Random Grammatical Rant
Call me a snob, but it bugs the crap out of me when people write by ear and end up butchering the English language. Case in point: it’s “SHOULD HAVE” (or SHOULD’VE), not “SHOULD OF.” As in: “I should HAVE (or should’ve) written about this sooner.” The same goes for “could have” and “would have.” While I’ve run across a bunch of other cases like this in my meanderings across the web, this is the one that comes to mind right now. Again, I know that I’m running the risk of being a grammar snob by writing this, but if nobody ever told you, then how would you know? Now you do. Feel free to leave a comment with any other grammatical annoyances that you’ve run across. I now return you to the regularly scheduled programming.
Published on August 2nd, 2005 - 15 Comments
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“Could/should of” is one of the most irksome grammatical muckups to me, as well. So many others… it’s vs. its, for example. That’s one’s not just on blogs, it’s everywhere in professionally published media, too.
Comment by Flexo — Aug 2nd 2005 @ 12:14 pmIts vs. it’s bugs me too, as well as other misuses of possessives.
Another is “alright.” It’s spelled “all right,” without exception. All right?
Comment by mbhunter — Aug 2nd 2005 @ 1:58 pmAnother pet peeve of mine is the improper usage of “i.e.” and “e.g.” The former is short for “id est,” which means “that is.” The latter is short for “exempli gratia,” which means “for example.” But in everyday usage, these get flip-flopped all the time.
irregardless.
The all time biggest offender. The word you want is “regardless”, people.
And innapropriate use of double quotes to make a point. Especially if you wiggle four fingers when you do it.
Comment by DavidB — Aug 2nd 2005 @ 7:00 pmOh, one other one .. “every day” vs. “everyday.” As in, “I try to post every day, but the everyday advice can get repetitive.”
Comment by mbhunter — Aug 2nd 2005 @ 7:58 pmAnd “alot” is not a word! A person may have a lot of money but they cannot have “alot” of money.
Comment by Jason — Aug 3rd 2005 @ 8:17 amI always loved this example from The Elements of Style– about nauseous vs. nauseated. It went something like “don’t say that you feel nauseous, unless you are sure you have that effect on others…”
Comment by Madame X — Aug 3rd 2005 @ 8:30 amPersonally, I despise the use of “definiately” and “was” in place of the contrafactual “were.”
Comment by Bob — Aug 11th 2005 @ 6:19 pmMy favorite is “flounder” and “founder”. Flounder is a fish, and founder is to drift aimlessly. But over usage of “flounder” with the meaning of “founder” has almost eradicated the difference.
Comment by EDWD45 — Aug 21st 2005 @ 11:54 amIf I see one more person use “do” instead of “due,” I’m going to scream.
Such as, “We postponed the game do to bad weather.” ARGH!
Nickel, this is for you: http://ask.yahoo.com/20050803.html
Comment by Kat — Aug 28th 2005 @ 1:57 pmMy pet peeve is the use of “your” in place of you’re. “our” is not a substitute for “you are”. You’re going to remember that, right?
Comment by Carol — Aug 28th 2005 @ 10:48 pmMy pet peeves aren’t about grammar. Not that I don’t notice when it is butchered, but I find that I have a remarkable capacity to forgive those errors in the context of good ideas. The two things that get to me are incorrect usage of words that distorts the meaning, and excessive use of passive constructs. Let me explain.
I think anyone reading grammar rants will be familiar with the distinction between “imply” and “infer”. The definitions are quite clearly distinct, but there are people out there who confuse the words. Usually I see “infer” where “imply” is clearly the correct choice. There are other cases, I merely offer that one as an example.
My second peeve is the use of passive constructions. It has its place. It is an ellision of an implicit subject. That can be extremely useful in speaking hypothetically or abstractly where there is no subject. It is even appropriate where the subject is not known. However, it seems to get overused in cases where the subject is known and deliberately not stated.
That’s enough of my ranting. If I continue, I will certainly introduce some choice typos for which I will be chastised myself. However, I wanted to mention two wonderful online resources and ask if anyone else reading this can contribute more. The first is the Chicago Manual of Style FAQ. The second is the 1918 edition of Strunk’s The Elements of Style
Comment by Dale — Sep 20th 2005 @ 11:20 amMy grammatical pet peeve is inappropriate use of ‘and’ when ‘to’ is intended, i.e. the all to common ‘try and succeed/improve/do something’. You’re going to try _and_ succeed?
Comment by Nathan — Sep 22nd 2005 @ 3:32 amMine is impacted as in it impacted our vacation. It could have had an impact on the vacation or affected the vacation, but impacted only refers to teeth, organs, and passages.
See Dictionary
Comment by Jeremy — Dec 21st 2005 @ 10:04 pmMy biggest pet peeve are people who only speak, read, and write ONE language. And while we have current politicians “mandating” that the “official” language become English, it is an inevitability (with current population trends) that we will all end up speaking other languages to conduct business. Chinese, Indian and Spanish come to mind.
Comment by Guest — Aug 6th 2006 @ 8:22 pm