# Post your minor/petty pittings here!
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-minor-petty-pittings-here/173267
**Category:** The BBQ Pit
**Created:** [May 5, 2003, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-minor-petty-pittings-here/173267 "2003-05-05T20:49:03Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@samarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samarm)
#### Post date: [May 5, 2003, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-minor-petty-pittings-here/173267/1 "2003-05-05T20:49:03Z")
None of these are worthy of an individual pitting, but they are all things I find occasionally slightly annoying. Please don’t take offense if you are mentioned here - I love you all, really!
**irishgirl** - Would it kill you to use the shift key?
**Lobsang** - Quit it with the lame rants! If you’re gonna rant then put some venom into it, man!
**C K Dexter Haven** - Whats with the "\<\<"s and "\>\>"s? Learn to love the “Quote” button!
**Eutychus** - Why do you have to be such a nice guy? Couldn’t you start swearing more when closing threads, or something? You’re not nearly evil enough to be a mod!
Err… I kind of ran out of steam there. In fact, I’m in danger of being accused of a lame pitting, myself. It’s a start, though. Any more?
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### Author:  [@stypticus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stypticus)
#### Post date: [May 5, 2003, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-minor-petty-pittings-here/173267/2 "2003-05-05T21:07:25Z")
Hell yeah. **samarm** , quit it with the lame pittings!
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### Author:  [@samarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samarm)
#### Post date: [May 5, 2003, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-minor-petty-pittings-here/173267/3 "2003-05-05T21:55:50Z")
Is this one of those ::hangs head in shame:: moments?
Did I step over a line in the sand?
You know, this is only supposed to be half-kidding… I hope I haven’t offended anyone!
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### Author:  [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)
#### Post date: [May 5, 2003, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-minor-petty-pittings-here/173267/4 "2003-05-05T21:59:39Z")
And another thing!
What’s all this hubbub about sax and violens on TV?
:rolleyes:
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### Author:  [@look\_ninjas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/look_ninjas)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2003, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-minor-petty-pittings-here/173267/5 "2003-05-06T01:16:30Z")
Man, I’m so fucking offended, **Samarm** … 😃
So offended I’m going to go make some cocoa. _And there’s nothing you can do about it!_
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### Author:  [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2003, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-minor-petty-pittings-here/173267/6 "2003-05-06T02:05:35Z")
samarm: Would it kill you to use the singular form of the verb so that it would actually agree with its subject?
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### Author:  [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2003, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-minor-petty-pittings-here/173267/7 "2003-05-06T02:12:11Z")
No, no, you got it confused with _Macbeth_: too much Saxon violence.
My pet peeve is people who post definitions from the dictionary, as if such an utterly inane act of pedantic masturbation could be remotely regarded as a rhetorical device! GOD, that pisses me off!
Guy did that must last month, but I hacked the Boards and got his real name and address, and well, let’s just say we won’t be having _that_ little problem any more, not from him at any…
Of course, that may be TMI.
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### Author:  [@Brutus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brutus)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2003, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-minor-petty-pittings-here/173267/8 "2003-05-06T02:21:09Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by elucidator \*
> No, no, you got it confused with _Macbeth_: too much Saxon violence.
>
> My pet peeve is people who post definitions from the dictionary, as if such an utterly inane act of pedantic masturbation could be remotely regarded as a rhetorical device! GOD, that pisses me off!
>
> Guy did that must last month, but **I** hacked the Boards and got his real name and address, and well, let’s just say we won’t be having _that_ little problem any more, not from him at any…
>
> Of course, that may be TMI.
**I**
1 ( P ) Pronunciation Key ()
pron.
Used to refer to oneself as speaker or writer.
## n. pl. I’s The self; the ego.
[Middle English, from Old English ic. See eg in Indo-European Roots.]
Usage Note: The question of when to use nominative forms of the personal pronouns (for example, I, she, they) and when to use objective forms (for example, me, her, them) has always created controversy among grammarians and uncertainty among speakers and writers. There is no problem when the pronoun stands alone with a single verb or preposition: every native speaker says I (not me) read the book; They told him (not he); The company bought a computer for us (not we); and so forth. But the decision is more problematic in other environments. ·When pronouns are joined with other nouns or pronouns by and or or, there is a widespread tendency to use the objective form even when the phrase is the subject of the sentence: Tom and her are not speaking to each other. This usage is natural in colloquial speech, but the nominative forms should be used in formal speech and writing: John and she (not her) will be giving the talk. ·When pronouns joined by a conjunction occur as the object of a preposition such as between, according to, or like, many people use the nominative form where the traditional grammatical rule would require the objective; they say between you and I rather than between you and me, and so forth. Many critics have seen this construction as originating in a hypercorrection, whereby speakers who have been taught to say It is I instead of It is me come further to assume that correctness also requires between you and I in place of between you and me. This explanation of the tendency cannot be the whole story, inasmuch as the phrase between you and I occurs in Shakespeare, centuries before the prescriptive rules requiring It is I and the like were formulated. But the between you and I construction is nonetheless widely regarded as a marker of grammatical ignorance and is best avoided. ·In other contexts the traditional insistence that the nominative form be used is more difficult to defend. The objective form sounds most natural when the pronoun is not grammatically related to an accompanying verb or preposition. Thus, in response to the question “Who cut down the cherry tree?” we more colloquially say “Me,” even though some grammarians have argued that I must be correct here by analogy to the form “I did” and few speakers would accept that the sentence What, me worry? is improved if it is changed to What, I worry?..
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### Author:  [@samarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samarm)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2003, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-minor-petty-pittings-here/173267/9 "2003-05-06T02:25:04Z")
Oh boy. **elucidator** : You know what to do.
**Brutus** : I hope you have a strong lock on your door.
**Monty** : Me fail Enlgish? That’s unpossible! Seriously though, which bit of my OP was grammatically incorrect? Grammer is not my strong point. (I seriously want to know - I’m not being sarcastic!).
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### Author:  [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2003, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-minor-petty-pittings-here/173267/10 "2003-05-06T02:32:44Z")
samarm: “none…are” is incorrect. Be happy, though, that you didn’t post something I hear all too often: “Her and her friend are going shopping.” Excuse me while I go scratch my fingernails on a chalkboard to rid my ears of that phrase.
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### Author:  [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2003, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-minor-petty-pittings-here/173267/11 "2003-05-06T02:41:26Z")
Kill… **Brutus** …must…kill… **Brutus** … **Brutus** evil…
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### Author:  [@Brutus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brutus)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2003, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-minor-petty-pittings-here/173267/12 "2003-05-06T02:51:29Z")
Hrmmm. Oh well, no point fighting fate…
My will goes as follows:
I, **Brutus** , being of sound and sexy body, do make and declare my last will and testament as follows:
I. To the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, my signed copy of _Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich_.
II. To my neighbors cat, 8 rounds of Federal Hydrashock 230gr .45 ammuntion, to be delivered via 1911-injection.
III…Damn. For how much money I make, I don’t have a lot of stuff that I would be willing to part with, even when dead. **Elucidator** , lets just call it off, for now. I need to sell some stuff or buy some stuff or something.
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### Author:  [@Pedro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pedro)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2003, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-minor-petty-pittings-here/173267/13 "2003-05-06T04:08:06Z")
The most annoying spelling mistake of all has to be _Grammer_. That’s worthy of an entire pit post if you ask me. Unless you were being ironic.
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### Author:  [@samarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samarm)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2003, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-minor-petty-pittings-here/173267/14 "2003-05-06T04:17:11Z")
Aghh! No, I wasn’t being ironic. I can’t believe I misspelled that word. It is a pet peeve of mine, also.
I should have known that starting a pit thread about minor/petty habits would come come back and bite me.
**Brutus** : If you’ve got any of that ammo spare, would you shoot this thread to put it out of it’s misery?
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### Author:  [@Desmostylus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desmostylus)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2003, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-minor-petty-pittings-here/173267/15 "2003-05-06T04:41:13Z")
People that don’t use “its” properly.
As in “put it out of **its** misery.”
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### Author:  [@samarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samarm)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2003, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-minor-petty-pittings-here/173267/16 "2003-05-06T04:44:16Z")
Did I mess up the grammar? I thought “it’s” was correct? Or am I being whooshed?
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### Author:  [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2003, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-minor-petty-pittings-here/173267/17 "2003-05-06T04:47:04Z")
**Desmostylus** is correct. “It’s” is the contraction of “it is”. The possesive form is “its”. Possesive pronouns do not have the apostrophe, such as “hers” and “yours”.
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### Author:  [@samarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samarm)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2003, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-minor-petty-pittings-here/173267/18 "2003-05-06T04:50:02Z")
Ahh fuck it.
**samarm** - Would it kill you to learn some basic grammar and spelling?
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### Author:  [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2003, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-minor-petty-pittings-here/173267/19 "2003-05-06T05:46:48Z")
> [@](#):
>
> C K Dexter Haven - Whats with the "\<\<"s and "\>\>"s? Learn to love the “Quote” button!
In case anyone’s interested, this is a holdover from the old AOL message boards. It was the only way we COULD quote for a long time.
In the same vein, I have my own holdovers…for instance, I will capitalize words instead of bolding them, or in the case of I, I’ll surround it with _asterisks_. I was somewhat active in a couple of newsgroups, and I got in the habit of using /slash marks/ instead of _italics_ and _underlines_ instead of underlines. Don’t think of it as an annoying habit, think of it as quaint habits that your elders have.
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### Author:  [@j\_kat\_251](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j_kat_251)
#### Post date: [May 6, 2003, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/post-your-minor-petty-pittings-here/173267/20 "2003-05-06T05:58:44Z")
Well what kind of person uses the name Lynn Bodoni? Imagine how some poor sap would feel addressing a letter to her, only to discover it’s some sort of elitist publishing joke. And that other administrator, this Arnold guy. Ancient Swede warrior I DON’T THINK SO. It’s so cruel and also in a similar fashion unusual.
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