.
At least we do it right in America:
“Nazi” is arguably an abbreviation, but it’s not an acronym.
I am willing to concede that point.
The one that bothers me more and I see more abuse of is ‘to’ and ‘too’.
Mostly on Facebook.
“We skipped practice. To hot.”
It annoys the hell out of me, to the point where I voted, “I reach for my revolver”, but, truth be told, misuse and/or confusion of “there”, “their”, and “they’re” is worse.
Hotting when you should have been practicing, eh?
What would be the punishment prescribed by this program for misusing conflating in place of confusing?
Considering that people are dropping entire words (“Want to come with?”), maybe they’re going on a trip to Hot Springs, Arkansas.
Prolly not tho. Its just stupidity rearing its ugly head.
Agreed. If the meaning is clear, no biggie.
None, given that conflate in the sense of “to fail to properly distinguish or keep separate; to treat as equivalent” is a dictionary-accepted usage of the word. It may not be the strict original sense of the word, but then, the earliest recorded usage of “conflate” in its most restricted sense (that being to fuse or unite, roughly equivalent to a syncretism) is from 1585, and I can think of few words which have not undergone at least some small change in meaning or appropriate usage over the last half-millennia.
That, and even if conflate were misused (which I think I have argued rather convincingly that it is not), there is a rather large gap between misuse of an esoteric word and failing entirely to grasp the proper usage of a staple component of the English language.
“I do it right. I don’t worry about what other people do.”
Apostrophe’s to pluralize bug’s me to no end.
:duck’s and run’s:
I put the person on my “list.”
As I do when the person writes or says “Just between you and I.”
Or uses the pronunciation “Nucular.”
But many people who commit these sins are very good friends, and I wouldn’t correct them unless they asked me to proofread something for them.
Theirs know way thats werser. :smack: