Misused words that get on your nerves

In My Humble Opinion
161

The one that’s getting to me lately is the news stories about the “alleged shoe-bomber.” The man did not blow up the plane (nor is he an airplane) so he’s not a bomber. Perhaps a would-be bomber, but…

Merriam-Webster

Main Entry: bomb·er
Pronunciation: 'bä-m&r
Function: noun
Date: 1915
1 : one that bombs; specifically : an airplane designed for bombing
The American Heritage

SYLLABICATION: bomb·er
PRONUNCIATION: bmr
NOUN: 1. A combat aircraft designed to carry and drop bombs. 2. One who makes ** and ** sets off bombs.

162

An anniversary occurs only once every year. There is no such thing as a ___ month anniversary.

A person who can control or affect the outcome of an event is resposible for it. The person who receives blame or credit is accountable. You cannot hold someone responsible; you can hold someone accountable.

“Feel” should refer to emotions or physical sensations, not ideas. "I feel that . . . " should be "I think/believe that . . . ".

An ellipsis is three dots separated by spaces ( . . . ), not three dots in a row(…), and should be used solely to indicate that material has been deleted, not for the written equivalent of a dramatic pause.

The sound /h/ is a consonant sound. The correct article to use before words starting with consonant sounds is “a”. It’s a harmonica, not an.

163

As a typesetter/graphic artist, many of my clients are insistent upon using bad grammar.

$5 million dollars. No, that’s redundant.

no, no and no. Commas are fine in a list of multiple objects, but the word before “and” does NOT get a comma.

apostrophe’s. <smack>

Sorry, Doctor. The cliche is “champing at the bit,” not “chomping.” Yes, I know you don’t understand what is meant by “champing” and therefore it must be wrong; apparently you don’t know the phrase. Don’t use it.

Punctuation goes inside quotation marks. Yes, always.

it’s etc., not ect. I don’t care if you pronounce it “excetra,” that’s not the word!

I’m sure I’ll think of more soon.

164

From the Chicago Manual of Style (13th ed.):

Faltering Speech
Ellipsis points seem to suggest faltering or fragmented speech accompanied by confusion, insecurity, distress, or uncertainty, and they should be reserved for that purpose. The dash, on the other hand, suggests some decisiveness and should be reserved for interruptions, abrupt changes in thought, or impatient fractures of grammar without the confusion or indecisiveness suggested by ellipses.

165

From The Chicago Manual of Style (13th ed.):

In a series consisting of three or more elements, the elements are separated by commas. When a conjunction joins the last two elements in a series, a comma is used before the conjunction.

*Attending the conference were Farmer, Johnson, and Kendrick.

The owner, the agent, and the tenant were having an acrimonious discussion.*

From The Chicago Manual of Style (13th ed.):

Periods should be placed within the quotation marks except when single quotation marks are used to set off special terms.

By convention in works of philosophy and theology, terms having special philosophical or theological meaning are often enclosed in single quotation marks. Following punctuation is placed outside the quotation marks.

He had not defined the term ‘categorical imperative’.

The exclamation point should be placed inside the quotation marks, parentheses, or brackets when it is part of the quoted or parenthetical matter; otherwise, it should be place outside.

Her husband replied?calmly?“It is no concern of mine”!

The question mark should be placed inside the quotation marks, parentheses, or brackets only when it is part of the quoted or parenthetical matter.

Why was Farragut trembling when he said, “I’m here to open an inquiry”?

The semicolon should be placed outside quotation marks or parentheses.

  • Curtis assumed that everyone in the room had read “Mr. Prokharchin”; he alluded to it several times during the discussion.*
166

The Straight Dope computer apparently does not like em-dashes made by Apple computers, and has converted the ones I used in my previous post above to question marks.

I will substitute two hyphens. The quotation should be:

Her husband replied–calmly–“It is no concern of mine”!

167

Incest

I get the impression that many people define “incest” as “molestation of a child by an adult relative.” Hence, you get statements like “so-and-so was a vitcim of incest.” Now, I’m not condoning this, but if two relatives, both adults, decide to hook up, is one of them a “victim” of anything (besides poor judgement?)

When people say of abortion, “it should be legal except in cases of rape or incest,” I get the impression that they think the latter is a subset of the former, i.e.: “except in cases where the woman is raped or cases where the woman is raped by a male relative.” This causes the phrase “rape or incest” to get on my nerves too, because they could simply say “rape” and mean the same thing. Or are they saying they specifically want abortion to be allowable in cases where a woman concieves via consensual incest?

I wouldn’t fault anyone for not being able to imagine such a thing as consensual incest. But I suspect that it does exist, and it is not the same thing as child molestation.

168

Just wait 'til I wish my boyfriend* a happy 9th mensiversary! I can see where you’re coming from, what with the root being ‘year’**, but I think the liberalization of the meaning in “9-month anniversary” is clear and understandable. It’s kind of like another touchy word, ‘decimate’; a few sticklers want this verb to mean “reduce to exactly 1/10 the original size,” but most people will accept a less literal usage.

These adjudications seem a little arbitrary to me. Then again, I am also wont to announce that my car “needs washed.” As far as I know, both “hold <person> responsible” and “I feel that . . .” are in common usage among speakers of Standard American English.

As another Doper pointed out to me many moons ago, it depends on your dialect. :wink:

  • hypothetical
    ** I’m deliberately placing the comma after the quote when mentioning a term–even though this is not a theological treatise. ;j
169

The original decimate is to reduce by 1/10th (kill every tenth), not reduce to 1/10th.

Walloon, thanks for the quotes. I always put commas before my "and"s and I tend to use the logical style for quotations, where punctuation is only inside the quotes when the quote had the punctuation to begin with. The Jargon File spells out why pretty well.

I also use elipsis points way too much, but at least I don’t do the triple comma that some 1337s seem so fond of.

170

These have become common usage, and communicate the intended idea. Nonetheless, they continue to annoy the hell out of me.

re the use of an before words beginning with /h/:

In what dialect is /h/ a vowel sound?

This will teach me to post without proofreading. In my haste, I wrote, “An ellipsis . . . should be used solely to indicate that material has been deleted, not for the written equivalent of a dramatic pause.” This was a mistake on my part. Solely should have been primarily. However, the second part of that sentence, which refers to a dramatic pause, agrees with the Chicago Manual of Style. I have no problem with an ellipsis used at the end of an incomplete sentence.

However, the OP asked for usages that we find annoying, and the overuse of the ellipsis is one that annoys me. I see students use ellipses routinely in places where commas or semicolons would suffice. It’s similar to beginning a sentence with a coordinating conjunction. There is nothing wrong with it if it is used sparingly for rhetorical effect, but I’ve seen the overuse and misuse so much that it grates on my nerves every time I see it.
What is a 1337? Does this refer to those who randomly sprinkle nonsense numbers, punctuation, and bizarre spellings in their messages, making them all but incomprensible?

171

D’oh! Thanks, Wikkit. I looked this up in a usage guide shortly after submitting my post, found your definition, and thought, “Naw, that can’t POSSIBLY be right!” Further dictionary scouring has shown me the error of my semantically sloppy ways.

Number Six, I’m referring to some British dialects where word-initial /h/ is weak or absent. Phrases such as “an historic occasion” coming from these speakers sound just fine to me.

Ah, but maybe you’re referring to American speakers who are trying to sound very formal and use “an” for effect. Okay, that usage I do find cringe-inducing.

Regarding the comma-before-‘and’ debate, I stumbled across this excellent example in a usage guide that I regretfully can’t locate now:

“The most inspiring people in my life are my parents, Mother Teresa, and the Pope.”

“The most inspiring people in my life are my parents, Mother Teresa and the Pope.”

I love this example because the comma disambiguates coordination (the first example) from apposition (the second example).

Since I saw this pair of sentences, I’ve been using the comma by default.

172

I worked for this total moron about this time last year who used the word “conceptualize” over and over and over and over and OVER AND OVER again.

If I ever hear it said in real life, I’m gonna smack whoever says it.

173

Great example. You’ve reaffirmed my postion on commas.

Yup. 1337 is short for 31337 which is 1337 for ELEET wich means ‘elite’. It’s really quite dumb, and can be really hard to read at times.

B0// 70 //\Y //\AD 3117 S|<I11Z!!!

etc. That’s not even nearly as bad as it can get.

174

These would sound fine to me also. Article usage is determined by pronunciation, not spelling. If one’s dialect omits the initial /h/, then the first sound of the following word is a vowel, thus the correct usage would be an. However, among certain Americans, particularly among the Northeastern upper-class and those who aspire to sound like them, the aspirated h is treated as if it were a vowel sound, and it is that about which I was complaining. Fortunately, I no longer teach in the Northeast, so I no longer hear that particular annoyance, but “I feel badly” seems to be entreanched in the upper-class wannabes and half-informed grammar pendants

“In 'artford, 'ereford, and 'ampshire, 'urricanes 'ardly 'appen.” Eliza Doolittle, My Fair Lady

So it’s some kind of number substitution code? I see seemingly random punctuation and lettering mixed in a lot also.

The only thing that makes sense to me in that sentence–or whatever it is–is the 1337 (elite), and that only because you just explained it to me.

175

My boyfriend immigrated from India when he was ten and had to learn English as he went along, which I guess explains why he says:

“I’ll be gone about a hour.”

The thing is, he somehow sticks a pause in between “a” and “hour”, so it actually sounds OK, but when I stop and think about it, it drives me nuts!

He also says “soya-milk”, but that’s for another, “mispronounced words” thread.

176

Leet is where you substitute symbols or numbers for letters that look like them. Kind of like a code. Can be quite inventive, but a pain in the neck when used in front of people who just want to communicate, dammit, not slog through a text in medieval Chineese. Used frequently by the type of kid who thinks that if it’s funny once, it’s funny fifty times.

Examples are //\ for M, |< for K, ( for C, |) for D, 5 for S, etc. In “1337” itself, 1=l (small L), 3 = E, and 7 = T (a bad substition if you ask me). It seems that the goal in the more advanced versions of this is to eliminate ALL use of letters, and communicate solely with symbols and numbers.

It’s kind of like a game I used to play (well, still do) with my calculator–see how many words I could make out of the numbers on the keypad. For example, type in 5316606 and turn the calculator upside-down to reveal “goggles”.

And, yeah, this isn’t a REAL hijack, because Leet DOES get on people’s nerves, including mine. (I never knew it was short for ‘elite’ before, though, but that makes sense.)

177

next time I hear someone say “irregardless” I’m gonna’ punch the fucker in the throat.

178

In the oppertunety that something bad will hapend, don’t use the word chance!

“There’s a chance she’ll never see her child again.” RISK i hope!!!

179

Aren’t you nice. Nice mouth too.

180

My pet peeve may seem a littly geeky, but here goes: “Bug” versus “insect.” Any critter of the class Insecta, Phylum Arthropoda is an insect. Bugs are only those insects in the Order Hemiptera. Bugs typically have forewings that are distally hardened and crossed over the dorsal side at rest. They include stinkbugs, bedbugs, boxelderbugs, milkweed bugs, giant water bugs, backswimmers, waterstriders, and cinch bugs. They do NOT include ladybugs or lighningbugs, which are beetles. Pillbugs and sowbugs are crustaceans. And spiders and ticks aren’t insects! And daddy-longlegs aren’t spiders! Sorry, just had to get this all off my chest.

Similar to “ATM Machine,” another common redundancy is “pizza pie.” The word “Pizza” means pie! Also “a dead corpse.” As opposed to living.