“Loose” and “lose” drive me nuts. I actually found that misuse on a major retailer’s website in no fewer than 20 product descriptions, and I sent them an email explaining the misuse. The response email I received was so laden with misspellings and grammatical errors that I came to the conclusion it was the same person who wrote the product descriptions.
Don’t get me started on apostrophes.
The problem, as I see it, is that society as a whole accepts these misspellings and misuses. No one wants to correct them for fear of being seen as a “grammar Nazi” or otherwise lambasted as being too proper. Decades ago, society would denigrate those people as imbeciles, teachers would discipline children for improper diction, and the like. Those days are gone in lieu of what “feels” right to the student.
“Oh, little Johnny, it’s okay that you didn’t spell laugh correctly. ‘Laff’ is a perfectly acceptable substitute.”
Notice the last few National Spelling Bee winners were home-schooled children of Indian descent?
I did notice there were no white kids of American descent in the finals. Doesn’t bode well for our future. Schools are too busy teaching how wonderful homosexuality is and making such kids have high self-esteem for absolutely no accomplishments and don’t have time to teach spelling and grammar.
I know this isn’t a grammar/spelling peeve thread, but I have to say this because I saw it a couple of times yesterday. The next time I see, instead of “voila”, “viola” or worse yet, “WA-LA”, I will scream.
That's "e-mail". ( ducking ). Sorry, it's my pet peeve.
The "e" is a modifier, delineating the type of mail. Therefore, the phrase should be hyphenated, even though some dictionaries bastardize the language by using the phrase without one.
Carry on :)