I detest when people use quotes when they aren’t quoting. They use them rather than underlining or using italics. I don’t like to format either, but I can think of at least ONE other alternative to quotes when showing emphasis.
Firstly, most of the people whom I’ve heard saying this adopt the same tone of voice they used to ten years ago when they said, “I couldn’t care less.” And I think that if I asked them what they mean by “I could care less” they would be unable to supply me with the remaining half of the sentence as you have done. Secondly, “I could care less but not much less” and “I could care less if I cared at all” don’t mean the same thing. How am I supposed to guess which one is implied?
Can a statement of the form “{A} but {B}” be shortened to “{A}”? You know how some people say, “Thanks but no thanks”? What if they decide to shorten the phrase a bit and just say, “Thanks”?
And, in that case, I would agree with you. But my own experience is different. I’ve never used that phrase, or heard it used, except in tones of voice that make the sarcasm evident. YMMV
Don’t mean the same thing? Perhaps not at the literal level, but it’s the nature of sarcasm to be understood as contrary to its literal content.
Certainly, after hearing either of those phrases, you aren’t going to walk away believing that the person was in fact interested in the matter under dicussion.
Sure. Happens all the time when people employ sarcasm. If you hear someone say “Thanks”, or “Thanks a lot” in a sarcastic tone of voice, do you really believe thay are expressing gratitude? If someone receives unwelcome news and exclaims, “Oh, that’s just great!”, do you really believe they are rejoicing?
Without the required tone of voice, I agree with you that the phrase is being misused. (For that reason, it’s not one I would expect to use in print unless I was certain that the context was sufficient to substitute for the missing auditory cues as to my real meaning.) But to me this particular phrase just seems to self-evidently sarcastic, that I can’t imagine it being used as a “straight” utterance. In that case, complaining that this phrase is being ussed contrary to its literal meaning is rather missing the point.
Well, saying “Oh, that’s just great!” doesn’t exactly fit the form “{A} but {B}” shortened to “{A}”. I don’t have a problem with sarcasm! I still think that “thanks but no thanks” and a sarcastic “thanks” have slightly different meanings. (I could elaborate on which circumstances would probably best illustrate these different meanings but this argument is becoming a bit silly now.) I suppose, though, that if you were to say, “I could care less…”, then I would understand that there was an implied “but” or “if” clause and it wouldn’t seem too ungrammatical to me. What I hate about it is just the way people seem to be parroting it out without a clue as to what they mean by it, other than the knowledge that it is supposed to give the hearer a general impression of indifference. You know, like those people who mix up their adages (“a bird in the hand is worth two if by sea”)…
Fair enough. I can’t disagree with you under the circumstances you describe.
And I’m just as happy to let this discussion lapse, as I am constantly worried that sooner or later I’m going to slip up and commit a half-dozen of the other pet peeves that folks have listed in this thread.
(Actually I don;t think anyone has listed my own personal most-common spelling error on the web, which is when I;m typing a contraction and never quite stretch my right hand;s pinkie finger far enough to hit the apostrophe key.)
I quite agree–I’ve also heard someone use the term “conversate” instead of “converse.” Drives me crazy!
My biggest typos seem to be “taht” for “that” and “jsut” for “just.” I annoy myself NO END when I let those slip into a post without noticing (until just after I hit “post” of course). 
“I could care less” is perfectly fine. It is sarcasm and is accepted generally in english usage circles because A) it is sarcasm; and b) it’s intention is quite clear, someone is commenting on their ambilivance and/or disdain of something.
Now explain “head over heels” to me and we’ll call it even.
And how about “julery” for “jewelry?” shudder
I am always irked by the incorrect use of to, too, or two. Is it that hard to remember which one is correct?
Another pet peeve that I see in many e-mails (on a corporate level, no less) is the absence of periods. Call me silly but I find it helpful to know where a sentence ends. Wildest Bill does this all the time when he posts and it drives me crazy.
I’ve seen these here on the boards:
“desparate”
“hypocrasy”
“flaunt”, when “flout” is meant. Yes I know some dictionaries have surrendered and included this definition, but that’s only because so many people got them confused that it got to be fairly common usage. Irregardless will probably show up in these same dictionaries before long.
My own most common typo: Omitting punctuation and capitalization.
Masterbate.
If you can’t spell it, you should not be permitted to do it.
I could be wrong about this, and please feel free to correct me if I am wrong. But, I maintain that it is not correct to use "can not. “Cannot” should be used.
I actually see this one a lot: menage e trois. As with the “masterbate” thing, if you can’t spell it, you can’t do it.
Tretiak, the intention behind all these typos and spelling/grammar mistakes is quite clear. If someone were to make so many mistakes that his actual meaning be obscured, one would probably assume he wasn’t a native English speaker. And it is my greatest fear that these mistakes will one day be accepted generally in English usage. One day we’ll find “lay” as the accepted present tense of “lie”. Apostrophes, punctuation and upper-case letters will all vanish from our language. Words like “ambilivance” will be in our dictionaries…
Here’s a topic-specific one for you; in a baseball thread, including on this board, it is impossible for any discussion of Mark McGwire to not have at least three or four mispellings of his name.
It’s McGwire. Not McGuire, MacGuire, or Megwire.
As will the adverb. I swear to you, noboby uses them any more, especially idiot sportscasters. If I hear another one say “the Redskins played aggressive today” I’m gonna scream.
I make a lot of typos because of my dark, horrible secret: I can’t touch-type. Yes, I have to look at my fingers. Sort of. It’s hard to explain the bizarre way that I type - it involves all of the fingers on my right hand and only two on my left. I can still type pretty fast this way, though not terribly accuratly. And I make a lot of typos because it’s still not as fast as me thinking about what I’m typing.
Also, for some reason, this causes me to invert "ng"s a lot, I think because I am typing the letters with two different hands and sometimes the left wins the race.
I’ve tried umpty-jillion times to learn touch-typing, never with success. I don’t know why it has escaped me for so long.
When I used to edit copy and grade papers in high school, I frequently saw “our” and “are” used interchangably. The majority of the assignments were handwritten, so they didn’t have the Shield of Typo (+3 justification, -2 charisma) to cower behind. I don’t see that one written out very often now that I’ve gotten older and moved away, but it still pops up on the Internet every once in a while. I suppose it might have been attributable to the very flat, very midwestern accent of lower Michigan, which makes “our” and “are,” for all intents and purposes, homophones. Had these people never seen the words in print, though? I mean, come on!