Oft-Used Examples of Poor Grammar that Irritate You.

'arks' and 'arksed'

No it's not, you congenital mooncalf.

He went ahead and hired him anyway and now I'm more than a little bit concerned.

"ON accident" (as opposed to "BY accident")

recently, "ValentiMes Day"

hey i'm from Staten Island, i can fill up a book - what was that old song by Wrathchild America - "Surrounded by Idiots?"

the misuse of their/they're/there and its/it's

i do, however, have a major problem with "quarter of" instead of "quarter to" when speaking of the time. "quarter of" simply doesn't make sense.

B-b-but "Think different" the different is as in "Think big" which wouldn't be "Think bigly" but like, "Yo, think of us as different."

For my part, tho I'm scholarly-like and know the difference, I still say "real" and not "really," as in, "that's real nice." I don't care though.

Growing up in a place where the dialect / accent is lazy and ignorant sounding has its price. I work up one morning when I was 13 and decided I didn't wanna speak with a Staten Island accent anymore (it's the worst accent of all time) and adopted that popular Planet Nowhere accent I have now. I've never slipped, ever. BUT...since I grew up hearing people speak this certain way, I misheard certain words words growing up. So in college when I told my best friend I had a "cankus sore" (because Staten Island folk say "canka so-ah") she teased me mercileesly for years. "cank-uhh??," she cried, "Cank-uhh?? AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA!!!"

(see? i like the written "more prettier" but the spoken one would bug me, partly just coz it flows wrong -- "partly just coz" isn't quite correct grammar either, i think. [haha the i think postfix ain't neither (i'll stop now)]

Back to geekery: its like ppl. hardcoding/macroing new language constructs like for example "if this expression does not evaluate to null execute the following codeblock with the value of the expression given the name passed" which i was hurtin' for while coding today. Lisp programmers do this bunches.

Main Entry: com·prise
Pronunciation: k&m-'prIz
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): com·prised; com·pris·ing
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French compris, past participle of comprendre, from Latin comprehendere
Date: 15th century
1 : to include especially within a particular scope [civilization as Lenin used the term would then certainly have comprised the changes that are now associated in our minds with "developed" rather than "developing" states —Times Literary Supplement]
2 : to be made up of [a vast installation, comprising fifty buildings —Jane Jacobs]
3 : COMPOSE, CONSTITUTE [a misconception as to what comprises a literary generation —William Styron] [about 8 percent of our military forces are comprised of women —Jimmy Carter]
usage Although it has been in use since the late 18th century, sense 3 is still attacked as wrong. Why it has been singled out is not clear, but until comparatively recent times it was found chiefly in scientific or technical writing rather than belles lettres. Our current evidence shows a slight shift in usage: sense 3 is somewhat more frequent in recent literary use than the earlier senses. You should be aware, however, that if you use sense 3 you may be subject to criticism for doing so, and you may want to choose a safer synonym such as compose or make up.

© 2001 by Merriam-Webster, Incorporated
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When people use 'less' where they should use 'fewer' and vice versa. This one is a pet hate of my mum's (anal listmaking statistician) and I've osmosed it. There was a massive poster on the wall at Russell Square tube station advertising Oyster cards, in which a plucky young executive was informed that he could carry 'less coins' around with him. What, are pound coins going to be reduced in size or something?

When people say they're 'itching' themselves. Nooooooooooo! You have an itch which you can then scratch. Not really an issue lately, but all my friends at school used this (is it a Kentish thing?) and it would drive me up the wall and then they'd call me pedantic. Which is fair enough, I suppose.

What is the world coming to?

(Or, To what is the world coming? maybe...)

Anyway, you are all fascists.

Less sugar
Fewer sugar cubes

it's, by the way

it's you're, by the way

QED

e.g. "Nigel and myself are going" WTF?? You're going by yourself?? What? What the fuck is Nigel doing?

Who says what 'correct' grammar is?

Not the government, that's for sure. So, your conflation of grammar, academia, officialdom, and dictatorship is a bit of a violent act in itself. This is an act of subsumption on your part. Doesn't that make you a fascist in your own terms?

xpost

ken -- maybe they meant it literal. get rhyming.

pronouncing the letter 'h' with an 'h' in front of the aitch

Back soon.

xpost

.... cannot... find... words...

(too)

You literally mean "haitch", correct? Because if not, I dislike people using "an" before a word that starts with h.

OH NO I'M GETTING DRAWN INTO ALL THIS

But I don't say "an istoric event"

I don't think I have ever said "close the lights" but in French it is correct to say ferme les lumieres.

I am envious of your British grammar education. At our school they recommended we buy a copy of Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style" and that was it.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0321103505.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Read it. Learn it. Know it. Live it.

(hey genevieve! hows it going long time no see!)

Hello Glasgow-chums, you're all so nice.

http://www.oup.co.uk/images/covers/0-19-869175-0.gif

Taste my em-rules bitch.

I hate the following mispronounciations: "supposably," "ekcetera."

I wonder if the mispronouncers spell the words correctly???

Oh, the irony.

I should be fired immediately.

Raagh!!

What is that?

"Ain't" isn't a word.

You also can't use too negitives in a sentince.

And it's "nothing"

actually, it is entirely correct to say "an historical monument" and "an hour" but not "an horrible day". This is because the rule that a goes before a vowel and an before a consonant is just a rough guide. It's actually the sound that matters (but I can't find the details of what the exact rule is...)

She ment to say "defective" but it was kind of funny. She kept arguing with her friend. When she found out defected was a word she was congradulating herself, thinking she was right. Then she found out what defected means and she felt embarrassed.

She was talking about a cell phone that had gotten water spilled on it.

Yeah. That's a bit confusing.

But one day at school, some people changed the words on the wall. The letters were made out of paper and they were just taped to the wall. It originally said, "I Have A Dream." They changed it to say "A HIV Dream." I'm not even sure what that's supposed to mean, but that's how they changed it. It sould have been "An HIV Dream." They could have ripped the "E" that was in the original statment and made an "N." I mean if they could take the time to change it, they could have done it right.

an "N."

There you go. It's all about pronunciation.

Usage Note: In writing, the form a is used before a word beginning with a consonant sound, regardless of its spelling (a frog, a university). The form an is used before a word beginning with a vowel sound (an orange, an hour). ·An was once a common variant before words beginning with h in which the first syllable was unstressed; thus 18th-century authors wrote either a historical or an historical but a history, not an history. This usage made sense in that people often did not pronounce the initial h in words such as historical and heroic, but by the late 19th century educated speakers usually pronounced initial h, and the practice of writing an before such words began to die out. Nowadays it survives primarily before the word historical. One may also come across it in the phrases an hysterectomy or an hereditary trait. These usages are acceptable in formal writing.

Dave, do you not aspirate the 'h' in 'historical'? 'An historical' is explicitly outlawed in the Guardian style guide.

should it be 'which irritate you'?

No.

personally, I don't. It sounds wrong to me. It feels like I'm trying to speak properly when I say it and it reads like I'm faking it if I write it. It's the same reason that I use "I'm" all the time in my writing instead of "I am". And since it is not grammatically wrong, exactly, then I'm happy with it.

Preferably sung by Linda Ronstadt

1) 'Alright' rather than 'all right'
2) 'Penultimate' for 'ultimate'
3) Irregardless
4) Drownded for drowned
5) Any sort of dangling modifiers e.g. 'Raised in Nova Scotia, it is natural to miss the smell of the sea.'
6) 'Peruse' for 'scan'

Only time I encountered "drownded": I remember reading a poem at primary school about a village where they made a giant pie, the last line of which was "and 24 poor souls, they say, were drownded in the gravy".

should y be "him/her"

or "he/she"?

I've often wondered which is correct. Most ppl just repeat their name so they don't have to worry about it!

This may sound insane to some of you, but it is all too common where I am from.

-- Tuomas (tuomas.alh...), July 25th, 2004.

OTM.

OTOH, I hate it when people spell 'weird' as 'wierd'.

http://hcs.harvard.edu/~golder/dialect/staticmaps/q_51.html

Also creeping into usage: upside-down 'let alone' or 'leave alone' comparisons, such as: 'They couldn't beat Arsenal let alone Cockfosters United' or Howard can't run the country leave alone tie his bootlaces'.

But there's no argument there, just well-worded assertions. If it's between common usage and a precedent that has an arbitrary basis, we should go with common usage. The words in question all have the same derivation, so why are two acceptable but the third bad grammar? It's just grammar maven bullshit, and for every pointless nitpick like this other tricky points of usage that actually impact clarity and meaning are being ignored.

What is Liz objecting to here?

There was a massive poster on the wall at Russell Square tube station advertising Oyster cards, in which a plucky young executive was informed that he could carry 'less coins' around with him. What, are pound coins going to be reduced in size or something?

This 'rule' doesn't make sense to me.

Maybe fewer is for physical objects, and less is for concepts: e.g 'fewer coins', 'less irony'

Or fewer is posh for less? This check-out is for 5 items or fewer???

(x-post)

As you might guess, this is one of those rules that was made up to make English more precise. Ignore it by all means, though be aware that some will think less of you.

The newer part of this area is in the western part of Little Rock. It's where the most new homes are being built, where Starbucks and Krispy Kreme are opening their recent stores, where the traffic is getting worse, etc.

I hold that this area should be known as western Little Rock, or even in the most casual use, be called west Little Rock. Others, including this weekly that should know better calls it "West Little Rock". There is no need to capitalize the "W" in the word "west".

I know that you could argue that there's a definite difference between "southern states" and "The South", but c'mon. Where do you draw the line?

Since we're off grammar and onto (mis)spellings now, can I just have a little rant? On ITV the other night there was a trailer for that shitey-looking drama set on a ship, and one of the captions was "turbulance". I mean, jeez, one of our national broadcasting institutions can't proof read its own trailers.

My old boss used to refer to the act of waiving something as waivering it. That used to get on my tits.

All right. Idiomatic in familar speech as a detached phrase in the sense "Agreed," or "Go ahead," or "O.K." Properly written as two words --all right [Elements of Style, 4th ed. Strunk and White, 2000].

Moreover, why should the dictionary's inclusion of the word suggest its legitimacy and not just its prevalence? Ain't, d'oh, teensploitation are included in dicts too. Why are people so attached to this mispelling?

Er, because that's what dictionaries are for?

SKY,S THE LIMIT
SIGNWRITER,S

Dead set. No exaggeration.

Not really: dictionaries have always included slang and jargon for the purpose of convenience. It's fallacious to presume this is endorsement. Most recent dictionaries (off- and on- line alike) include scads of non-standard words, slurs, colloquialisms, what-have-yous, c.f. the inarguably incorrect 'irregardless' or the slangy 'nigga.'

Language changes. Yes, it's better not to let it be a free for all. Children should be told that certain things are wrong. But equally, language has never been static and never will be. If there's no good reason for objecting to a common usage or spelling other than that the word wasn't always spelt that way, then that's where it's advisable to start thinking about going with the flow, rather than making pointless attempts to ossify something that will always resist ossification.

I object to errors of language when they cloud understanding, as with non-standard spellings, poor punctuation, poor sentence construction, or the confusion of two words with usefully distinct meanings. As I said above, I don't think the use of 'alright' does any of those things.

I'm in a funny place, where I have a fairly good understanding of 'the common errors', and know that there are people like you who will think less of me if I make them, even though I know that language scholars are happy to point out that a certain rule is actually the result of some stuffy 18th century grammarian's attempt to make English more like their beloved Latin, or whatever. So I still tend to stick to all those rules, just to show that I know them. It's like the intellectual equivalent of a secondary sexual characteristic. I'm not glad that I do that, though. It turns language into a kind of snobbery system, where people are classed as according to whether they know some arbitrary rule, by people who try to feel better about themselves by sneering at some and slapping others on the back for being in the know.

So I do tend to spell 'all right' as two words, but kind of wish I didn't. I am pretty bold these days about splitting infinitives and ending sentences with prepositions, though.

OTM, which is why I get kind of irritated by those who get irritated by minor grammatical issues.

xpost

What sends me running screaming from the room, you barely notice, and vice versa. What may or may not be 'correct' (according to some 'authority' or other) is a red herring we may sometimes usefully bring in to give our prejudices a basis. But at base my fingernails-down-the-blackboard reaction to 'could of' or 'should of' (see upthread) comes from my nervous system, not my intellect.

oops has nailed it.

spelled.

That's an over-the-top argument - if complete bastardization (shorthanding, sloppiness) of language were the natural progression of things, every generation's style would seem like Finnegan's Wake on acid to the previous ones. Language evolves in a Darwinian sense - when necessary, when offering some modification or new and apropos speciation. Verbal canon's a social contract and the necessity of agreeing on a certain core grammar / lexicon is - especially because of electronic fracturing - more important than ever.

It would have been better if grammar had been spelt 'grammer' in the title.

Finnegans Wake

spelled.

A 'bastard word' it may be on your earth, but over here on ours most folk don't seem to give a toss. Which may in time, of course, destroy our ozone layer and seal the doom of our civilisation. Only time will tell.

whoa whoa whoa... this is wrong. languages are grouped in families but the process by which they became differentiated is not an evolutionary one. that's a really bad analogy. all modern languages have had equal fitness in an evolutionary sense since modern languages first appeared (50k-500k years ago, depending on what you believe). so with the exception of pidgins, all languages, including the same language at different points in time, have equal fitness. they don't evolve, they just change. english didn't get less synthetic and more analytic because analytic languages are more versatile than synthetic ones. it just changed.

along these lines, current words should not be called bastardizations of older words. that implies some kind of de-evolution of language as time progresses and that's not what is happening either. we needn't worry about english changing too rapidly. widespread literacy is a very effective brake on language change and has more of an impact than every style guide ever published.

I'm not sure: he did invent something like a third of all the words he used, apparently. (Individual words, not total. But still, can this be right?)

widespread literacy is a very effective brake on language change

This is certainly true. The differences between Chaucer's and Shakespeare's English is huge, but because of printing the difference between Shakespeare's and today's is less so. There was another century after Chaucer of rapid change, then it stabilised a bit before Shakespeare who went and changed vocabulary massively.

spelled.

-- jed_ (colin_o_har...), July 27th, 2004. (later)

I was under the impression that both 'spelt' and 'spelled' were acceptable here...

Re: split infinitives. To me, '"To boldly go where no man has gone before" carries a slightly different meaning to "To go boldly where no man has gone before".

The latter suggests that 'boldly' is qualifying the going. (In what manner is he going? He's going boldly). Whereas in the former, the very act of going sounds bold in itself.

It totally decimates me.

I kind of believe him.

well, not exactly. all that really gave us was people saying ye as an old-timey version of the. in middle english thou and thee were (along with other variants) the subject and object forms of the second-person singular pronoun. ye and you were the subject and object forms of the second-person plural pronoun, but they were also used as polite singular forms. eventually thou and thee faded away and we were left with just ye and you with no singular-plural distinction in second-person pronouns. around the same time you became the heavily favored of the two. ye is still around but you can't really employ it formally as a pronoun unless you are at a pirate conference.

these days of course we have a few options for making that singular-plural distinction in second-person pronouns. i say y'all in all but the most formal situations, and other dialects have other ways of showing the plural.

I'm not so keen on 'youse'.

"ALUMNI" IS NOT A SINGULAR NOUN.

THANKS YOU MAY GO BACK TO YOUR SNACKS AND WANKING.

Roffle