Well, I'll start off. Here you can post things which piss you off about the english language. You can post things about the actual language itself, or about how people butcher it.

One of my pet peeves: Sour Grapes does not refer to being bitter over something. It's about rationalization. eg. John Kerry complaining about Bush is not sour grapes. John Kerry saying that he is happy not to be prez because of what a tough and painful job it would have been is an example of sour grapes.

Also, people use irony way too much, and often confuse it with a coincidence. But i'll let someone else take that one.

Let's see...spelling is a big issue for me. Especially easy, common words like "weird", the three "there"s, the three "two"s, and things like that. Also, lack of punctuation gets to me. I can never tell the sentences apart, not to mention the commas which are sometimes essential to a sentence's meaning. Missing (or superfluous...maybe even especially the superfluous) apostrophes cause me to rip my hair out. And finally, lots of acronyms. If any sentence you write looks like this: "omg dude u r rely stupide i hate u u stupide gerk i wish u wud dye rely man u suck", I may just commit hara-kiri...

This is old but maybe not all have seen it...


I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg

The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde

Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer inwaht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the

olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit

pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a

porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by

istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas thought

slpeling was ipmorantt!

Ive never seen that before and am quite impressed, I realised straight off they were badly spelt but could understand all the words. partly due to their length and the first and last letter.

Originally posted by BorgHunter
Let's see...spelling is a big issue for me. Especially easy, common words like "weird", the three "there"s, the three "two"s, and things like that. Also, lack of punctuation gets to me. I can never tell the sentences apart, not to mention the commas which are sometimes essential to a sentence's meaning. Missing (or superfluous...maybe even especially the superfluous) apostrophes cause me to rip my hair out. And finally, lots of acronyms. If any sentence you write looks like this: "omg dude u r rely stupide i hate u u stupide gerk i wish u wud dye rely man u suck", I may just commit hara-kiri...

I knew you'd be the first to reply to this topic.

spelling is a big issue for me too, borg. it drives me crazy when someone can't spell correctly *coughwhammycough*

Ugh I absolutely hate it when people use bad grammar when writing. I hardly notice it anymore when people talk improperly (I used to correct people, but as you might suspect it hardly made me popular).

I agree with Borg about the apostrophe thing, and it REALLY pisses me off that I cannot figure out how to make the apostrophe on this stupid Spanish keyboard!!

Yeh bad spelling sucks *cough* Hooligan *cough*

when people go "u" instead of "you"

that's about it. otherwise i don't care at all

I never got this: a lot of times sportswriters will say something like "the Green Bay offense never got untracked," meaning that the offense never got moving and scored many points. Wouldn't becoming untracked be bad? We want trains on the tracks, don't we?

(I had thought they were saying "on track" until I saw it many times in print.)

Originally posted by DarkFantasy96


I agree with Borg about the apostrophe thing, and it REALLY pisses me off that I cannot figure out how to make the apostrophe on this stupid Spanish keyboard!!

Use the accent key (tilde, I guess you speak some Spanish being in Costa Rica) and then use the spacebar. So the accent won't be over a vowel, but it will be just an English apostrophe.

And about bouchering English grammar, I have problems with spealling, prepositions and expressions. I guess I'll pick up most of it living here.

I ain't got nuthing against grammar but misuse of a well known saying simply gets to me ... like when someone says "I could care less" ... What they really mean is "I couldn't care less".

On the other hand ... I enjoy seeing what we call alternative grammar/spelling like behaviour, Iraqui, Usama and I just noticed in a post up thread the word 'spelt' ... man I love that stuff. Keep em coming.

Dop

Will someone just please explain to me why one gets on a bus, on a train, and IN a car?

The same reason we drive on a parkwary and park in a driveway.

Or the same reason we're frightened when a bomb goes OFF when we should be frightened when a bomb goes ON.

I would "of" thought so.

Using apostrophes to pluralize

Using "cynical" when one means "skeptical".

The phrase "reverse discrimination"

Calling September 11th "nine-one-one" The word is "eleven"

Changing the spelling of the english equivalent of Chinese. (Mao Tse Tsung became Mao Zedong, Peking became Beijing). These are our own made up words anyway. Why change them.

People outside of New York who use "ah" for every vowel sound. If Dawn and Don are sitting across the room from me, they should know which of them I am calling.

Watch the civil war documentary. They read letters home from soldiers who were uneducated farmers, hostelers, factory workers, etc. Their writing sounds like poetry. You'll realize how much we've lost.

Brooks,

Don't sell Civil War soldiers short. The armies of the North and South were the most literate in the world at the time. That's why their letters were so good. It's amazing what a one room school houses could produce, eh?

ah! i know of another thing that angers me a little: An acronym is not any set of initials but rather a set of initials that can form a word like NATO. hehe, anyone else thinking of George Carlin right now?