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May 31, 2014 at 4:36 pm #611513
JanSParticipantwe’ve talked about it before on here, but…here’s another list….what are your favorites….er..pet peeves?
May 31, 2014 at 7:41 pm #808958
miwsParticipantI pretty much know the difference between most of the words listed, although further/farther generally trips me up, and in regards to the rest of the list, I sometimes have to picture the word in my mind, and sound it out to myself as to which word I need for my usage. Also, I usually have to sound out; “Its ‘possessive’, no apostrophe.”
These last two points bring up a question that I’m not sure any of us have addressed on these similar threads over the years; does anyone else have the issue, of “there/their/they’re”, for example, of where you well know the proper usage of each, but end up typing out the wrong one?
I attribute it to my brain typing faster than my fingers, and by the time the fingers catch up, the word is still “audibly” floating around in the brain, but the proper spelling of the word for the particular usage has gone away.
Also, related to the brain typing faster, I often find that I am missing words, or even entire sentences that I meant to be they’re. ( ;-) )
Mike
May 31, 2014 at 7:45 pm #808959
miwsParticipantJust remember, Jan; It’s only words, and words are all I have to take your heart away….
;-)
Mike
May 31, 2014 at 8:47 pm #808960
JanSParticipantawwww.
Yes, Mike, my fingers do that, too. And spellcheck only checks the spelling…it doesn’t correct usage. So if you spelled the wrong word correctly, spellcheck doesn’t give a damn. Grammar nazis will get you every time :D.
I,myself, let it pass when I read the mistakes of others. After a while, correcting just sounds bitchy….unless you mean to be ;-)
May 31, 2014 at 9:08 pm #808961
SmittyParticipantSomewhat related, but I find it amazing how many people spell loser, “looser”.
For some reason it also bugs me when people pronounce it REAL-A-TER in stead of REAL-TOR.*
* and it’s usually the same people who make fun of NUC-U-LUR , oddly enough.
May 31, 2014 at 9:33 pm #808962
miwsParticipantSmitty, “looser” is probably my biggest peeve.
I generally don’t call out others’ errors either, even if they repeat the same ones, (which tells me they think it’s the proper spelling/usage, as opposed to the random typo).
Jan, I just noticed within the past couple of months, or so, that I not only have the spellcheck that’s been on my system forever, but also usage correction suggestions. The little squiggly “you screwed up” underline seems to be a bit different; perhaps lighter, or something.
Dunno if it’s a Browser (Chrome) thingy, or an OS (W7) thingy, though.
Oh, once in awhile I can’t help but give a bad time to somebody, if they make a typo that turned out comical. ;-)
I think I’ve even sent e-mails to people whose addys I have, if their typo ended up appearing to be offensive, if taken at face value.
Mike
May 31, 2014 at 9:38 pm #808963
JanSParticipantwhich brings us to grammer vs. grammar. lol…
one I find myself doing periodically, and I do know better (it’s that fingers/brain thing) is know/now. I really try to proofread before hitting “enter”. I just chalk it up to age – lol…it’s a good excuse – hehehe
and then there are some people we just know are not knowledgable :-|
May 31, 2014 at 11:00 pm #808964
KatherineLParticipantMike, I type their/they’re wrong now. I never used to. Of course I know the difference, but my brain has somehow cross wired them.
The misuse that I hate most is when I read that a character “poured over his/her page.” Really? Did they turn to syrup? I want to scream.
June 1, 2014 at 8:26 am #808965
metrognomeParticipanty’all should try e-mailing my sister who is a PhD-level linguist who has never, ever made a grammatical error in any language or dialect, no matter how obscure.
pretty much any set of homophones will cause problems (I find examples always help):
– ‘to’ vs ‘too’ vs ‘two’ (‘It’s two late for me … I agreed too go on a date with someone who behaves like a to-year-old. What am I two do?’)
– ‘where’ vs ‘wear’ vs ‘ware’ (‘Wear is the outfit I was going to where to dinner with MetroGnome on Saturday? Darn! Now I’ll have to stay home since I have nothing to ware.’)
– ‘capital’ vs ‘capitol’ (Maybe eye should rethink this … he was going to fly me to the Capital in his private jet and spend a lot of capitol on a reely fancy dinner with the Precedent!)
– ‘principle’ vs ‘principal’ (‘I was going to take the high school principle to dinner Saturday, but she her principal objection is that she doesn’t date men who behave like too-year-olds.’ Just because I choo my food with my mouth open!’)
And than their’s the people who confuse ‘irony’ and ‘ironing,’ as in, ‘I can’t go out to dinner with you Saturday because I have to do the irony and then wash my hare.’
Plus there’s the folks who insist on using ‘naked’ instead of ‘nekkid’ when referring to a Southerner.
Lastly, there is ‘lei’ vs ‘lay’ but I think I should keep that example to mice elf. Let’s just say I was *very* disappointed when I visited Hawai’i … I *really* wanted an orchid wreath.
June 1, 2014 at 12:48 pm #808966
miwsParticipantJune 1, 2014 at 3:57 pm #808967
dmkParticipantI love it! I have to admit I didn’t even know the difference between compliment and complement. This has nothing to do with spelling or grammar but my pet peeve is “in tears” can’t we just say she was crying?
June 1, 2014 at 5:31 pm #808968
miwsParticipantdmk, that hat you’re wearing today is really nice! The color goes well with the color of your eyes!
(Don’t get creeped out, this is just a random example!)
I just complimented you, on how well the color of your hat complements the color of your eyes.
Mike
June 4, 2014 at 12:26 am #808969
metrognomeParticipantmy favorite peeve this week, with the coverage of the Bergdahl swap, is the use of ‘was’ and ‘former’ in the same sentence by alleged ‘news’ organizations. For example, ‘Sen. John McCain, who was a former P.O.W…’ DOH! ‘Was’ means ‘formerly’; the only way the above sentence is accurate is if McCain is once again a P.O.W. He either ‘is a former P.O.W.’ or he ‘was a P.O.W.’
And don’t get me started on past pluperfect split infinitives because I have no idea what they are.
June 4, 2014 at 1:23 am #808970
singularnameParticipant–“led,” not “lead,” for the past tense of the verb “lead” (have seen this misspelled at least a hundred times in scholarly journal editing)
–“more than 30 flavors,” not “over 30 flavors” (marketing departments fail all over this one)
–“between you and me,” but “among Bob, Rob, and me”
–one space following a period between sentences, not two, when using a computer program
June 4, 2014 at 2:22 am #808971
MBParticipantWhen people say “nucular” instead of “nuclear” I feel like my head is going to explode. It was especially annoying throughout George W’s presidency :/
And then I just read this on Wikipedia…seriously?! Sigh. “Nucular is a commonly used metathetic form of the word ‘nuclear’. While it is usually regarded as a mispronunciation, and no dictionaries list this particular pronunciation as correct, several make mention of it because of its increased usage.”
June 4, 2014 at 3:02 pm #808972
JoBParticipanti have become a lot more tolerant of the misuse of words since my brain started misfiring..
June 4, 2014 at 5:29 pm #808973
KBearParticipantDefinately
June 4, 2014 at 5:49 pm #808974
sam-cParticipantha ha, when people type defiantly, when they really mean to type definitely
June 4, 2014 at 8:09 pm #808975
JanSParticipantsam-c…I have seen that so many times – lol
I’m getting persnickety in my old age, I suppose. I am now starting to stop and hi-jack a thread and point out those little quirky mistakes to people…
June 4, 2014 at 11:53 pm #808976
miwsParticipantAnother couple of common-ish ones that are up there with loose(r)=lose(r), conveniently packaged in a sentence:
“I am SO greatful that the breaks on my car are good, because some nutcase, driving a white Escalade, aggressively tailgated me for a block, honking, while I was going 3 mph over the limit. Then they whipped around me and cut me off! I had to slam them on so herd, I thought I’d brake (less common error) my neck!”
Mike
June 5, 2014 at 12:21 am #808977
KevinParticipantIf you really want to have some fun… try finding a spelling or grammatical error in the WSB news stories! Perhaps we should start a “contest” thread to see how many errors can be found?
Because of their (Tracy and Patrick) 99.99999 accuracy, it REALLY brightens my day when once in a great while I do catch a typo in a story :)
I dare anyone to compare the accuracy rate of any other media source in town, compared to the WSB. Main stream media is FULL of typos and grammar errors!
June 5, 2014 at 1:41 am #808978
waynsterParticipantJune 5, 2014 at 2:02 am #808979
singularnameParticipantReminds of when I worked in a pub house … the bathrooms, both genders, had stacks of magazines and red pencils for typo-finding contests. Vanity Fair was the most clean, with only one typo ever found, not by me.
June 5, 2014 at 5:11 am #808980
metrognomeParticipantKevin — I defiantly agree. I am one of those people who is blessed (or cursed) with the ability to scan a document without reading it and have the typos jump out at me. Once, a friend showed me a uniform patch from his days in the submarine service. I glanced at it and said, ‘Do you realize the name of the boat is misspelled?’ I was the first one in 10 years to notice (or I was the first to be rude enough to mention it.)
Early in my days at Metro, I was proofing a draft Water Quality document on starting a recycling program (that was back when *everything* went into the garbage.) I noticed a rather odd theory that the advertising should be geared toward women as they would do the sorting before making their husbands take out the garbage. Being new to gubmint service, I wasn’t sure if that was standard thinking, but I flagged it anyway. Turns out the editor put it in to see who, incl. sr. mgmt., actually read the draft; I was the only one who caught it.
Having come from Group Health, I was shocked to see ‘PID’ used repeatedly until I discovered it meant ‘Public Information Document’ not ‘Pelvic Inflammatory Disease.’
June 5, 2014 at 1:58 pm #808981
anonymeParticipantCat described as not liking to be “pet”. Same cat described as having been “spaded”. Sounds like animal abuse to me.
“Rod” iron.
The document left behind by Isla Vista shooter Elliot Rodger described repeatedly by media as a “manifesto”. It was a diatribe, not a manifesto. While manifestos can also be written by narcissistic nut jobs, they usually contain some kind of political theory beyond misogynistic murder.
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