Posted on 12/22/2004 9:32:13 AM PST by georgiadevildog
I am starting a grammar thread at the behest of Xenalyte and TheMom. Post your most irritating pet peeves of grammar or usage here.
People who write/say "insure" when they mean "ensure". To ensure something is to take steps to make sure it happens. To insure something is to buy an insurance policy to cover costs or losses in the event something bad happens, despite your best efforts to ensure that it doesn't happen.
Yes! That one drives me nuts! As does a space between the last word in a sentence and a question mark or exclamation point ! No watt eye mean ?
Amen to that. I am similarly annoyed by the fashionable trend of turning nouns into verbs, as in, "to dialogue." "We were dialoguing about the controversy the other day . . . "
Punctuation mistakes are my pet peeve, particularly the use of quotation marks for emphasis. Such as a sign at a local restaurant: Kids' meal includes "free" drink. So, it's not really free?
Another one is 'borrow' and 'loan.'
"Can you borrow me a dollar?" instead of "Will you loan me a dollar?" or "May I borrow a dollar from you?"
"I hate homophones."
So, what are you, a heteronym?
He can be anything he wants to be.
I think it's "hear, hear" when agreeing (sort of like "listen up, y'all"), and it's "here, here" when calling your cat or your spouse.
I believe the title should be corrected to read,
Kahmen Grammer adn Useage Airerrs
Another one: "I should of gone" instead of "I should have gone."
I think the error is common because the contraction "should've" sounds like "should of."
"Irregardless."
Yea, I can never remember when to use irrespective or irregardless. Oh, well, I could care less about that.
The French used pétard, “a loud discharge of intestinal gas...” “To be hoist by one's own petard,” a now proverbial phrase apparently originating with Shakespeare's Hamlet..."Can you borrow me a dollar?" instead of "Will you loan me a dollar?" or "May I borrow a dollar from you?"
Add to that another common error: the use of the word "loan" as a verb! Loan is not a verb--it's a noun. The word you're after is "lend." Someone can lend you money, and it will be considered to be a loan.
Of course, this is one of those usage errors that has become so common that it is beginning to be accepted. Another blow is dealt to English as we knew it.
Aigh! YES! Me too, exactly. Or I say, "Quoting whom?" Evidently someone came by and remarked, "Hm. Free!" — and was later quoted without attribution.
I wish I'd kept a hilarious letter to the editor of the LA Times' Calendar section, from decades ago. It was responding to an article debating what to call the recording of movies now that film isn't exactly used. Instead of "filming," someone suggested "lensing."
This writer composed a really clever letter full of verbed nouns. Memory can't do it justice, but it was something to the effect that "I then promptly lamped my room, papered my typewriter, verbed some nouns, and commenced letter-to-the-editoring. Afterwards, I shall envelope the letter, postage-stamp the envelope, and mailbox it."
Dan
Good point!
The ultimate rule about this grammar stuff is that when you gripe about someone else's grammar, you end up making a grammar mistake yourself (as I did). It's some kind of natural law.
The use of numbers and dates, specifically, cardinal numbers v. ordinal numbers.
Use always cardinal numbers after a month when writing a date, use ordinal numbers when writing the day before the month.
Hence: Fourth of July
but July 4.
Please add me to this ping list.
My pet peeve is the Politically Correct twisting of our language. My college professor actually told me that it was incorrect to use the default "he" which was proper english for generations before he started teaching. That is part of the origin of using "their" and "he/she" and "s/he" because there isn't a good generic first person singular asexual pronoun in the english language.
Another pet peeve is misspellings on signs. Usually a sign or banner or headline has only a few words in it. If the owner of the business can't get those few words correct, how careful are they going to be with other details? At least TV commercials are relatively free from misspellings.
You're added. I've had about two Typso pings a week recently. People just aren't being that funny!
Regarding the PC nuisance, I'm very annoyed that hymns have been rewritten to avoid using "man" as a general term for people, and to avoid using "He" as a pronoun for God. I make it a point to sing the politically incorrect words as loudly as possible (and I can lead a whole congregation flat from the back row :-).
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