If we are talking solely about message boards, I’d say simply … “Bite me.”
I’ve dragged this argument out a billion times, so I guess one more time won’t hurt.
When I compose my posts here, I speak in my head, and whatever comes out flows down my arm, through my fingers and onto the keyboard. Homophones sometimes slip in. I’ve used “won” when I meant “one” more times than I can remember.
If a post is generally grammatically correct and the typos don’t appear in every other word, then I’d say you got you panties wound up a little too tightly.
And let’s not forget then vs than. They all annoy me, but that one is definitely the one that makes my skin crawl the most.
While I agree with Jack Batty that I can easily overlook typos, it’s different when it’s obvious (by repeated wrong usage) that someone simply doesn’t know the difference and doesn’t care enough to learn the correct word.
Thank you! Typos I can overlook; those happen to everyone. But the grammatical errors just grate my nerves.
I hate this and I see it all the time, and I didn’t want to nitpick but since the thread’s already here: The proper thing to say is “more or most stupid” not “stupider” or “stupidest”.
There’s currently a thread in Cafe Society right now called Books that start good, end bad. ARRRGGH! That’s wrong! Wrong, wrong! I don’t want to be an ass and go in there simply to correct the grammar of the thread title, but I’m tempted everytime I go into Cafe Society and see it there on the first page.
Take an adjectve; -er makes the comparative, -est makes the superlative. I see, from a quick search, that ‘stupider’ is given as acceptable by the first two relevanthits (for the second one, go to Page 6 - it lists stupid as one of the two-syllable adjectives that conform to the -er -est rule).
Does someone want to bribe Lederer or Safire to contradict that?
This may be a stupider thread than most, but it is by no means the stupidest I’ve ever seen.
Here’s my way of ‘splaining it to my children: “Its,” “his” and “hers” are possessive by definition. You wouldn’t write “it’s tail” anymore than you’d write "his’ tail."
I’d like to take a moment to rant about my biggest grammatical pet peeve:
The word combination “different than” does not exist in English, you drooling knuckledragger!
An object can be “bigger than,” “faster than,” or “heavier than.” Note how these examples mean, “more X than.” It is impossible for one object to have “more different than” another.
Say it correctly, you primates. It’s “different FROM.” And KEEP saying it correctly, or I will follow you home and buy a house in your neighborhood. And you do NOT want me affecting your property values.
On a somewhat similar note, I hate the phrase “same difference” as well. Also, this one isn’t abused as much as your/you’re and the like, but there are a lot of people out there who really need to learn the difference between “imply” and “infer.”
One that always annoys me is “should have went” instead of “should have gone.” Some people, even otherwise apparently educated people seem never to have heard of the past participle.
“Hoard” and “horde”. I’m a D&D player, I see this a lot. A dragon’s wealth is not its “horde”. A barbarian army is not a “hoard”. Thank you for your attention.
“Flaunt” and “flout”. If I see one more person “flaunting” the law…