I hate it when people get “literally” mixed up with “figuratively” or “practically”. Granted, they are spelled and pronounced alike, but they don’t mean the same thing [ironic sentence]. For example, don’t say, “Whoa, dude, my computer got literally fried!” unless it’s been cooked in some kind of fat or oil.
“Oooh this better work or my ass is literally going to be on the chopping block.” Interesting image, though.
“The cold killed half my cattle! My herd’s been literally decimated!” Decimated five times?
I don’t want to make people think like me, I want them to think like me of their own free will.
If you want to drive me up the wall, it’s very affective to get “effect” and “affect” confused. That error effects me deeply, in grammatical ways that you couldn’t begin to understand.
Quand les talons claquent, l’esprit se vide.
Maréchal Lyautey
Arnold, you nailed my favorite peeve.
Another peeve of mine is the mix up of further and farther. They are not interchangable and they do not mean the same thing.
Sigh. Another “get the editors” thread. If all of you will agree to flawlessly observe the distinction between “that” and “which,” “comprise” and “compose” and “anxious” and “eager” – and never, ever use “relatively” when you simply mean “somewhat,” I shall spare you a nice long speech on how underpaid and underappreciated copy editors are
Less vs. fewer. As in, “I have less oranges than you”. No, you have fewer oranges, damnit!
My real peeve is that I often screw up things that I really do know. Sometimes I go back and read things I’ve written to discover I wrote “there” instead of “they’re”, or “its” instead of “it’s”, and I do know the difference!
Another, non-linguistic peeve: I sometimes read a news article in the mass media saying something like, “An F-16 from such and such base…”, while accompanying photo shows a very twin-tailed F-15, or sometimes even an A-6. It seems like they just pull up a stock photo of any old military aircraft at random. One aircraft is pretty much the same as another, I guess.
Chrome Toaster – I was just bickering with my husband about further/farther. We were listening to a song with the lyrics “never been closer to heaven, never been further away.” Should be “farther,” am I right? He says “same difference” (another irritating phrase.)
voguevixen, here’s what my Webster’s says about farther and further:
“usage: According to traditional grammarians, farther should be used only in connection with physical distance, as in They sailed farther down the coast.Further should be used esp. in referring to degree, quantity, or time, as in They fell further into debt. But it should be noted that the distinction between the two terms has often been ignored by writers since the time of Shakespeare.”
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to
improve the world.” - Anne Frank
I made my Mom in Law really mad this summer when she was staying with us, because a news person said “Feb-you-ary” and I said, "that annoys me, when people say ‘Feb-you-ary’, since I had a second grade teach who drilled “Feb-ROO-ary into our heads, and if I had to learn to say it the way it is spelled, everyone should.”
The mom in law got really huffy, and said, “I say Feb-you-ary, and I am sure it is correct.”
So she looked in the dictionary, and, indeed, it is an acceptable pronunciation, since it has been pronounced that way by so many for so long. So I said “Huh! Next thing you know, ‘nook-you-ler’ will be in the dictionary, too, since so many people say it that way. And Li-Berry, too, do you think?” OOh she got mad.
BTW no offense to anyone who says Feb-you-ary, since I do accept that it is an accepted pronunciation. I just love to get the Mom in Law riled on occasion. :0
“A slightly altered view of the world…”
Chrome Toaster
Well, I was going to say that I don’t really have any grammatical pet peeves, but I just heard one (on an NPR news report no less) that just makes me cringe every time I hear it.
“as” vs. “since”
Yeah, yeah. I know Webster’s says it’s okay, but what’s wrong with using “since” if that’s what you mean? People that use “as” that way are usually trying to make themselves sound more intellectual, but they do it at the cost of conciseness.
It’s not orientate, it’s Who will orient the new students?
It’s not could care less. If you could care less, then you do care somewhat. It’s I couldn’t care less if all trollers were buried up to their knees – head first.
My biggest pet peeve is the misspelling of “lose” as “loose”. Also “loser” as “looser”. I had NEVER seen this before I started tooling around the internet. Now it seems I see it daily. Perhaps I should avoid the yahoo chat board. they all all loosers
I often see errors in print and ads with possesives and plurals. For example: The Gilligan’s would like to…; …taking it’s time. It’s really not that hard - " ‘s " is possesive, " s " is plural, " s’ " is plural and possesive.
When people (my boss in particular, but I see politicians & news anchors do it all the time) use myself when they don’t mean to make the verb reflexive.
“If you have any questions, please feel free to talk to either my assistant or myself”.
this may be just a local thing.
but in SE pennsylvania, people say yous
(plural for you)
“are yous guys going to the store?”
aaahhhh!!! i hate that!!!
i also hate people who don’t capitalize
people who don’t capitalize should be shot!!!
there is no excuse for that!
i mean you can’t blame someone for being a poor speller, some people just can’t learn spelling.
but every single person learns about capitol letters in fist grade!
it’s just plain lazyness!
and let’s not forget ending every sentence with exclamation points! that’s like laughing at your own joke! it’s rude!
or, beginning sentences with cunjunctions! that’s just poor form!
People who write in phrases instead of complete sentences. Assume you can follow. Guess the rest of the sentence. I do it from time to time in personal correspondence, mainly for effect. But anytime I’m trying to actually convey a point, I revert to full English. There’s a reason our sentences are constructed the way they are, with all those extra words like subjects and adjectives.
Then there’s a guy on one board who posts in some strange shorthand he developed himself. It is a combination of English words with letters and symbols, sort of like those children’s games using pictures as words and you have to decipher the meaning. He writes like that in every post. I’ve stopped reading anything by him. Even though he has made a few interesting points, I can never understand what he’s saying. Takes too much effort to decrypt.
Speaking of slang, anyone remember “It’s like pink and green”? Don’t know about pink and green, but I know a kid who’s favorite colors are pink and orange.
