wtncffts Posted February 23, 2011 Posted February 23, 2011 The mistake of using the contraction <it's> for the possessive <its> is annoying to all heck, and seems to be becoming more and more prevalent, to the point where I've seen it numerous times in reputable news sources. You wouldn't believe the number of times I came across it while grading student papers. What is going on? Another one, and I got this from someone's post, so I apologize for stepping on that poster's shoes: <advice> is a noun, <advise> is a verb. The pronunciations are different. One advises someone by giving them advice. An advicory opinion: I advice everyone in future to take this advise and stop using advize incorrectly. What are your grammatical annoyances? Purled 1
newms Posted February 23, 2011 Posted February 23, 2011 It's definitely your vs you're for me. Although sometimes when I'm typing on here I find myself making the same mistake
Ennue Posted February 23, 2011 Posted February 23, 2011 (edited) Well, I learned something today! I did not know that advice and advise have different pronunciations. So thanks for your advise (yes, it hurt me to write that) Oh, by the way, my pet peeve is a Dutch thing: als vs. dan. In English that's "That one is bigger than (dan) the other one" and "That one is as big as (als) the other one". People keep using 'als' everywhere. And it's even worse when people are involved: "He is bigger than me (ik in Dutch)" vs. "You think he is better than me (mij in Dutch)." Nowadays, some people always use 'mij' and say things like "Hij is groter als mij". It kills me Edited February 23, 2011 by Ennue
Gunner24 Posted February 23, 2011 Posted February 23, 2011 2) there ≠their ≠they're 1) affect ≠effect
UnlikelyGrad Posted February 23, 2011 Posted February 23, 2011 principal vs. principle "Principle" is an idea. "Principal" is used for everything else, including "main" (e.g. Principal Component Analysis) I've even seen this one misspelled in textbooks.
DrPepper-olic Posted February 23, 2011 Posted February 23, 2011 2) there ≠their ≠they're 1) affect ≠effect This!
wtncffts Posted February 23, 2011 Author Posted February 23, 2011 (edited) I'm not a linguist or literature major, and I freely concede that I occasionally make mistakes, but there seems to be a growing lack of 'grammatical sense', so to speak. I mean, when I'm writing and reading, I have this constant awareness of whether words and sentences look and sound right and pleasing, as I'm sure many of you have. This seems to be an eroding capability; (some) students have seemed completely oblivious to their repeated and egregious errors. This suggests that the mistakes are not momentary instances of mental collapse but systematic learned behaviour, as though somewhere along the way, "you're" and "your" became confused, "affect" and "effect" became interchangeable, and so on. Unfortunate, really. EDIT: It may also be the case that, increasingly, people just don't care. They don't read back what they've written, they don't look up something if they're unsure but, instead, guess, and they don't value written expression as a representation of themselves, as a "face to the world". Edited February 23, 2011 by wtncffts
Bumblebee Posted February 23, 2011 Posted February 23, 2011 It could be because I'm not a native speaker of English, but specially and especially bug me a lot. Oh, and I've made the your/you're-they're/their mistake countless times. -ice/-ise/-ize endings also confuse me a lot.
wanderlust07 Posted February 23, 2011 Posted February 23, 2011 My current one from students is eliminating the -ed on the adjectival form of "bias": This source is bias, because... (cue twitch). I also dislike wandering commas. Students frequently drop, for example, the comma that should help join two independent clauses. It then mysteriously appears on ONE SIDE (why?) of a non-restrictive element or as a comma splice. Another pet peeve is people attempting to begin or end a quotation with ellipses directly inside the quotation mark. I just...the quotation mark means it's an excerpt!! What do you think it's doing? The little dots do not tell the reader anything new. In vain I try to convey this information. I could go on (perhaps because I'm staring at a stack of essays).
wtncffts Posted February 23, 2011 Author Posted February 23, 2011 It could be because I'm not a native speaker of English, but specially and especially bug me a lot. Oh, and I've made the your/you're-they're/their mistake countless times. -ice/-ise/-ize endings also confuse me a lot. Oh, I certainly understand some confusion if English isn't one's native language. God knows that my grammar is probably terrible in the only other language in which I am semi-fluent (French). As for that specific issue: especially or specially? So, one might say "This is an especially trying time for prospective graduate students, an agony which is amplified by a specially tailored forum on which to commiserate".
cranberry Posted February 23, 2011 Posted February 23, 2011 Prospective and perspective. Seriously, people!
qbtacoma Posted February 23, 2011 Posted February 23, 2011 Ooh, speaking of ellipses, my older relatives on Facebook have this problem where they do not capitalize the beginning of sentences or use periods...they just trail all their sentences together...and punctuate them with lots of LOLs...now my mother has picked this up from them and thinks it is okay to do this...I am deeply annoyed but I don't know how to tell her to stop. Purled 1
nhyn Posted February 23, 2011 Posted February 23, 2011 loose vs lose. I swear, I almost lose it sometimes (pun somewhat intended) when people use loose instead of lose.
wanderlust07 Posted February 23, 2011 Posted February 23, 2011 loose vs lose. I swear, I almost lose it sometimes (pun somewhat intended) when people use loose instead of lose. THIS. Also shutter vs. shudder. *twitch*
wtncffts Posted February 23, 2011 Author Posted February 23, 2011 Ooh, speaking of ellipses, my older relatives on Facebook have this problem where they do not capitalize the beginning of sentences or use periods...they just trail all their sentences together...and punctuate them with lots of LOLs...now my mother has picked this up from them and thinks it is okay to do this...I am deeply annoyed but I don't know how to tell her to stop. Hmm, it seems like they're trying too hard to be 'youthful' in their internet-speak. That, or they're employing excellent snark. loose vs lose. I swear, I almost lose it sometimes (pun somewhat intended) when people use loose instead of lose. Yes. What I don't get about some of these is that it actually takes more effort to type the incorrect word. Presumably, it's more work to type "loose" instead of "lose", even if that difference is marginal.
SimilarlyDifferent Posted February 24, 2011 Posted February 24, 2011 You might appreciate The Oatmeal's take on this: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/misspelling
neuropsych76 Posted February 24, 2011 Posted February 24, 2011 I think affect vs effect annoys me the most. I sometimes mess up their/they're/there even though it bugs me too lol
squaresquared Posted February 24, 2011 Posted February 24, 2011 I think many people are not taught the tricks properly back in elementary school for the you're/your/their/there/to/too/etc. Many teachers don't even do these things properly haha It also really irritates me when people say 'libary' instead of 'libRary' (like the Principal of an elementary school I know...) My friend has horrible spelling and he thinks it is because nobody ever really corrected him back in the day, so he just kept writing it wrong the whole way through school. He didn't realize how horrible he was until spell check came into his life and even that can't get things right 100% of the time.
UFGator Posted February 24, 2011 Posted February 24, 2011 I think affect vs effect annoys me the most. I sometimes mess up their/they're/there even though it bugs me too lol I hate the fact that I have to google it every time, it's one of my many grammar and writing weaknesses. Personally, I hate when people say finance like "fin-ance", I'm not sure what's proper but I am just so used to hearing "feye-nance."
dant.gwyrdd Posted February 24, 2011 Posted February 24, 2011 Most of the errors mentioned here are not grammatical but spelling errors.
Bumblebee Posted February 24, 2011 Posted February 24, 2011 Oh, I certainly understand some confusion if English isn't one's native language. God knows that my grammar is probably terrible in the only other language in which I am semi-fluent (French). As for that specific issue: especially or specially? So, one might say "This is an especially trying time for prospective graduate students, an agony which is amplified by a specially tailored forum on which to commiserate". Ha, ha, ha. Thanks!! I'll try to remember the sentence
wtncffts Posted February 24, 2011 Author Posted February 24, 2011 (edited) Most of the errors mentioned here are not grammatical but spelling errors. Interesting. Can you elaborate on the difference? In my OP, I was sort of using 'grammatical' in a loose way, but I really would be interested to hear from someone in linguistics on this. The "its/it's" mistake: spelling or grammar? From my lay perspective, I'd say a spelling mistake is when a word is correctly used but just spelled incorrectly, where it is a grammatical mistake when the wrong word is used altogether (though most of these are homonyms). EDIT: I also wouldn't call it a matter of 'word choice', which I see more as an error in which there is some kind of semantic difficulty; someone meant one thing but used a word which doesn't quite capture what they presumably intend or is awkward/vague/ambiguous in some way. Edited February 24, 2011 by wtncffts
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