Here are more audience-choice mistakes that seem to drive a lot of people crazy.
I regretted not including this in the first blog, as it really is one of my biggest pet peeves. We want to hire someone who is great at grammar, and we will buy books that we can use for reference. Use the word "who" when you are talking about people, and "that" when you're talking about objects.
This one got a lot of enthusiastic complaints about people using the word "myself" in sentences like "You will have a meeting with Bob and myself." Myself is a reflexive pronoun, and it's a bit confusing, so I will turn to my favorite source, Grammar Girl, who gives a great explanation about when to use I, me or myself, and when myself can be used to add emphasis, as in "I painted it myself." But the short answer? Please, never say "You'll be meeting with Bob and myself."
I think the problem here is that the words "should have" and "could have" were contracted in spoken English to "should've" and "could've" and some people now think that means "should of" and "could of." The correct expression is "should have," "could have," or "would have" and that is how you write it out.
The way we make words plural in the English language is usually by adding the letter 's' to the word. So egg becomes eggs and CEO becomes CEOs. Apostrophes are not used to pluralize words. Ever.
Fewer is used when you're talking about something you can count, and less is used for things you can't specifically quantify. So if you want to weigh less, you will want to eat fewer candy bars.
This pair got a lot of mention in the other article's comments section. If you're confused on this one, "then" refers to the passing of time, and "than" indicates a comparison. First you need to be better than she is, and then you can win.
This one is kind of tricky. Traditionally, "lend" is a verb and "loan" is a noun. In American English, you go to the bank and ask for a loan, and they lend you money. Or they loan you money, and then you can tell people that they lent you money. Or loaned you money. And now you have a loan to pay off. I told you it was tricky. Our faithful source Grammar Girl has a tip to remember: "loan" and "noun" both have an "o" in them, and "lend" and "verb" both have an "e."
I didn't include this because I rarely see it in cover letters, resumes or business correspondence. But apparently others see it a lot, so here you go. "To" means in the direction of, as in They went to the movies. "Too" means in addition to, as in Our daughter came along, too, or to an excessive degree, as in, We left early because it was too hot in the theater. Of course, none of these are the same as the number two. Duh.
By the way, a simple grammar check caught most of the mistakes here. When in doubt, let your software tell you when you've got it wrong.
That is certainly the rule I was taught and to which I still adhere, mostly, but pluralizing an acronym with an apostrophe is now a practice accepted by most editors, especially in technical writing. It can lead to confusion, though:
The contraction: "Shewt-fahr, boy, that thar GTO's a fast sumbitch, ain't she?"
The possessive: "Shewt-fahr, boy, that thar GTO's paint job ain't improved none by that primer."
The plural: "Shewt-fahr, boy, how many o' them GTO's you done stole?"
As you can see, concision is occasionally the enemy of precision, to the point where the actual semantic content of the subject phrase can be reduced in an effort to standardize. The alternative is that rote memorization of proper usage that used to be a function of primary education before condoms on bananas took precedence in the intellectual toolkit conferred on young students. One cannot imagine the pedagogy of the latter being administered by nuns with rulers, and the children are, in my humble estimation, the poorer for it.
Most of these don't say anything about how you speak. They involve spelling. Grammar too, but you can speak very well and still make these mistakes when you write.
In my neck of the woods, I often hear “sposably” instead of “supposedly.”
There’s also, in these parts, an odd habit of saying things such as “He needs fed” or “It needs washed” instead of “He needs feeding” or “It needs to be washed.”
I also hear many pseudo-intellectuals say that something “begs the question” when they mean it “raises the question.”
So many small annoyances exist purely to vex me...
“as I said, NOT “like I said”! There oughta be a law!
Think about it. Graph time on the x-axis, and degree of learning on the y-axis.
A skill which is quickly mastered has a steep learning curve.
A skill which is slowly developed over a long period of time would have a very shallow learning curve.
Which is exactly the reverse of the way most people use the phrase.....
Was/were
Was is past tense, were is conditional in the singular and conditional and past tense in the plural.
When I was a boy...
If I were king...
They were my classmates...
If they were elected...
It’s not really a grammar mistake but the use of words that do not exist just pushes me over the top.
When I hear people on TV, especially educated people, use words like “co-conspirator” and “irregardless” I just wish to punch my TV and be done with it.
I used up all my exclamation points a couple of years ago. I was panic stricken!!
However, I was able to borrow a large supply from Pete Kessler at no charge. I'm still using them!!!
Thanks for coming to the rescue, Pete!!!!
Leni
Come on buddy, get with the programmar...
Perhaps someone hear can text to advice me where to attain the best advise on impacting?
“Cheap”, I was learnt ages ago, meant “shoddy”. “Cheapest” meant then “shoddiest”. Use “inexpensive”, and “least expensive”, respectively, to indicate cost, I was beaten into my brain. That was then, this is now. Even such reputable journals like the Wall Street Journal, employ “cheapest” when meaning “least costly”. Grrrrrh!
I had a argument once. I said that you’re supposed to write “use guys”, while my argumentor insisted on writing “youse guys”, even though “youse” can be found in no dictionary.
I hate it when people say, “Good morning humblegunner.”
When it would be much more accurate to say, “Good morning butthole.”
I am of the firm opinion that misuse of the phrase “that begs the question” is the crime against the language most likely to precipitate an aneurysm.
Using it to mean “suggests a follow-up question” is simply bone-headed.
I’m sorry - I am outraged when I hear so-called journalists use it on both radio and TV!
They never apologize and there is no recourse.
Harrumph!
As I age I have noticed I often use the incorrect version of a word which I completely understand the proper usage. After posting, I will see it and wonder why I used it that way.
My late wife was a wiz at grammar, in fact she graduated from a major University with a 3.97 GPA back when you didn’t score higher than 4.0 no matter what.
Despite that, she always had a problem with lie and lay. I would tell her lie was to recline (I am not talking about the falsehood meaning) and lay was to place something. No matter how many times I corrected her she would still get it wrong. She would even ask me the proper way sometimes and next time still get it wrong. Possibly a mental block.
Further and Farther confuses me.
And then there are those on this site, all of them conspicuously missing from this thread, who when you dare to point out their confusion of itses with it’ses, resort to calling Kelsey Grammer a Nazi, a connection too obscure for me, but that’s probably my uninformed fault.
The one I hate is “all the sudden” or “all of the sudden” instead of “all of a sudden.”
http://grammartips.homestead.com/sudden.html
http://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/all-of-what-sudden/
(Interestingly, the second link says that in the 1500s “the sudden” was the common form of the idiom. But not today.)
“coinky-dinky” or “coinky dinky” or “coinkydinky”?