spelling pet peeves

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Okay, I’m really going to try to restrain myself. I could go on all day otherwise:

The ubiquitous misuse of apostrophes drives me absolutely apeshit, too. I have no respect for someone who can’t take time to figure out this moronically simple rule. I have only a little understanding for people who confuse its and it’s (but only a little) because ‘its’ doesn’t play by the usual apostrophe rules.

“Employee’s only.” Employee’s only what??? Only refuge from the outside world? Only place to hide from the boss?

“Rock 'n Roll, Stop 'n Go,” etc. Where’s the second apostrophe? There’s two letters missing here. One on each side of that little n.

I Hate It When People Feel The Need To Capitalize Everything In Sight. Like the New York Times’ Headlines, For Example. Welcome to the tail end of the 20th century, NYT. A headline is a complete sentence; it’s not a book title and therefore doesn’t need such excessive capitalization.

The misuse of $ and ¢. I once saw a sign in a video store that stated their intent to charge customers .50¢ if they didn’t rewind the videos after use. I was tempted to toss 'em a penny and say “keep the change, you moron.”

Government misspellings are the worst, though. As if the FBI witholding evidence from Reno doesn’t shake your confidence a little, the way they spell sure will. On an off ramp to a park ‘n’ ride in Colorado, there were two signs flanking each side of the exit. One read “Buses only” and the other read “Busses only.” I can just imagine the thought process that went into that decision: “Well, I’ll be goll-darned iffin I know which is the right one. We’ll just put both up t’be safe-like.”

The park sign outside my apartment reads, “Please clean up after your pet’s.” Aaaaaargh!

And a personal little rant here. If you can’t spell, don’t write. It’s that simple. There’s absolutely no frigging excuse for poor spelling. Dictionaries have been readily available for a few hundred years. USE THEM!

It’s even more frustrating in an on-line format. Every single poster to this board obviously has access to a computer, and I have yet to see a modern computer that doesn’t have MS Word (or equivalent) installed. Write you message in Word and spell check it. Please. Then a quick Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C, ALT+Tab, and a final Ctrl+V, and you’ve selected your entire message, copied it, switched to the SD response window and pasted it. It’s not hard. Do it. Please. This (probably) won’t catch the their-there-they’re errors, or its-it’s, etc., but it will at least catch the blatant screwups.

Oh yeah, and reading your messages for clarity of thought before posting sure would be appreciated!

Now aren’t y’all glad I restrained myself? :slight_smile:

~ Complacency is far more dangerous than outrage ~

22

Stark, that was restrained?

I agree with every word you said.

The Cat In The Hat

23

“Write you message in Word and spell check it.”

It obviously doesn’t catch the you/your thing either. Sorry, I just had to do that. I do however, agree with you completely.

Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
- Ambrose Bierce

24

CatInHat:
Yeah, that was restrained. You don’t want to see me in full-fledged rant mode! That was but a meager sampling of the bitter bile I’ve built up over language slaughtering.

UncleBeer:
I saw that mistake myself after I’d posted. You have no idea how hard I was hoping no one would catch it. Nothing makes me feel like an ass more than doing the very thing I’m accusing others of! Pissshitfuckdamn. Congrats, though, on your proofreader’s eye.

~ Complacency is far more dangerous than outrage ~

25

The thing that really ticks me off is when it’s obvious that someone used Spell-Check on something and then didn’t bother to proofread it. This shows up in our local newspaper all the time. One of these days I’m going to proofread and correct the stupid thing and send it back to them. I can’t stand people who make a living using the language and can’t put out the effort to use it correctly.

26

Not exactly spelling, but punctuation:

People who use quotes for emphasis.

We have the “best” pizza in town!
Oh yeah? So not really the best…?

Also, people who type like this: How r u 2day? I’m gr8!

>^,^<
“Cluemobile? You’ve got a pickup…”
OpalCat’s site: http://fathom.org/opalcat
The Teeming Millions Homepage: fathom.org/teemingmillions

27

I hate in when some “people” put there name on there mAilBoxand thenthe ’ afterit. Like "the Billingham’s "

Makes me ask the Billingham’s what? House?Mailbox?AndI don’nnt like it at all whenI attemtto irritateby spelligbad delibiritelu.

28

Hear, hear, Opal! The emphasizing use of quotes bugs the crud out of me. As does misuse of apostrophes. Arrgh! Funny, yesterday at a teaching inservice, the bathroom door was labeled “Womens.” That’s one of the few times I’ve ever seen an apostrophe omitted when needed (excepting the its/it’s thing) rather than added when not.

My spelling pet peeves: weird as “wierd,” choir as “chior,” coming as “comming,” many as “manny,” (which is a Mexican nickname–for what original name IDR–as well as the name of a great Mexican restaurant) and cool as “kewl.”

Grumble, grumble.

“Me fail English? That’s unpossible!”

“English? Who needs that? I’m never going to England.”

29

I was in my English teacher’s room after school as he was grading papers. All of a sudden, he started hysterically laughing. I inquired. He showed me a paper in which the kid had written “For all in tents and porposes…”

Dolphins and campers–what a combo!

I don’t know who first said “everyone’s a critic,” but I think it’s a really stupid saying.

30

And yes, all you jumpy asswipes, I know that it’s spelled “porpoises.” Phonetically, though, it’s the same, making it amusing to hear.

31

LauraRea is RIGHT! Nobody should use “kewl”!

It’s mine! MINE!

– Bob Kew :slight_smile:

Bob the Random Expert
“If we don’t have the answer, we’ll make one up.”

32

ammendment. Many Great Debates posters are guilty of this one.

Never regret what seemed like a good idea at the time.

33

Mine is when people don’t know the difference between to, too and two. So simple, too!

34

I’m an editor, so I have dozens of these, but one I see frequently on the 'Net is the confusion between “loose” and “lose.” All the time, it’s “my cat is loosing his hair” – although I suppose that could be true – or “I’m loosing my mind!”

Catrandom

35

To Catrandom; When I would make a goof like this in junior English, in high school, the teacher would write, in red pen, “ww” meaning “wrong word.” I learned the distinction between similar words years ago, and found it to be more critical in other languages–especially Hebrew and Arabic, which don’t use vowels and where a typo would make a word totally different.

36

Stark; please don’t feel as though I’m picking on you. The following highlights one of my pet peeves.

Granted; but, appreciated by whom? Please, folks, let’s all use the active voice instead of the passive voice when using the latter does not aid clarity.

KJ: perhaps this may give some insight as to why so many folks use the apostraphe as an indicator for plurals. The U.S. Army used to require the plurals of numerals and acronyms to be indicated by the use of 's. This was also the case in the Navy for quite some time; however, that changed, AFAIK, approximately halfway through my career. The Navy indicates the plurals of numerals and acronyms as follows: 2s, 3s, 4s, etc. & POs, CPOs, COs, OICs, etc.

Another pet peeve is the incredibly prevalent misuse of who and whom. One misuse which I find particularly onerous is “Give this to whomever you think is the quickest runner.” The proper use is “…whoever you think is…” as “whomever” (objective case) is used incorrectly in this sentence (by the individual uttering/writing it, of course!) in the nominative case.

My guess is that it’s quite difficult to overcome old habits.

Cheers!
-Chip

37

Two favourite of mine:

principal for principle, and vice versa.

And “Viola!” instead of “Voilà!” – In French, “Viola” can mean “(S)he raped (a person)” or “(S)he violated/broke (a rule, a law, etc.)”

Caveat!

38

I used to work at a place located in a mall. On my first day of work, I looked at a receipt and it spelled “square” as “sqaure”. I pointed it out to my boss and she laughed so hard. She said only I would notice something like that. Well, it may as well have been highlighted, because it jumped right out at me!

A peeve I have is when people use “with” inappropriately. Example-someone wasn’t rinsing out their bowls after she was done doing a bleach and it always left a mess. So someone put out a sign that said, “Please rinse out bowls with bleach.” Doesn’t that mean to use bleach to do the rinsing? I crossed out “with” and wrote “that contain”. No one understood what the big deal was. Am I the only who thinks it was wrong?

MaryAnn
Sometimes life is so great you just gotta muss up your hair and quack like a duck!

39

When you guys get done proofreading your rants do us a favor and refrain from becoming postal employees. The last thing I want is my local SDMB typo Nazi snapping, and opening fire from the nearest bell tower.

40

Omni, I apologized already! But it needed to be said.

Copyright! Right! Right! RIGHT!

(End of rant. Returning to rational mode.)

Bob the Random Expert
“If we don’t have the answer, we’ll make one up.”