7 Spelling and Grammar Errors that Make You Look Dumb

work.lifegoesstrong.com ^ | August 5, 2011 | Leslie Ayres

[Puppage]

My mother, rest her soul, used to constantly correct my grammar as a kid. I used to HATE it.Now, at 49......I am so thankful she cared enough to do so.

[steelyourfaith]

[IDontLikeToPayTaxes]

This thread should be a permanent fixture on this forum. The spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors here at FR make us look like a bunch of illiterate children.

[IDontLikeToPayTaxes]

There was a guy in my St. Paul office who loved apostrophes. Virtually any word with an “s” or “es” ending would get one.

Apostrophes drive me nuts. I think half the posters here at FR use them at the end of every other word.

It's a new trend for some reason. I didn't notice it until just a few years ago. I think people put apostrophes at the end of words that end in "s" to try to make themselves look smarter. The result is that they just look stupid.

Don't even get me started on "your" and "you're"

[Eric in the Ozarks]

I took note that our secretary was sending out his business letters without correcting them. Very carefully, and with the boss’s approval, we got the secretary to clean up his letters without his knowledge...

[IDontLikeToPayTaxes]

Problem with a lot of these is spell check doesn’t do the job...error’s remain....Its like that old saying.....my tongue got in the way of my eye tooth and I couldn’t see what I was saying...

Did you read the article? You put an unnecessary apostrophe at the end of the word "errors" but didn't use one for the word "its." Completely ass backwards.

[al_c]

People oughta learn that the proper usage is "shoulda" and "coulda"!

[ShadowAce]

How about commas:
The mailboxes were red, green, and brown. (3 total mailboxes)
The mailboxes were red, green and brown. (2 total mailboxes, the second one was green AND brown.)

The mailboxes were red, green, and brown -- OR -- The mailboxes were red, green and brown. (We have no clue how many there were ... or whether any of the mailboxes had more than one color. But we do know that only those three colors were used!)

The second comma is optional, but we do know there were more than two mailboxes, as you do not list two items without a conjunction.

[Jack Hammer]

My own, personal, peeve, concerns misuse of further/farther; it’s extremely common and very irritating.

[firebrand]

This ad caused a lot of head-wagging when it came out. People said it would teach people to use “like” for “as.”

[PCBMan]

A few I see all the time:

Illicit / Elicit
Discreet / Discrete

And let's not forget “lightening” instead of “lightning”.

I've only ever seen this one on the Net - people who write “noone” instead of “no one”. DRIVES ME INSANE.
Noone was the lead singer of Herman's Hermits. Learn the difference, people!

[firebrand]

It should be a permanent fixture of some kind, but FR is no worse than the “norm.” You would be surprised at how many errors are made by professional writers and other authors.

[AnAmericanMother]

So, are you saying that the Beatles, since they’ve already been mentioned, ought to have sung, instead of “You Can’t Do That”, “You Can’t Do Which”?

Of course not! In that case, "that" is used as a pronoun rather than a conjunction for a dependent clause.

Or something like that. ;-p

[Revolting cat!]

You say you write for a living. Your angle on the following, please.

This morning’s WSJ, page C12:

“There are a couple of flaws in this strategy.”

“a couple”, while it may contain two or even three of some element members in acceptable everyday usage, IS singular, as indicated by the ‘a’ article. Therefore we ought to write “There is a couple”, no? But this is such a common error nowadays that I expect to hear arguments that such usage is correct. Is it? Double GRRRRRH!

“Mr Funeral Director, there is a bereaved couple stiffly awaiting you in your office”, and not “Mr Funeral Director there are a couple ...” etc! In the strategy above, there are some two or three flaws, but still, there is a single couple of those flaws, dammit! “There are a” is pidgin English in my opinion.

I figure that at least one other person read this piece beside the author, his editor. Hey, may I have the job of editor at the Wall Street Journal?

[steelyourfaith]

[Melas]

a couple”, while it may contain two or even three of some element members in acceptable everyday usage, IS singular, as indicated by the ‘a’ article. Therefore we ought to write “There is a couple”, no? But this is such a common error nowadays that I expect to hear arguments that such usage is correct. Is it? Double GRRRRRH!

It's correct. English is full of exceptions, and collective nouns are often the source of these exceptions. My MLA style guide devotes no less than a page and a half to the word "couple" alone.

[MissouriConservative]

Conspirator by its very definition means more than one. So you are simply a conspirator...not a co-conspirator.

[goat granny]

Did you read the article? You put an unnecessary apostrophe at the end of the word "errors" but didn't use one for the word "its." Completely ass backwards.....

Opps/opp's

[AnAmericanMother]

"Couple" is one of those awful words. I avoid it when I can. While technically it's singular, it's really a collective noun, as "couple" doesn't necessarily mean two - it can mean more than two e.g. "a couple of minutes". And in common speech it's a plural. So -- is a newspaper article common speech or formal speech? Probably the former.

But when you're talking about counting foxhounds, it's worse. Foxhounds are always counted in pairs, a "couple", no plural, and when you report the total number it's described as "twelve couple" = 24 hounds, or in the case of an odd number "four and a half couple" = 9 hounds. As Winston Churchill said, "That is something up with which I will not put."

[Political Junkie Too]

A big one here is "of" vs. "have," as in "Should of" instead of "should have."

-PJ