The Vine: December 4, 2007
Hi Sars,
For one of my jobs, I need to compile a list of verbal pet peeves — the “if you will”s, “Joe and myself”s, and other grammar- and style-related mistakes that the unknowing often make.As I started making my list, I realized that it is very personal — the things that drive me nuts aren’t the same as my co-worker’s chief irritants.So in an effort to cover my bases, I hoped I might ask your awesome Tomato Nation readers to help out with a couple of the things people say in
conversations or in presentations that drive them craziest.I’m particularly interested in verbal tics and misused phrases and constructions.
By the way, what’s your verdict on “there’s,” as in, “There’s a lot of cars on the road today”?(I mean, it’s wrong, but it’s rampant. Can anything be done?)
Thanks,
Free To Be You And Myself
Dear Free,
I don’t have a huge issue with the “there’s a lot of” construction, in colloquial speech anyway; you can treat “lot” as a collective noun, I guess, if you want to find a rules-based reason why “there’s a lot of” isn’t the worst usage crime in the world, but I treat it more like the Spanish hay.My last Spanish class was quite some time ago, but if I recall correctly (and I may not), hay handily covers both the singular and the plural of “there is” or “there exists.”I think, colloquially, we’ve come to treat “there’s” the same way in English — “there’s a lot of dust in here,” “there’s 200 people coming” — not necessarily because we don’t know it’s incorrect, but because 1) we’re using it more as a state indicator, i.e. “there exists a state of 200-people-ness”; and 2) “there’s” is easier to understand in spoken conversation than “there’re.”
Short answer: I wouldn’t use it in written correspondence, except in fiction/dialogue, but in spoken language it doesn’t bother me.
Now, to the meat of your question.”Frankly”/”honestly”/”to tell the truth” is one that’s really bugging me of late — and I’m as guilty as anyone, but I’m working on it.It’s a tic, and what comes after it usually isn’t so much honesty and frankness as it is an unpopular opinion, or a statement to the effect that someone else/the reader is wrong.What’s meant, often, is not “frankly,” but rather “I disagree,” or “You’re mistaken about X,” which is fine, but just say that then.(Note: One of my mother’s pet interjections is “Oh, honestly,” and I don’t take issue with that one.)
Also, “nevermind” (it’s two words; “nevermind” is cutesy), and the rendering of the adverb “anymore” as two words.The 11C doesn’t commit to saying that a phrasing like “I don’t eat meat any more” is incorrect, only that “anymore” is preferred, but it bugs me.”I don’t have any more meat”; “I don’t eat meat anymore.”Two different uses, two different renderings.If the purpose of usage rules is clarity, well, I rest my case.
Readers?
Tags: Ask The Readers grammar
I have a coworker who almost always says “Like I said…” at the start of a sentence, even if she never said anything like it before.
My other pet peeve is written, not verbal. So many people write “lead” instead of “led” as the past tense of “to lead.” I know they sound the same, but…they’re not.
I can’t believe that after 140 posts I’ve not seen my pet peeve: the misuse of “bring” and “take.” I have trouble describing this misuse (although, much like pornography, I know it when I see it!), so I got some help from Dr. Grammar (www.drgrammar.org):
“Bring and take both involve direction when they denote physical movement: bring means movement in the direction of the speaker or writer, take means movement away from the speaker or writer.”
I usually only hear “bring” substituted for “take,” such as: Can you help me bring this stuff to the car? NO! But I’d be happy to help you TAKE it to the car.
It’s already been covered, but the misuse of reflexives really pushes my buttons. I’ve been known to teach this one by poking: ::poke-poke-poke-poke:: Am I poking yourself? NO! I’m poking YOU! Only YOU can poke yourself, get it? ::poke-poke-poke-poke:: It’s a miracle I’ve never been slapped during a “lesson” :)
@Shannon, “from whence” always remind me of one of my favorite Broadway-musical lyrics ever, when Captain Hook sees Peter Pan in drag and tries to impress this lovely vision with his great sophistication: “Oh, beautiful lady, what is your name/Oh, beautiful lady, from whence have you came…”
The unfortunate effect is that I end up sort of snickering at whoever was similarly attempting to sound impressive, which is not very nice.
I have never heard of either “y’uns” or “yins” until this very moment, and would have been completely baffled had I heard them used in conversation.
(…I kind of love the “I know, right?” construction. I know it makes no logical sense when parsed; I don’t care.)
@ Bonnie & RKK: Absolutely agree on using the word ‘impact’ in environmental work. Using ‘contaminated’ in a report is guaranteed to get red ink and probably a phone call from the client. Just like the chemicals themselves are not contaminants, they are constituents of concern. And of course, nothing is ever stated as being a definite unless your site is definitely clean.
What a great post. I (shamefully) learned a thing or two.
Adds:
-BESIDES. “That’s besides the point.” Nope, sorry. Not correct.
-ALLOT. “We have a allot of work to do.” Oooh, so close! I do appreciate the effort to realize “alot” isn’t right though.
“On accident” as in “I dropped the glass on accident” it’s “by accident” and “on purpose” drives me nuts!
Though that may just be a Boston area thing.
Funny. I think in a lot of cases the “LITERALLY!†thing evolved from people trying to phase the overuse of “like†out of their vocabulary. “I have, like, a million things to do!†becomes “I LITERALLY have a million things to do!†They (mistakenly) think it sounds better.
@ Sadie & Elizabeth: Yes, ending a sentence with a preposition is regional. It’s a Midwest thing. I grew up with it, too. Which coffee shop are you at? Where is the bowling alley at? etc. I don’t do it where I live now, but I hear it creeping back when I’m home, along with the godawful Midwestern A. shudder.
I don’t like “for all intensive purposesâ€, but for a long time that’s what that phrase sounded like to me. I still remember the first time someone enunciated it clearly enough that I understood the real saying. It was like a light bulb going on, because the real words make so much more SENSE!!!
But “I could care less†is inexcusable.
“Nucular instead of nuclear†– see, I like this one now, because every time I hear it I think of Margaret Cho’s comedy routine about it, which is hysterical. http://tinyurl.com/2kdcrb
@RKK – passive voice is falling out of favor in most sciences. New publication styles for most journals discourage it. If you see it in articles now it’s mostly the older scientists who are too crotchety to change.
I think I may be alone in this but I have an issue with the word “obviously.” I always find it vaguely insulting. If something is obvious then you shouldn’t need to say it and if it is not obvious then you shouldn’t say it.
Hee – the quotation marks for emphasis will forever remind me of Joey on Friends. “I’m sorry” Cracks me up!
I just received an e-mail from a friend that reminded me of another of my chief irritants. “Thataway.” She says it and she writes it.
The first few times I heard her say it all I could think was that she was being “cute.” Saying it like they do in cartoons (i.e. “He went thataway!”) just to be funny. But then I met her mother and realized they both think it’s a legitimate word. They’re lovely people but every time they say it or write it in an e-mail to me, I want to grab them, shake them hard and scream “THAT WAY! Two seperate words!!!!”
@RK
…I’m pretty sure that ISN’T wrong, actually. Webster’s says:
BRING: 1 a: to convey, lead, carry, or cause to come along with one toward the place from which the action is being regarded.
One assumes that the speaker in that sentence is, say, in the house, regarding the car from a distance, and “bring” is therefore perfectly appropriate.
I wish the link I saved still worked for all you “most unique” individuals. Now all I have to go on is what I saved at the time.
I once blundered into this long and ever expanding philosophical debate about “unique” on a message board. It was simultaneously irritating and fascinating. I am so wishing right now I had saved the entire conversation.
The original poster was arguing that the phrase “more unique” is actually correct usage because most people use “unique” incorrectly. His position, as far as I could tell, was that everything is or is not unique depending upon the subjective categorization of objects by the person making the statement. So, on a microscopic level everything (he used the example of unused cigarettes in a pack) is unique – no two things are exactly identical, either at the level of fine detail or at the molecular level. Yet, a burned cigarette which has achieved a particular shape in being burned and stubbed out is “more unique” from the rest of the unburned
pack than any of the unburned ones are from each other.
Obnoxious. His response to “proper usage of this word according to English usage is” was consistently “well, proper usage is WRONG.” SOOOO obnoxious!
It made my head hurt and yet I couldn’t stop reading.
some quotes:
>Ergo the relativity of it all. My mom certainly thinks I’m unique! Someone
>who happens to randomly catch sight of me in a crowd? Not so much.
>
>”However, in reality, the term means one of a kind.”
>
>You must mean “The Only One of it’s Kind”. And that suggests to me that
>you are sorting things by creating categories that each contain only one
>member!
(haw. note his use of “it’s” in place of “its”. In a grammar debate. AWESOME.)
Even now I’m not sure I can fully grasp his point about “one of a kind” versus “the only one of its kind”… I think he’s objecting that his grouping of things into “kinds” might not be the same as yours, therefore who are you to say anything on this earth is unique? Either that or everything is unique. Like, a single elephant is not unique among animals, because there are other elephants. But elephants are unique among extant land mammals because of their size. Nitpicking. OBNOXIOUS.
I probably find this fascinating because what this guy was essentially saying is, “my subjective reality is not the same as your subjective reality, and therefore I am right no matter what you say, and no matter what anyone else in the world says even if everyone in the world agrees that I am wrong, because it is all just subjective.” –And my husband is precisely this type of person. He, too, has used the “well, subjectively to ME it’s this way, so no matter what proof you come up with I’m still not wrong because only I live inside my own head, so neener” argument. arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh…
*hangs self with own earlobes*
I have trouble keeping my head from exploding when people use sports metaphors, because I don’t think most of them know that they are metaphors. I’ve always hated “touch base” but the subject of my current loathing is “step up.” Especially painful to me is the parallel construction: “step up and take control of the project.” The “step up” is pure waste; it doesn’t help as an intensifier, and it doesn’t work as a metaphor. I think it gets used when people want to sound more “businesslike” but it just really reminds me of “The Apprentice.” (Or, really, any other reality-type contest.)
It may be the least bad thing to come from the Iraq war, but I’m really tired of “on the ground.†I think the prevalence comes from listening to too many years of military people on the news. But just because you heard someone on TV talk about the Iraq Study Group doesn’t mean you know about anti-insurgency tactics!
I have two peeves to discuss. The first is a phrase I’ve only noticed in Rhode Island. Describing an item that’s on sale as being, “on special.” All day long at work I listen to customers ask me, “Are these vitamins on special?” It makes me crazy.
My second complaint is using the word “anniversary” to describe something other than an annual event. For example, “We’re celebrating our six month anniversary!” No you’re not. An anniversary marks a yearly occurrence. I understand that it can be more broadly used to mark any recurring event or significant date but this usage still irritates me.
My boss drives me nuts with “the point being”, or even “the point being, is”.* Every time we submit a paper or grant application I have to go through and hack out dozens of these with a (sadly non-literal) machete.
Something that has annoyed me since the creation of the internet is the use of “roll playing games”. I don’t care if they use dice! It’s wrong!
I can’t stand text-speak even when texting, although I did feel silly earlier today when I realized I was bothering to enter “I see you have unearthed your motorcycles” instead of something easier, like “D00d U got UR bikes”.
*I’m with Betsey on the issue of terminal punctuation.
A historic. It’s AN! AN AN AN AN! I know it’s becoming more and more common (irregardless, I’m looking at you), but don’t let the dream die, people! When my boyfriend says it wrong I make him repeat the sentence until he gets it right. (“What did you say, sweety? Sorry, didn’t catch that.”) But I’m a bit of a bitch.
For the love of the sweet baby Jesus and all his pet reindeer, someone stop the invasion of “to gift.” I know it’s not *wrong,* but I hate it in a way that I haven’t hated anything in a long time, and I hate a lot of stuff.
I gifted her with a new hat. Do you want to gift this music? He gifted me with a pair of diamond earrings. Augh! Make it stop!
I seen…; I/We done….;Irregardless; Using “impactful” as other POS than an adj., as in “I want to be impactful.” No – You want to “make an impact.” Argh!
Oh, just reading some of these made me grit my teeth.
I have a boss who consistently confuses ‘there’ ‘their’ ‘they’re’ and ‘your’ ‘you’re’. I really respect him and am so tempted to walk into his office and rap his knuckles every single time he writes an email.
Also, my husband uses ‘heighth’. I finally, after a couple of years trying to convince myself he just mispronounced it the first 100 times, told him it was HEIGHT without the ‘th’ at the end…. He was convinced I was wrong. Now every time he says it I just mumble ‘heighT’ overexagerrating the T so it comes out heigh-TUH. We’ll divorce over that someday I think.
“Asterix” when you mean “asterisk.”
“I seen” when you mean “I saw.”
The ellipsis used to replace any and all punctuation, and “laughing” at one’s own text, at seemingly random intervals: “So then I guess we said goodbye…he called yesterday…what a bigot…lol…also I had some fudge…grandma has to use the internet now…lol…”
This is probably just a Utah thing, but “Neltson” instead of Nelson and “acrost” instead of across are also maddening.
@RK: I actually didn’t realize there was such a distinction in English between bring and take – I’d only encountered it in Spanish, where I learned that you could never go to a place you were, or come to a place you weren’t. So in Spanish when your mother calls you down for dinner, you yell “Voy!” (“Going!”) instead of “I’m coming!” Same for “bring” and “take” – and it was something I had to train myself in (and still do) because as far as I knew this wasn’t a rule in English. Interesting…
Reversing the items in an “x, let alone y” (or “x, much less y” or “x, not to mention y”) construction. Incorrect: “He can’t explain the proper use of the phrase ‘beg the question’, let alone form a coherent sentence.” The part after “let alone” or “much less” or “not to mention” should be the stronger/larger/more difficult/etc. of the pair.
My own pet peeve only appears in e-mails and bad blogs, but it makes me want to retire from the human race every time I see it: “persay” in place of the Latin term, “per se.” (Meaning “by itself,” or innately.)
Simple concept – you don’t understand Latin, don’t use it – but please don’t phoneticize it and bastardize it out of all recognition, thinking you’re actually being smart!
One of my biggest ones is “literally”. My boss uses it ALL THE TIME.
I love this thread. I’m a copy editor and my list of pet peeves would fill a book the size of the AP guide. I’m generally somewhat accepting of mistakes in spoken grammar, but the fact that adults who are native English speakers misuse apostrophes and don’t know the difference between they’re/their/there or your/you’re makes me want to break things.
Most of the things I hate have already been mentioned, but I’ll include some more.
1. Towards is NOT a word. It used to be a word. It is not now.
2. “I have got.” Someone else mentioned this, and it is indeed incorrect. I worked at a wire service this summer and “I have got” was my boss’ biggest pet peeve.
3. People who say “I had gone to the store” or “I had loaned her my car.” HAAAAAATTTE.
4. On the “Sara and I” versus “Sara and me” topic: The worst thing is when you say “She gave a gift to Sara and me” and some smart-ass tries to correct you by saying “Sara and I.” People who correct others’ spoken grammar can be irritating (I admit that I do it), but people who do it when they’re wrong are even worse. Same thing with who/whom. Sometimes it is “who,” and I know the correct usage of both words. If you don’t, don’t try to correct me when I speak.
5. The misuse of that/who.
6. The use of plural verbs or pronouns to refer to a singular entity, such as a team, band or corporation. (I know someone mentioned being a fan of the serial comma, but I’m a newspaper girl. I tend to stick to AP style, so I don’t use it).
7. Nuk-yoo-lar. If I didn’t hate Bush for his politics, this would drive me over the edge.My view is that if you can’t be bothered to pronounce the word correctly, you shouldn’t be allowed access to the weapons.
the rampant use of “I” instead of “me” on tv shows, because it seems people think it sounds classier even if it’s incorrect. It doesn’t sound classy, it sounds ignorant and pretentious and sad.
1) “As per” for per.
2) “Begs the question,” when the speaker means “raises the question.”
3) “ATM Machine.” Apparently I have an issue with redundancy.
4) Criteria is a plural noun. Criterion is the singular. People who say “criterias” make me cry.
@Melanie – Myriad is used as both a noun and an adjective, so both “a myriad of concerns” and “her myriad pet peeves” are correct
I’d like to second “utilize” when people mean “use.” It’s ridiculous
I made the mistake of visiting Pennsylvania during the autumn and nearly everyone I met suggested I enjoy the “foilage.” Like little aluminum leaves were hanging from the trees.
I’m Australian, so admittedly some of these might be different, but some of them particularly bother me about the American use of English, from the vast quantities of your television I watch.
1) Adverbs. He didn’t play awesome, he played awesomely. The amount of times I yell out the correct adverb ending at the television? Entirely too many. Mary Murphy, I am looking at you …
2) “Verbing”, which is what I call the practice of transforming nouns or similar into verbs, like dialogue, above. Also impact as a verb. But there’s a whole raft of them. Let’s conference? No. But you may confer.
3) The verbing feeds into my final hatred, corporate or management speak. I hate hate hate “moving forward” and the like. There is a really good book by an Australian author, Don Watson, called “Weasel Words” on this topic …
And I have to agree with the complaints about homonyms and apostrophes.
@Nichol: So glad I am not the only one. “Do you know what I mean?” is such a prevalent sentence-finisher here, it drives me nuts!
“Decimate”, used in place of “obliterated” or “completely destroyed”.
I know that this one’s more and more accepted but my math brain won’t let the deci- prefix die off without a fight. It means to reduce by a tenth, folks. You’ll still have 90% left. It’s a big deal when you’re talking about slaughtering conquered armies, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what you did to the opposing football team…
The hard X sound in axe/expresso/ex cetera is annoying, but it does make sense. I agree it’s annoying, and written “expresso” drives me up the wall, but…
axe: Say the word “ask” really, really slowly and think about what your tongue is doing. Then say it “axe” and do the same. There’s less tongue movement. It’s a quirk of language shifts that people tend to do things that are easier in terms of articulation – this doesn’t mean that it’s an inevitable change in English, just that it’s hit some dialects.
espresso: It’s a bit of the same, plus a bit of retroformation. Espresso is an Italian word, and the /espr/ construction isn’t native to English. The only other word I can think of offhand that has it is “esprit”, which… French. Which isn’t to say it’s outlandish, just that it’s not quite native. /expr/ is slightly easier to say for an English speaker. The retroformation comes into it when you take into account the existence of the English word “express” – sounds similar, sounds more natural, and we’re talking about fast coffee, right?
Except that “espresso” means something that “express” doesn’t, in English. Hence the wrongness.
“ex cetera” is all about being easier to say. /x/ gets your tongue in place for a VERY easy shift to the soft c /s/ sound. /t/ has it flicking off the postalveolar ridge and it’s an awkward shift back. It’s a lazy shift to say it ex cetera.
Using “their” as the third person singular non-gendered pronoun is almost inevitably going to become part of standard English. Use of “he” as the default is unpopular, with good reason, and the options that are tolerable in text, like “he or she” or the ugly yet semi-unintrusive “s/he” are, respectively, clunky and impossible in spoken language. I’m actually fine with it, despite being a moderately hardcore prescriptivist, because it has utility and it’s generally clear from context what people mean. Since English lacks a third-person-singular pronoun that doesn’t enforce implicit sexist assumptions, I can roll with it.
@Sars: I’ll readily pay that American English prefers “anymore” and will try to find it less annoying therefore, but seriously, in my dialect that’s just plain wrong.
Ooh… a couple of years ago I took a job that, among other things, requires me to review and edit every document produced by my office. I have been gleefully indulging in wiping my pet grammatical peeves from at least my small corner of the world…
– Misuse/confusion of “cite”, “sight”, and “site”. Look ’em up, people, but here’s a hint: It’s a webSITE.
– Misuse/confusion of “login” vs “log in” (and its bretheren, “logon/log on”, “logout/log out”, “backup/back up” — I could keep going, but you get the idea…) The single word is an adjective: “Click here for the login page.” The two-word variant is a verb: “Click here to log in.”
– Lack of the verb “to be” as in “The dishes need washed.” Either the dishes need TO BE washed, or else the dishes need WASHING. AAAGH, this one makes my teeth grind.
And since the poster was looking for a whole stack of things, I’ll throw in a couple of peeves that belong to various friends of mine, but which I don’t really care about that much:
– Modifications for “unique” — “That’s a very unique sweater.” If it’s unique, then it’s unique and it cannot be more or less so; otherwise it’s just rare or unusual.
– Flammable is an invented word that means exactly the same thing as inflammable; using “flammable” indicates that either you or your listener is too stupid to know that “inflammable” means rather the opposite of “fireproof.”
For GOD’S SAKE, stop saying you were waiting with baited breath. Leave the bait in the freezer where it belongs, dammit.
Also, (inspired by but not addressed by one above) stop “reigning things in”. Reins and reigns are DIFFERENT. Misuse of homonyms in idiomatic expressions drives me mad. MAD!
I am not bothered at all by regionalisms in speech, probably because I’m Southern. Also, I think regionalisms are some of the fun of language. I can speak and write English well enough to suit my purposes, and I second the folks who don’t mind “y’all.” It’s the second-person plural, and it’s handy. That’s why so many other languages have one.
To be fair, I’ll point out that I have horrible problems dealing with where the punctuation goes relative to quotation marks, especially nested quotes. No one’s perfect.
The thing that gets me is y’all, but only when idiots misspell it “y’all” I see it all the time (I’m from Texas). For Heaven’s sake, we made up this silly word, at least spell it correctly! It’s not ya will, it’s YOU ALL. Y’all. Drives me nuts every time.
My husband (who is a yankee) would vote for “the other day” We say it all the time around here, and it really could mean the other day two days ago, or the other day sometime last January. And he’s not the only person from up North that has pointed out to me that we Texans do it, but I think he’s used to it by now.
I teach high school. I don’t mind misspellings so much – I have a lot of ESL kids (southwest Texas, probably fewer than 100 miles from the border). It’s the unwillingness to accept correction that drives me nuts – “Hey, you misspelled force.” “Who cares? You said spelling doesn’t count; you knew what it meant.”
I wanted to smack a kid for telling me that he “literally” was going to beat up one of the other kids (twice his size) if he didn’t stop mocking the mullet. Which… mullet.
The one that bothers me most is “all is not” for “not all is”. They mean two completely different things.
All is not = none of it is.
Not all is = some may be.
“All that is gold does not glitter” vs. “Not all that is gold glitters”.
I don’t know if it’s a slang thing, regional thing, or just plain laziness, but one I hear a lot is “serial”.
“Here’s your test. You got a 65.” “Are you serial? My mom is going to kill me!”
One more and I hear it all day in retail
saleable instead of sellable or the opposite “having a sell” instead of “having a sale”
Bonkers.
Admittedly I’m not native to these shores, but I strongly object to being invited to “Shop Our Sale!” Is this really acceptable? It’s hard for me to pinpoint exactly what’s wrong here, but I feel it deep in my soul. That, and “savings”, as in “Now only $99 for a savings of…” — just awful. Perhaps it’s just the holidays getting to me.
I don’t think anyone else has covered this. Disorientated instead of disoriented drives me nuts. The guy who hosts Man vs. Wild says this all the time, and I hate it. He gets no slack for being British.
Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs says something too, that makes me think of the line from The Princess Bride “That word, I do not think it means what you think it means.”
And ditto on supposably instead of supposedly. Pick up a freaking dictionary people!
I’m SO glad this was brought up! I thought this was limited to my friend and was going to let it be, but then I heard it over, and over, and over…from intelligent people who should know better!
‘weary’, used to mean ‘suspicious or trepidatious about’. It’s WARY. Or LEERY. Used in different contexts. You cannot simply amalgamate them and make the word mean something different!!!
I mean, honestly, if ‘weary’ were some sort of wary/leery contraction that didn’t already have it’s own definition, that’d be one thing. But it is and it does.
I can’t really complain too much since I make a lot of mistakes on a daily basis (mostly out of laziness, not for a lack of knowing). Most of mine have been mentioned, but I’ll add a few.
My husband and I saw a hotel sign while we were on vacation recently that read:
We have the “internet”.
I nearly peed myself laughing.
Others that bug me are “healthy” for “healthful”, and the rampant misuse of alumni (for alumnus or alumnae). Mr. Joe Schmoe is NOT an alumni, unless he is suffering from multiple personality disorder! Gah!!
Also. ditto on the “literally” thing. I heard someone say ” he literally jumped out of his skin” on television the other day. Sweet heavens.
I second the “I was like” comment, especially because I catch myself doing it! It’s terrible. Overuse of like in general has to be a wide pet peeve, right?
And then there’s the recent upstart: using text abbreviations as actual spoken phrases. “I was like, OMG” would be a good example of the combination of these two things.
It shows I live in LA and overhear a lot of stupid conversations in coffee shops, doesn’t it?
Aw, I love grammar geek conventions! (And while we’re on it, it’s grammAR, not grammER. I still haven’t figured out the best way to react to being called a Grammer Nazi. There are so many things wrong with that; I just don’t know where to begin.)
So many of my pet peeves are listed, but I still want to cast my vote for a few:
*Orientate: I actually love hearing this in a strange, perverted. Orientate is, in fact a word; it means to turn to the east. Now, whenever I hear that, it gives me a happy little mental image. (“Okay, since it’s your first day, we have to orientate you.” “Really? Okay…which way is east?”)
*Misused apostrophes: WORD. It’s so simple and yet so misunderstood. Not a possessive or contraction? Don’t use it!
*Seen/saw: In general, past participles are woefully misused. “I had ran/saw/went…” just makes me sad. My husband, a computer programmer, once asked me, “Have you aten lunch yet?” Huh?
*Everyday/every day: I emailed a company over this once. Febreze used to have an ad campaign that said something like, “Use Febreze everyday.” I sent them an email explaining the difference between everyday and every day and said that they should really hire someone to correct things like that. I got a form response: “We were surprised to hear about your problem. We assure you that we go to great lengths to make sure our customers are satisfied with our products. Thank you for your feedback.”
*Should of: HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE
*Are you wanting…?: Damn you, McDonald’s! That stupid “I’m lovin’ it” ad started this whole let’s-overuse-the-progressive-tense thing. I used to be an ESL teacher, and when we talked about static verbs that can’t be used in the progressive tense (“Those roses are smelling good.” “He is liking blue. It’s his favorite color.”), someone ALWAYS mentioned McDonald’s. DAMMIT.
*Text Messaging: I used to find it handy; now I hate it, especially when people start treating acronyms as words. My sister does this; if she finds something really funny, she’ll type something like, “Looooool!” What the hell is that? That has no meaning! It’s even worse when I see people use text language when they are writing by hand. I even had a student once (and this was an American) who wrote smiley faces on her papers sideways, as in emails, as opposed to a traditional vertical smiley.
And, finally, as I was reading this, I heard “Could you voyage into the past and change the future?” on the TV. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard voyage as a verb before. Anyone familiar with that?
I don’t know how prevalent this actually is, but everyone at my job is obsessed with using the word “dank” to mean “fantastic.” That food is pretty dank! That party was dank!
Is it unpleasantly moist or humid? No? Then it is not “dank.” Cram it.
I would also like to agree with those who mentioned “anyways.” I have a violent hatred for that damned monstrosity. “Anyway” is a perfectly serviceable word: why must people forcefully drag it deeper into pointless informality with that stupid, grating “s”? When I see it in writing it never seems like something someone would naturally say (it takes EFFORT to add the extra letter, both in speech and in writing); or else it seems like the person speaking it is only doing so to be annoyingly, smugly dismissive. “But ANYWAYS.” Hate!
Also: use of the word “vain” when “vein” is needed; “idol” chatter instead of “idle.” My friend does stuff like that all the time. Admittedly, it was somehow extremely adorable when she said we needed to “consolidate” the puppy instead of “console” him. Heh.
“Somewhat of”.
ARGH! It’s “Something of”, or “somewhat”.
“He is something of a pedant.”
“He is somewhat pedantic.”
But not “He is somewhat of a pedant.”
Sort it out, people!
There’s one that was apparently invented within the last 2 or 3 years but has spread so quickly and widely that I fear that it can’t be eradicated; I see it online all the time, including the writing of otherwise eloquent bloggers (and recappers): “Moreso.”
First of all, it’s “more so.” Second, a majority of the time it’s being used when just “more” is needed. (“She likes it moreso than I do.”) I guess (as with the objective-position “I”) people thinks it sounds classier or more educated, when it’s just the opposite.
“Segway” is a scooter, sort of. “Segue” means “to continue without break”. I see the former used for the latter all the time, and it makes me want to kidney-punch the misusers.
@Duana: Ooh, good one. By which I mean “bad one.” I see that one a lot.
That reminds me of a question, which I’m going to post now.
I’m not much of a grammar fiend, but I absolutely can’t stand the phrase “very unique.” It makes me scream internally.
My biggest peeve (I’ve seen this often on message boards, and the posters have used it so consistently it cannot just be a typo) is “athiest” for “atheist”. I just find it incredible that a person cannot spell correctly a word s/he uses to describe his/her OWN life philosophy. I mean, how do you know what an atheist is, or whether you are one, if you cannot spell it?
I have really seen this numerous times outside a “omg teh athiests r so stupid omglol!!1!!” context, and coming from people who seemed to be educated and were often very vocal about their beliefs or lack thereof,
On line for in line.
“She was waiting on line for coffee.” She was? She was standing on a line? There’s a queue with a line on the floor on which she’s toeing the line? She was at her computer checking tomatonation for coffee?
No, she wasn’t. She was waiting IN LINE.
Every time I hear it I have to restrain myself from saying that in my most sarcastic voice. I didn’t even know it was something that people said until I moved to Boston, and now I hear it a lot. It’s like nails on a chalkboard to my ears.
Ooh! Moonloon, you made me think of another pet peeve. While I’ve never seen anyone write “persay,” it drives me crazy when I see D.J. written as “deejay” or M.C. written as “emcee.” They’re abbreviations for a reason!