English Pet Peeves, or the Recovering Grammar Nazi Support Group

[Contempo]

Is it an English Pet Peeve if one despises certain grammatical constructions that people intentionally highlight regardless of the communicative degradation done to the sentence, idea, or concept by said error? I ask because I cannot stand certain grammatical constructions.

I hate parallelism. I consider it as useless as a hippie at a N.R.A. meeting: it is only going to draw a lot of attention and cause problems. I hate the idea of not splitting infinitives. I shall split every single infinitive within my grasp. The man is going to slowly hang. The bum is trying to (magic) go to the store. Well . . . I am not as capable of splitting some infinitives as others.

People draw attention to these mistakes as they type run-on sentences and forget (again) the introductory comma.

Oh, comma. Yes, the bell tolls for you. At least, the bell would toll for you, if, in fact, the modern American society had church bells within ear-shot.

Hm . . . I guess this is not a Pet Peeve.

I . . . I hate texting or how ever it should be spelled. I know it is a legitimate form of communication; however, I have never sent a text message by cellphone in my life, and I have noticed that text-forms have been seeping into papers and classroom discussions to the point where the students are no longer clear or precise enough with their language for a complex argument.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

I spell everything out in my text messages. Except I don't know how to capitalize (it does it automatically at the beginning of sentences) so I write "i" a lot.

 

[Mirc]

^ What kind of cell do you have? (although we're going off-topic)

I also spell every single word in my text messages, no matter whether it's in English or Romanian.

 

[Contempo]

^ What kind of cell do you have? (although we're going off-topic)

I also spell every single word in my text messages, no matter whether it's in English or Romanian.

This is, sadly, Off-Topic. Do you notice that many individuals forget that Romanian is one of the five Latin languages? Does it bother you?

I ask because it bothers me. It makes me sad for Romania.

 

[Mirc]

This is, sadly, Off-Topic. Do you notice that many individuals forget that Romanian is one of the five Latin languages? Does it bother you?

I ask because it bothers me. It makes me sad for Romania.

I notice it, especially since when I was in the US I got asked 3 times a day if Romanian is a slavic language...

And yes, it's really annoying, but I got used to it. Actually last time when I was in Italy, I was talking on the phone with a Romanian and some Italian guy walked up to me and asked me really polite from what area of Italy I am, since he's never heard that dialect before.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

I have the cheapest phone I could get. The one I got on my plan took a swim, and I had to pay for a new one out of pocket, so I didn't waste money on things like a camera.

 

[Mirc]

I have the cheapest phone I could get. The one I got on my plan took a swim, and I had to pay for a new one out of pocket, so I didn't waste money on things like a camera.

No I meant what company made it. Like Nokia, Samsung, Sony Erricson, etc.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Sorry, but it is definitely "None of them works." "None" is always singular. People often use it as if it were plural, but that is wrong.

Thank you for restoring my faith in Mr. Fry. I was worried there for a while

 

[Taliesin]

On the other side, I've heard that the French often find a Scottish accent easier to understand than an English one - in fact they sometimes have less trouble understanding a Glaswegian than the English do. Yet Scotland is further from France than England is.

And yet, if you've ever heard a Glaswegian try to speak French...

But to be fair, it should be noted that Scots have no trouble at all with the French 'tu' vowel that confounds most anglophones, because the sound is already present in most Scottish accents. I think this might be due to the 'ui' sound in Scottish Gaelic, which is more or less the same.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

it's vs. its

It's is a contraction of "it is", it is NOT a possessive.

Its is a possessive and ONLY a possessive.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Yes, but Peter's grammar has an apostrophe.

It is confusing.

It's better than hi's, her's, etc.

 

[warpus]

There's a restaurant opening in town.. A big sign going up.. It reads "Bernies"

No apostrophe.. why not??? A lot of places do this.. I don't really care, but... I'm sort of wondering how it's possible that nobody noticed before they Ok'd the sign/name of bar/restaurant.

Am I the only one who cringes when coming across signs like that? It's not even like I'm trying to be a grammar republican.. It's just a natural response..

 

[ParadigmShifter]

But, at the local fish and chip shop, they should have left a bigger gap between fish and and and and and chips.

 

[StarWorms]

I find it worse when people try to look like they know what they're doing. So rather than saying something like "That is there dog", they say something like "You're party was great".

say=write, of course.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

*cough* their dog.

 

[StarWorms]

*cough* their dog.

Nope, it was an example of someone using incorrect grammar.

 

[Taliesin]

There's a restaurant opening in town.. A big sign going up.. It reads "Bernies"

No apostrophe.. why not??? A lot of places do this.. I don't really care, but... I'm sort of wondering how it's possible that nobody noticed before they Ok'd the sign/name of bar/restaurant.

Am I the only one who cringes when coming across signs like that? It's not even like I'm trying to be a grammar republican.. It's just a natural response..

And the most visible example, of course, is 'Tim Hortons'.

 

[Red Door]

I'm sure this one has been beaten to death, but if one more sports commentator uses the word "irony" to describe a player playing for his favorite team growing up or playing in the city he grew up in, I'm going to choke someone.

 

[Plotinus]

Can I also throw "likely" used as an adverb into the mix?

Americans do it all the time: "There is likely a problem with your drivers" etc. They mean "probably", of course - "likely" is an adjective ("An earthquake is likely" etc). Obviously they're misled by the "-ly" ending. This is one Americanism that I don't think I've seen creeping into other countries yet, but I bet it can only be a matter of time.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

There are a bunch of words ending in -ly that get (improperly) used as adverbs. There is a song with the lyrics of " . . . the flag you cowardly salute", which makes my skin crawl; add "ugly" and a few others. Compared to that, "likely" isn't so bad.