To-day. (Do hyphenated words count?)
Minor thing that irritates me: Social media posts that start with “BREAKING:” when posting about some news story. Breaking means this story is unfolding right now, as we’re reporting it. I might not see your post until hours or possibly days after you posted it, when it’s no longer breaking. IMO calling a story “breaking news” only really makes sense for broadcast journalism.
Honestly, I’m starting to wonder if the social media groups doing this think “breaking” means “Big, important story”.
Ooh, that reminds me! People in news stories are always “speaking out”, or “breaking their silence”. No, they’re just giving a fucking comment.
I used to have a T-shirt from Hyperbole and a Half that said, “I care about this alot.”
Basically whenever they read “alot” they assumed it was an adorable creature called an alot. Alots remind me a lot of the flying buffalo in Avatar.
I’m a bit distressed to discover this a sixteen-year-old meme.
Cambridge accepts “alright” as an alternative spelling but says “alot” is a misspelling.
I have accepted alright. It’s generally only used in casual contexts.
I started learning English 48 years ago. “Alright” has always been presented to me as a legit spelling.
I’m a descriptivist anyway. But I admit alot makes me cringe. Well it used to, before that meme. Now it makes me chuckle.
Yeah. I’m also a descriptivist , and I don’t mind anybody writing “alot”. Maybe the word will go the way of “alright” and be accepted in the OED, I wouldn’t mind.
The OED is quite anti-precriptivist in its discussion of “alright”, but indeed does not have an entry for “alot” (except as an unrelated variant of “allot”).
The form alright is frequent, although more widespread in non-literary printed sources (e.g. newspapers and journals) than in literary texts. Compare the standard spellings of already adj. & adv., altogether adj., n., & adv., always adv. Although these analogues exist, the form is strongly criticized in the vast majority of usage guides, but without cogent reasons.
How about - awhile vs a while. Many people only use “awhile”.
IMO broadcast news should quit using it as well, since it has lost all meaning. Every news story is BREAKING NEWS!
This shit pisses me off so much. I work in software, mostly web.
It is so unbelievably trivial to generate a unique “short url” in the style of, say bitly.com, that is single click and allows a database lookup even before you have logged in so your bill is immediately available. You still need to prove credentials, but the data is by that stage in cache, so super-fast to provide.
Some short-url providers even allow certain amount of customisation to make it even easier for the user to remember the link…
(Aside, because I am in a multicultural country, one of my colleagues tasked with creating the code that generated the short-urls, needed to blacklist certain short words in 11 different languages… swear words mostly)
Whenever I encounter this bullshit I just write the account number in a second time. It usually accepts that.
In a similar vein, every sale is a BLOWOUT!! What the hell does that even mean? I think the pinnacle was reached when an apartment complex put up a banner sign offering a discount on your first month’s rent and called it a Blowout.
Speaking of sales – “Save up to 70% or more!” So, you might save potentially any amount between 0%-100%. That statement give you literally no information about the actual discount.
I’ve noticed this a fair few times on the SDMB, so I assume it’s a US thing. Can’t say I’ve noticed it on UK-based sites.
“Alright”, while still considered somewhat informal, has a legacy going back at least to the 19th century, and in some form, arguably back as far as the Middle English of the 12th century, and is paralleled by other forms like “altogether” and “already” and similar blend words.
Whereas “alot”, as amply illustrated on other threads on this board, is a noun that designates a scraggly gnome-like creature often kept as a pet. So when someone says “I like this alot”, they are expressing affection for their pet alot. They hopefully keep their alot well fed and well supplied with loving skritches.
ETA: I see that @Spice_Weasel has kindly provided an illustration here of a typical alot! 
Many of them are also “reaching out”. Damn, I hate that annoyingly meaningless expression. I feel like saying “keep your damned hands to yourself!”
But have you noticed that those people no longer seem to “share” whatever mundane preoccupation is on their mind
I don’t give a good goddamn who thinks “alright” is all right, this thread is entitled “Things that infuriate you beyond their actual importance,” and “alright” does. And none of you or your cites is going to stop me feeling that “alright” is ALL WRONG!
Now get off my lawn, you young whippersnappers!