Grammar Police, UNITE!

[filkertom]

Something frivolous and fun. In the previous thread, arensb thanked umbran for correctly using the phrase "... invites the question" rather than "... begs the question".

What mistakes of grammar or syntax or style bother you the most? "Its" vs. "it's"? "Hopefully" instead of, for instance, "ideally"? The phrase "the fact that..."? Or "As everyone knows"?

Comments

[rikhei.livejournal.com]

I will come back to this thread and see how people respond - I've often made the mistakes of saying "begs the question" and "as everyone knows" and it will be good to learn what other mistakes I make. :)

The mistakes that bother me the most are the "its" vs. "it's" mistake, as well as the "they're" vs. "there" vs. "their" mistake. Gross spelling errors tend to bother me as well. The mistake I make that bothers me the most is my use of the passive voice when I should use the active voice.

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

The use of "impact" as a transitive verb is a sign of creeping bureaucratic language, though I will admit there is one proper use I have thought of:

Leaning backwards over the balcony after three glasses of Merlot, the dean suddenly found himself dropping into the courtyard like a delinquent duck shot by a vigilante Supreme Court justice, landing squarely on students about to be honored for making the Provost's List and finally realizing his public ambition of impacting college students in a lifelong way.

And, yes, I just entered that in the 2005 Bulwer-Lytton contest (my first attempt).

[catmcroy.livejournal.com]

*everyone knows* it's "you've done well", NOT "you've done good"

[jss]

Depends on the context. See also, "Doing well by doing good."

[patoadam]

It bugs me when people use "lay" without a direct object.'

Hens lay eggs. People don't lay down, they lie down.

I seem to be fighting a losing battle. Adam has learned to say "lay down" because his Mommy, pediatrician, and dentist all say it that way.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

How about past tense? "He lay down, and within minutes he was asleep."

[jss]

Mine include:

• Affect versus effect.
• Enquire versus inquire.
• Misuse of to, too, and two, and of their, there, and they're.
• The frequent misapostrophication of its/it's.

Lay versus lie doesn't bother me quite so much. And I don't see much misuse of one versus won.

[figmo.livejournal.com]

Time to start working on his mommy. Don't give up on him; he'll eventually get it.

[figmo.livejournal.com]

It drives me nuts when people who write professionally mix up "its" and "it's," "their," "there," and "they're," and "your" with "you're."

A few phrases that make my teeth hurt and my skin crawl:

• log onto (as in "log onto [my web site]") - Too often people say this when they mean "visit" or "connect to." You cannot log onto a site without having to enter a user name and password!
• in order to/in order for - Unless you're talking about things happening in a specified sequence, you do not need the phrase "in order." Period. Use "to" and "for" instead.
• A number of... -- What the hell is that supposed to mean? I hear it or see it and think, "this person doesn't know what they're talking about." "A number" can be anything. It can even be zero. If you mean "Many," "several," or "few," use those words instead.
• Because of the fact that... - Just say "because."
• This should [action] - Here's a phrase that does not belong in technical documentation other than perhaps a troubleshooting section. Either the software works ("It [does action]") or it doesn't. Similarly, unless you're attributing the phrase containing "should" to someone ("Fire Captain Jones says you should change the batteries in your smoke detector..."), it doesn't belong in news copy, either. Instead, use words like "advises" ("Fire Captain Jones advises folks to change the batteries in their smoke detectors...").

The other thing I really dislike is gender-specific language when it isn't needed. For example, using:

If a user wants to remove all his files, he should type "rm *" and press the "Enter" key.

instead of:

To remove all your files, enter "rm *".

I once had an editor who actually "corrected" the latter to the former in one of my documents. Eeeuw.

*Flame war possibility* Alert! Alert! Danger Will Robinson!

[aylinn.livejournal.com]

*ahem* Both you and the editor goofed.

I believe the correct phrase is "all OF your files" or "all OF his files" or "all OF their files".

Furthermore, I believe the editor was correct to modify your writing IF you were writing a technical document.

"You" & "Your" are what is known as the "familiar" form. "He", "She", & "It" as well as "They" & "Their" are the FORMAL third person method of address.

Technical documents are normally written as formal, third person, documents. I shall dutifully sit/type corrected if your entire document was written in a second person familiar mode and the editor just changed that one line.

If you do not like specifying gender, may I suggest third person plural? "They" & "Their" work very nicely and inclusively.

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Modifiying "unique" in anyway.

An object or concept that is unique is just that: a singular, unmatched item that is not duplicated by anything.

Something can not be "very unique", or "almost unique" or anything else. It is either unique, or it isn't.

On another note, I hate it when sportscasters mix sports metaphors. I just heard a Fox football broadcaster use a baseball term.

[jss]

Q: How do you trap a rabbit?

A: Unique up on it.

[kengr]

The growing use of "mute point". It's "moot point"!

[shikyrie.livejournal.com]

Well, if it can't utter a sound, then it is mute, correct? ::ducking for cover::

[trdsf.livejournal.com]

My a-number-one bugaboo is the simultaneous disappearance of 'to be' and of the gerund form. The phrase "Your car needs washed" causes me to reach for a tire iron. No, your car does not "need washed". Your car either "needs to be washed", or it "needs washing" -- although one might debate that a car, being an inanimate object, cannot 'need' anything and instead 'should be washed'.
Another one high on my "take a tire iron to the offender" list is "its'", which is always incorrect.
"Hopefully" doesn't bother me. "Irregardless" is on the tire iron list.
Of course, being a good Ohioan, I'm perfectly aware that we have our own grammatical peculiarities, particularly our irrational tendency to terminate a sentence a preposition with. ;)

[shikyrie.livejournal.com]

Don't get me started on Ohio... I work for Verizon 411 (yes, I'm one of THOSE people) and some of the idiocies, mispronunciations, etc.etc. I get from Ohio callers are enough to start a book.

eg. They want something in CANTON, OH., but they say "KENTON" and since there IS a Kenton in the state of Ohio, they go all ballistic when I give my not found. Then again, they go ballistic on me when I ask them to spell the city out (so I don't type in the wrong city). Then there's half-dozen Washington Townships, and Jackson Townships, and various other townships that have their own listings (why don't they just list those under the nearest big city/town, like Canton, Cleveland, Cincy, Dayton, etc.? pisses me off to no end. some of those people need shot (HA! did that deliberately). Ok I digress and end my rant.

[aylinn.livejournal.com]

My two personal bugaboos are:

1) Comma usage - and/or the lack thereof

2) Verb tenses & conjugations - and again, the lack thereof

As a factor of number 2 - I also dislike it when the verb forms do not agree with the mode of address - i.e. first person, third person, etc.

One of the saddest days in my life was when I realized one of the signs of how far American Education had fallen was that Laura Ingalls Wilder has to learn (AND DEMONSTRATE for her teaching certificate) the ability to diagram a sentence. I only learned it in school because my 6th grade English teacher had to learn it to get her Master's degree. Oh, and I was also lucky enough to be in an Honors level English class.

Go back & reread the Little House books. Then see if any child today could pull off the School History Exhibit that Laura & Ida pulled off in "These Happy Golden Years".

Can you tell I'm the daughter of a Social Studies teacher? As well as the grandchild of an Elementary School teacher?

*gets down & kicks that dratted soapbox off-stage* Stupid thing - always sneaking underneath my feet when I least expect it. *sigh*

my apologies to all.

I forgot one.

[aylinn.livejournal.com]

People who say "I don't need to know how to spell - that's what a spell checker's for!" (and don't even use THAT!)

my immediate reaction is usually to grind out "You can't spell check Life!" from between my gritted teeth & bleeding tongue.

I'm getting better - I USED to scream it at them & go for their jugular veins with claws & teeth...on the strict principle that such people should not be allowed to breed further, you understand. ;)

Why yes - it IS in our marriage contract that I'm allowed to correct my husband's pronounciation & spelling. why do you ask? *Huge Grin*

Seriously, it is. He's dyslexic and I warned him that I have that minor personality glitch. He thanked me and told me to go right ahead and do so. His spelling has improved in the 15 years we've been together. *sour look* Unfortunately, mine has started transposing things when typing. *sigh*
Comes from seeing things his way.

Best example of this was when we were having a friendly but vociferous discussion about the subject of dyslexia and he said "ON!" at me. I just looked him dead in the eye and replied "EYES!" or rather "EYS!" He stopped. He blinked. And that was the end of THAT discussion.

[cthulhulovesme.livejournal.com]

Apostrophe abuse. Why must people mistreat the poor things so?

same here

[madmanotl.livejournal.com]

An apostrophe is for possessive or a contraction. Not for a plural. I've seen written on a cake "Best Wishe's Paul"

[thepiercedrose.livejournal.com]

Typing real estate listings all day I could give you tons if I thought about it. Right now my pet peeve from certain agents is "priced to sale". GARGH!!! They have some serious issues with tenses.

And please don't get me started about their handwriting.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Oh, God. You just prompted me on the two that make me craziest: "Pre-owned" and "instant discount".

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

The one that drives me crazy is "for all intensive purposes" rather than "for all intents and purposes".

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

I think the one that bothers me the most is using quotation marks for emphasis. That's closely followed by inappropriate mixing of upper and lower case letters, apostrophe abuse, and excessive ellipses. I tend to notice and be annoyed by bad punctuation more often than any other class of errors.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I agreed completely with the 1990 micro-series The "World's Worst Comics" Awards in the nomination of Stan Lee for the Nobel Prize for Literature, because he saved us all from years of Jack Kirby's "word jazz".

If you've never read a "comic" written by "Jolly Jack", there's no "easy" way to "describe" it!!!!!-----"Words" were put in "quotations" for "emphasis" seemingly "at" RANDOM!!!... Lots of "exclamation points" and "dashes" and "ellipses"!!! SENTENCE FRAGMENTS! MEANINGLESS OUTBURSTS! DISJOINTED "REFERENCES" TO "OTHER THINGS"!!!!! With the "occasional" "meaningless" "observation" that seems to be some sort of "cosmic ZEN koan"-----OR IS IT?!?!?

[jbrewer.livejournal.com]

Incorrect use of the word penultimate. I can't say how many times I've said, "No...really...it means second to last...."

[jss]

I get a perfectly inappropriate enjoyment when I get to use "antepenultimate" in its correct usage.

[shikyrie.livejournal.com]

What mistakes of grammar or syntax or style bother you the most? "Its" vs. "it's"? "Hopefully" instead of, for instance, "ideally"? The phrase "the fact that..."? Or "As everyone knows"?

Humm... I know I have my own little quirks, but there are those which REALLY irk me.

Brief list:
1) someone I know has a habit of saying things like "I'm going to the store to look for me some shoes"... ::shudder::

2) the great "to, too, two" or "There, their, they're" problem.

3) and number one on the list- people who talk, and type "ghetto". ::scream::

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Coming in late, after a con, so...

Many of the things on this list are bothersome.

To add to them:

- Misspelling the word "definite" -- a spellchecker ought to catch it. Misspelled words that can be caught mechanically, in general, are problematic, but that one in particular bothers me.
- I am slowly coming to terms with the modern acceptability of the usage "different than" as opposed to "different from". I don't have to like it, though.
- Misuse of hyphens, en dashes and em dashes. This is mitigated somewhat by situations in which the latter may not appear properly (such as across platforms on LJ). But in print -- and, particularly, at my workplace -- em dashes are just as easy to use as en dashes and almost as simple as hyphens.

There are lots of others. They'll come to mind just as soon as I click "Post Comment."

[mrlogic.livejournal.com]

What really galls me is that Sondheim used "different than" in the lyrics of two songs in Into the Woods. This is someone who is supposed to care about language. And he did it twice.

Argh.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, lots of things, and "its" vs. "it's" would definitely be high on the list. Generally speaking, I hate when people confuse plural and possessive. And since I'm in the stationery business, I come across this a lot. ("No, you cannot put "From the Brown's" on your notepaper!")

[janet-coburn.livejournal.com]

I recently heard someone use "precurse" as a verb--and not in the sense of what I do when I realize I'm going to have to spend time with my sister. The smoke from the volcano precursed its eruption, or some such.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Huh. I always thought it was the language you use while waiting for the stupid slow-ass word processing program to finish waking up and let you frickin' type already. :)

Love those spell-checkers

[janet-coburn.livejournal.com]

One of our editors just posted a note he received from a student who missed a deadline and apologized for "any incontinence it caused."

Re: Love those spell-checkers

[arensb.livejournal.com]

That was so funny, I wet myself.

[ororo.livejournal.com]

there's a couple communities about this, dot_pedantic is one. :)

[mrlogic.livejournal.com]

I'll list a solecism that I sometimes perpetrate as the only solution that seems to work: sometimes I use the "singular their" as a nonsexist pronoun. I do so with full knowledge of what I'm doing and the way in which it is grammatically perverse. There are times when nothing else will serve this purpose without sounding self-conscious or needlessly circumlocutory. For example: "Everyone has a right to their own opinion." Even though it makes me cringe somewhat, I just can't find another construction that expresses the same idea in a non-sexist way without sounding too picky or obviously contrived. (The best I can come up with is "All people have rights to their own opinions," and you can't tell me that sounds natural.) Common usage supports "their" used in this singular manner, and I am willing to concede that it fills a linguistic need and does so well.

[arensb.livejournal.com]

In case it makes you feel better, the OED lists this usage of "their", notes that it is "Not favoured by grammarians", but also gives usage examples dating back to 1420.

[trdsf.livejournal.com]

I thought of another one that bothers me: "impactful". Eurgh.

dragonscholar, ataniell93 and I used to have a magazine ... we have dealt with our fair share of grammatical, syntactical and structural horrors. The worst, though, is the correctly spelled incorrect word. We have gone to press only to find later that a desert was crossed in twenty minuets, a vampire took a steak to the heart, and a phone was answered with a "Hell."--and those are the ones we didn't catch (I myself very nearly had 'Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded wife' in the issue we brought to ChiCon V--fortunately for my sanity, that was caught before we printed). Sometimes, no matter how hard you try ... ah, well.

I have sympathy for those errors, because I know personally how easily they can slip through. A spellchecker or grammar checker can only find just so much.

[shikyrie.livejournal.com]

See my above post on "The bridge came closer." The person I was proofreading for saw (and still sees) nothing wrong with it, even after repeated attempts to get them to visualize what they wrote. The bridge does NOT come closer. It does NOT sprout legs, wheels, whatever, to give it mobility, and if it does, then you'd better run, because it just might be some Lovecraftian construct, or some other otherworldly nasty that you don't want to encounter in this, or any other lifetime. I have since given up trying to convince said person that "We approached the bridge..." would be must more aesthetically pleasing.