Grammar Pet Peeves

[Pawpaw365]

It irritates me when people say 'give it me' instead of 'give it to me'

 

[TwooTwooTwitTwitTwoo]

Hey Alice, don't beat yourself up about it. I'm a stickler on grammar tooooo, but after reading back some of my posts, I've typed many silly corkers.

Yep me toooooo. I always cringe but I doubt many except other grammar pedants notice.

 

[1001 others]

"Low and behold" instead of "Lo and behold"
"The curtains compliment the flooring" instead of "The curtains complEment the flooring"
"Per say" instead of "Per se"
"Low and behold" instead of "Lo and behold"

... I could go on all day!

 

[Django]

People who start a sentence with 'like' for no discernible reason

 

[AliceInWanderLost]

I get annoyed by Americanisms creeping in everywhere! My phone keeps correcting ill to I’ll. No, I won’t write « sick », as if I say I have been sick, that means I vomited, not that I was poorly/unwell.
Also nail polish instead of nail varnish annoys me no end, as does pants for trousers, said by an Irish colleague!
It annoys me that Brits make the effort to learn the US word ( elevator, trunk, pants…) but if you say lift, car boot and trousers in the US, you are met with blank stares. It just does my head in!

i feel the same way when my spelling of words is queried - my phone etc trying to correct the "s" to "z" in words like organise, or erase the "u" from words like honour and harbour. just STOP.

same with the word "yoghurt" which i still spell with an H, as i was taught as a kid. the americanised spelling of "yogurt" has seemingly rendered the original spelling obselete but it just looks wrong spelt that way. and american terms such as "thru" and "tho" to replace "through" and "though".

 

[Pawpaw365]

When people say “I brought this dress from Asda” when they mean they purchased. If you’re bringing it somewhere, it’s brought. If you purchased it, It’s bought.

I’m fairly patient with some of the mistakes as I’m dyslexic so make a few myself but whenever I read that my brain just reads it and I think “you brought the dress to where”… for about two minutes before I’m like ohhhb

I’ll admit it took me years to know the difference. It was one of the words that I don’t remember being taught the difference between at school, whereas their, your, etc were all hammered in!

 

[witchofwestbyfleet]

What is an Oxford comma? And please don't say "Google is your friend." No he blinking isn't!

A comma after the last item in a sentence e.g.

"Tattle discusses influencers, vloggers, and celebrities" = with Oxford comma
"Tattle discusses influencers, vloggers and celebrities" = without Oxford comma

 

[Loubywoobywoo]

I always just say "partner" as I always forget if I'm the é or the ée.

Just had a flyer through from a company offering me a free boiler. Wow, great! Except they've used "effected" instead of "affected", so into the bin it goes.

For a man it’s fiancé and a woman is a fiancée
Similarly I've noticed people not using "of" after "a couple".

E.g. "Can I have a couple days off?"

Male person is a fiancé, woman is a fiancée, if that helps.

 

[emm]

in primary school, our teacher taught the whole class - kids aged about 6 - that the word "friend" was spelt "freind" - to the point that if we spelt it correctly, she would actually cross it out with red pen and alter the spelling. eventually, it was noticed by our parents, who - while waiting in the playground to collect us - must have discussed the fact that their kid was struggling to spell "friend", and suddenly made the connection that all the children in the class had the same issue.

I often hear primary school teachers saying things like "was you" no wonder literary standards are as they are!

 

[Kim Mild]

On the forum list , there is an Instagramer category. Shouldn't it be instagrammer? My phone kept auto- correcting this post.

 

[IridescentLipstick]

When people say "I could care less!" when they mean "I couldn't care less!" and don't realise that they're saying exactly the opposite of what they mean!

That one drives me batty.

I know a woman who pronounces unless /ungless

I'm Irish and some people mix up U and O vowel sounds e.g From - pronounced frum , under/onder and the worst one Room, pronounced Rum

A posh lady I know pronounces a sharp T sound like SH- whash was thash?

 

[AliceInWanderLost]

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'

reminds me of my frustration when people confuse "taught" and "learnt" and "lend" and "borrow".

 

[Kim Mild]

I saw a meme that made me think of this thread.

It refers to people saying someone ' was like ' instead of saying someone said . The meme explained that using 'said' is pretty much quoting someone but using 'was like' takes into account someone's non verbal communication such as tone , facial expressions and body language.

 

[Pawpaw365]

Grocer’s apostrophe is the use of an apostrophe in plural words e.g. apple’s, orange’s etc.

Hahaha that’s funny.

A grocer's apostrophe is the incorrect addition of an apostrophe, when there should be none. Advertising "apple's" instead of apples.

I was looking for a ‘to do’ notepad on Amazon last night and there were at least three that said TO DO’S - That’s a grocer’s apostrophe right?!

 

[watermelon sugar]

"Low and behold" instead of "Lo and behold"
"The curtains compliment the flooring" instead of "The curtains complEment the flooring"
"Per say" instead of "Per se"
"Low and behold" instead of "Lo and behold"

... I could go on all day!

Were you meant to put low and behold twice

 

[Lalalaand]

This has probably been said on here but the amount of times I've seen this recently is criminal... when people say generally but they actually mean genuinely it's not normal how much it pisses me off

 

[witchofwestbyfleet]

Native English speakers writing "can not" instead of "cannot" or, for instance, "why she is saying that?" instead of "why is she saying that?" These are perfectly understandable in people whose first language isn't English, but if it is your first language, yeah, it grates

I had an ex who frequently wrote "&c." (archaic form of etc.) I guess it's not wrong per se but it did look weird, lol

 

[emerald]

Writing "women" when they mean a singular "woman". Goes right through me.

 

[HereForTheTtt]

I despise it when people say ‘I’m going gym’ rather than ‘I’m going to the gym’. When did this become a thing?

 

[TapToBoreMeRigid]

Super Nanny was fab at terrible grammar. Remember "asseptable"? There was that really difficult girl yelling at her "It's ACCEPTABLE not asseptable"

I wrote about it on Twitter years ago and Jo Frost replied to me. She must have searched her own name.