She is the woman that stole my purse.
Them sure are nice shoes.
Could you borrow me a cup of sugar?
Along the same line as ‘losted’ instead of ‘lost’, I offer People Who’ve Never Understood Synonyms!
Not just the somewhat understandable to, too and two or there, they’re and their debacles, no I’m talking adults who truly do not know that our and are or passed and past are indeed disparate concepts. The mind boggles.
And then there are those who attempt to use cliches and even get them wrong, i.e., “Boy, you should have heard the human cry they raised!”
“Should of” always bugs the shit out of me. I even see it in print occasionally. Dumb-asses: it’s “should’ve”, a contraction of “should have”. Should of makes no fucking sense whatsoever. I’m sure it’s been covered before, but damn.
My favorites are the “People Who Use The Word ‘Synonym’ When They Really Mean ‘Homophone’”. 
Oh, God, make it stop!!! :eek: :eek:
Chefguy, I showed (‘showded’) that note to mr. avabeth, and he just looked at it, looked at me, and said “That’s a joke, right?”. You’ve just destroyed his sanity 
.
I’m just astonished at the lack of grammatical skills people possess now. My co-worker’s 7 year-old has more knowledge of grammar than some of the people in my company.
Honestly, I always have to resist the urge to proofread their emails and send them back with red mark-ups all over them.
Jeff Olsen, I was about to give you one of these - :dubious: - for fucking with me, and then I went to dictionary.com and found this:
past tense and past participle costed: To estimate or determine the cost of: The accountants costed out our expenses
Okay, so I half stand corrected on that one. But one would still say “The item cost four dollars”, correct? This tense is only used for examples like the above, right?
Damn. You’ve just turned my whole world upside down.
Ava
I’ll admit I catch myself at this one now and then, but it bugs me. “There’s” is short for “there is,” as in (for example) "There’s someone at the door, not “There’s some people at the door.” I realize “There’re” doesn’t seem quite right, so let’s just leave it at “there are,” okay?
And then there’s the new trend of taking nouns and turning them into verbs.
For example, a commercial for PeoplePC has the slogan “A better way to Internet.”
How do you Internet?
I don’t believe that the level of grammar skills are any worse than fifty or a hundred years ago. It used to be that only trained journalists and writers, shielded by good proofreaders, were all we ever saw the works of. But it’s just nothing like that now - more and more people have a need to write things for public consumption, due to email, instant messaging, and general web and internet opportunities. Everyone has something to say, and now they have a platform.
Actually, I have no idea. I’ll let a linguist field that one.
I too hate the way nouns are changed into verbs in a seeming random fashion. Watching the word “impact” go from a solid noun into a verb makes my head hurt every time I hear it: “The funding positively impacted the community.” No, impacted is what a wisdom tooth is, not what your funding did! There’s a usage note about the pretentiousness of this construction on Dictionary.com, but how, through repeated use by politicians and other jargonmeisters, it is now becoming standard.
I saw a sign in the food co-op that said, “We will be visioning a new direction…” This irritated me enough for me to mention it to my companion. What’s wrong with “envisioning”? Do we need visioning now too? Sadly, the very person who wrote the sign was standing behind me in line. :o She seemed a bit defensive about making up a new word on her sign. Maybe she learned something, but I felt like a grammar snob (which maybe I am).
[Calvin]
Verbing weirds the language!
[/Calvin]
OOoooooh, there the worstest! :smack:
Disorientated bothers me a lot and the fact that it’s in the dictionary makes me very depressed. “Boo hoo I’m disorientated! I don’t know uptate from downtate.”
Another that drives me nuts… and I guess it really shouldn’t:
Complected. I’ve always said complexioned, but according to M-W, either one works. Complected just sounds… argh.
And “parenths” instead of “parentheses”. There is 1 parenthesis, 2 parentheses and NO parenths or however the hell you would spell that.
The one I hear more and more, especially on those courtroom shows (where the elite meet to have it out) is the use of the word ‘had’ where it has no business being. The following scenario is a bit exaggerated but not by much:
I had went outside and he had said, "Get back in here." Then he had grabbed my arm and yelled at me. Then our neighbor had went and yelled' "Knock it off!" to him and myself.
Oy vey!
NO. POSSIBLE…WAY!!!
Okay, Past for passed, I can kind of understand, in a “too much of a hurry, and thinking ahead of one’s typing kind of way”.
But those are, well, don’t we learn those in like SECOND GRADE for Pete’s SAKE???
Would you object to this sentence?
"I had gone outside and he had said, “Get back in here.” Then had had grabbed my arm and yelled at me. Then our neighbor had yelled, “Knock it off!”
How about this one?
I went outside and he said, “Get back in here.” The he grabbed my arm and yelled at me. Then our neighbor yelled, “Knock it off!”
Either is correct. The choice depends on the meaning intended.
I often slip into the use of the dialectical I’dn’t in speech. What I mean is isn’t. Another that I use is leaving out the r sound in through. In hurried and thoughtless conversation I say, “She came thu the house looking for her shoes.”
I love to hear kids say Nuh-uh! istead of No way!. Is that just Southern?
But don’t ever say center around when you are near me. “The focus will center around the dining table” makes me grind my teeth. Make it center on.
[QUOTE=Zoe]
I often slip into the use of the dialectical I’dn’t in speech. What I mean is isn’t. If you said that to me, and I was in one of my typical mischeivous moods, I’d reply, “Yeah, it id.”
But then you could make fun of me for my coding and for not previewing. See how it all works out?