Grammar Pet Peeves

[Scorpihoe]

Not exactly grammar but…DOMANOSE

 

[MaineCoonMama]

I live in Australia and a lot of people will start a sentence with 'Yeah, nah'. Not as bad as 'you know what I mean' every three minutes but it's just so weird. Who said it first, and why?

 

[AliceInWanderLost]

I'm sure this must have been mention before, but I absolutely hate when people say "I could care less", instead of "I couldn't care less". It makes me irrationally angry.

THIS. the irrational anger is real! i genuinely don't understand how people don't realise that by messing up the phrase, they are saying the exact opposite of what they are trying to say! "i could care less!" - you very much COULD care less, meaning it is a situation/issue you DO care about.

 

[Oops...]

Arrive TO......

Yer what?

This is a fashionable grammatical error at the moment

Yes, who can forget ‘We arrived to the Fairmont Hotel for The Montreaux Jazz Festival...’

I think I've found my tribe

She’s introduced me now!

Hello Tribe!

Oh my God, this just made me remember a time when a 'posh lady' called our office (I worked in travel).
She says, 'Oh hello, I'm running late because I'm stuck in Splarshen Darsh.

Cue me, wondering where the hell Splarshen Darsh is.

I responded with 'Can I take your booking reference?'
'No, I've not made a booking'
'Ok, we'll make one now for you'
'I don't need a booking. I'm in my car'
'Ok...erm...'
She proceeded to tell me that she worked in our Head Office (down South) and was visiting our office (up North) but was stuck in Splarshen Darsh.

I said that I'll pass the message on. So informed my big boss, who looks at me and says 'Where the hell is Splarshen Darsh?' Thinking she was coming via Germany (in her car!! )
Google gets involved. Everyone around gets involved.

10 minutes later she arrives.
We discovered that Splarshen Darsh was actually Splash and Dash and she was getting her car washed.

Oh the embarrassment!

I laughed SO much at this my ribs hurt and my little dog side-eyed me then went to sit under a chair he’s never sat under before! It’s one of the funniest posts I have ever read...

 

[AliceInWanderLost]

I think that's an Americanism, isn't it?

A bit like"gotten" instead of "got". I know the former is fine to use in North America, but it annoys me when people use it in the UK.

Kinda like "can I write TO you?", but in America, "can I write you?"

 

[sheleg]

“on accident“

its BY accident.

 

[Archduchess of Luxembourg]

A genuine question - what IS the correct use of ‘myself’? I hate it being used to sound like a smartarse when ‘me’ or ‘I’ is grammatically appropriate but I can’t think of the correct context to use it?

When, for example, you have bought something for yourself; you wouldn't say 'I bought me a...', you would say 'I bought myself a new...'.

Edit: the perils of answering before reading to the end of a thread! I see someone else answered, sorry!

 

[Oops...]

Oh my God, this just made me remember a time when a 'posh lady' called our office (I worked in travel).
She says, 'Oh hello, I'm running late because I'm stuck in Splarshen Darsh.

Cue me, wondering where the hell Splarshen Darsh is.

I responded with 'Can I take your booking reference?'
'No, I've not made a booking'
'Ok, we'll make one now for you'
'I don't need a booking. I'm in my car'
'Ok...erm...'
She proceeded to tell me that she worked in our Head Office (down South) and was visiting our office (up North) but was stuck in Splarshen Darsh.

I said that I'll pass the message on. So informed my big boss, who looks at me and says 'Where the hell is Splarshen Darsh?' Thinking she was coming via Germany (in her car!! )
Google gets involved. Everyone around gets involved.

10 minutes later she arrives.
We discovered that Splarshen Darsh was actually Splash and Dash and she was getting her car washed.

Oh the embarrassment!

Just bumping this up again! It’s still one of the funniest posts I’ve ever read. I commented on it a while ago.

 

[Django]

When I was at school I wrote about my Granddad and how he liked listening to the radio. I put, "wahless", instead of, "wireless", because that's how my Londoner Granddad said it. Being corrected in front of the class means I now check almost everything prior to writing it

I have a friend and she says she's sitting IN the settee instead of on it. I bite my lip.

Is your friend of Spanish origin because that's how it's said here?

 

[AliceInWanderLost]

when people say irregardless instead of regardless. irregardless is not a word!

 

[Loubywoobywoo]

A little treat to bring the thread into June. Courtesy of the Daily Mail.

How can there be so many mistakes in so few words?

 

[AliceInWanderLost]

When people type Xmas instead of Christmas oh it drives me insane

Xmas is such an ugly word. And don't get me started on Crimbo!

 

[emphiii]

Weary instead of wary..."she's weary of new people".

 

[Melanysus]

One pet peeve I'm seeing creeping in is a lot of lax Americanisms of word usage or sentence structure. In the capacity I work, communication and English skills are pretty key, so it's becoming a bit of a mare seeing many of my colleagues, who should know better, lapsing into these.

Some of the top ones:

1. Confusing 'bring' and 'take'
2. Confusing 'come' and 'go'
3. Saying 'amends' instead of 'amendments' — this is my favourite one because we get many people constantly 'making amends' with text documents in some ongoing, obviously tumultuous relationship
4. Similarly, saying the likes of 'disconnect' and 'intent' to avoid that extra syllable of '-ion'

 

[Milktray]

Carn't

Contractions are taught in year 1.

If you can write an essay on Facebook about how kind you are, then you can spell can't.

 

[Gloria Rostron]

What’s the grocer’s apostrophe?!

People getting to/too wrong

I think you're being to harsh on people, they don't mean too!

 

[HoGi]

When I see that I wonder how they'd spell she's. It's a riddle wrapped in an enigma.

Totally agree. I work with a girl who uses his incorrectly in letters

 

[emm]

I am told it's dialect but I'm certain the amount of people who say "I seen" has risen significantly in recent years and I cringe internally every time.

I think what annoys me is that (assuming it is a dialect) people don't seem to be taught that there is a different between formal and informal English. I usually teach English as a foreign language and all students have the idea of this but recently I taught an academic language course to a mix of native and non native speakers, and most of the native speakers had no concept of what was appropriate or not in writing essays etc. I really despair of our education system

 

[Pawpaw365]

My major pet peeve is people who don’t know when to use subject or object pronouns (I/me). I have had colleagues ( when I worked in a school!) tell me “You can always call on S or I for help”, and so many vloggers say things like ‘I just made lunch for my husband and I”. The best/worst ones are horrible language manglings like “it’s my husband and I’s anniversary” which makes me shudder. It isn’t even a hard rule to master, you take out the “X and” bit and see if you would say I or me by itself, no need to understand the grammar behind it, though why that isn’t being taught in schools just beggars belief. It often crops up in scripted TV shows, tomy great chagrin, as this means no-one on the writing/acting team picked up on the mistake at any point, or if they did, they didn’t address it!
Another school colleague used to put the past tense where a past participle should go, so would tell children they should “have went to the toilet before we went to the park”. So many influencers make this mistake, it drives me bonkers to hear “I have ran” and other such delights! Again, it‘s really not that hard to get it right!
Perhaps it’s just because I was made to sit in front of a mirror and say things like “these three things” until I stopped pronouncing my th’s as f’s as a young child, but hearing people say ‘Fanks, I fink it was a fing I fought about free times” just makes my ears bleed! The k sound for words that end in g gets on my nerves too, and don’t get me started on people dropping their h’s and especially their t’s - no Collaeral Beauy is not the name of the film you saw, it’s Collateral Beauty!
I am thrilled to find this thread! My mum did an English Lit degree and has always made sure (my siblings and) I speak properly, correcting our mistakes and explaining the rule(s) until we understood it/them and could spread the word. We weren’t allowed to watch Eastenders as the characters use incorrect language like ain’t, drop their t’s and pronounce th as f quite often!

Agree with all of the above! But also have to add that ‘no one’ isn’t hyphenated
I see people say ‘Dave and myself’ or ‘I’m going to get a new top for myself’ - I don’t know whether people maybe think it sounds better or more formal?! But it’s so wrong.

Question - are you deranged if you decipher the best wiki on tattle for petty non existent errors?

If you’re gonna come on to the thread and make petty, sly digs about me, just @Me. This doesn’t need to be a bloody playground.

 

[Gl1tt3rUn1c0rn]

I think that you meant to say none, not non, but 'there isn't one' would make more sense.

sorry that was a bit of an in joke. Brummy Mummy is always saying ‘non’ instead of none.

Our you only aloud to comment on hear if you‘re grammer is prefiction?.