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What's your biggest grammatical pet peeve?
- Thread starter doctorjazz
- Start date
There is one major fundamental difference: In the days of middle English (or older), most people were illiterate and had little or no access to education. Grammar was "mangled" out of unavoidable ignorance. Today, virtually everyone in the advanced, industrialized, tech-driven world has access to educational recourses such as public schools, libraries, dictionaries, and various reference sources both physically and online. IMO, most of today's mangling of English is due to willful and inexcusable ignorance.
For the record, I'm not referring to casual speech or text (e.g., "prolly," "gonna," "y'all"). I'm referring to instances where people use incorrect grammar, spelling, and/or punctuation, and they're not even aware it's incorrect.
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I do have a multitude of pet peeves along these lines. I don't bother to put them out here because I figure that in most cases when a person is ignorant of something it's because they weren't taught well, or else social constructs overruled the teaching they were given.
A kid who grows up in a rural area where everyone uses the construct "I seen it," (which is one of the things that makes my skin crawl) probably took an English class at some point where the teacher pointed out that this is incorrect usage. But if everyone in your community says it, anyway, you're going to become habituated to saying it, too, because you'll seem out of place if you don't.
I could get into a whole bunch of esoterica here about class distinctions and what that all means in terms of privilege and whatnot, but I'll just say that not everyone gets the same opportunities to experience the things that might influence them to change their ways on things like this. So I try not to get too picky on this stuff unless I'm paying someone to do a job where it's important.
But it still makes me cringe when I hear it.
I actually didn’t say it was a problem for me. My only pet peeve in writing is people who fail to communicate clearly and insist it’s other people’s fault for failing to understand.Invoking the colloqualism is what it is, and neither you nor anyone else here gets to dictate when or whether I get to write this way or some other way. This isn't a newspaper or some other formal setting, and I feel sorry for people who take themselves so seriously that this is a big problem for them
There are many more pressing matters, like which pickguard to choose.
I love good writing, but I don’t look down on people who aren’t gifted writers.
There is zero difference. Language change is an unavoidable fact, as any linguist will confirm, and it would take an enormous level of planned and concerted effort to freeze a language in place, according to the currently valid prescriptive norm (somehow as if that specific one had more right to exist in perpetuity than those that preceded it in the 1800s, 1700s and so off): something for which your language is, if possible, even less equipped than others (there's no such thing as a Royal Academy of the English Language; nor is this 1948 Israel, with its unprecedented revival of spoken Hebrew).
This is not to say you're not entitled to your own taste in language: everyone is. It's just that your say on the matter is limited to those you can influence, and your language will go its merry way with little regard.
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There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around
That the colt from Old Regret had got away,
And had joined the wild bush horses - he was worth a thousand pound,
So all the cracks had gathered to the fray.…
When they reached the mountain's summit, even Clancy took a pull -
It well might make the boldest hold their breath;
The wild hop scrub grew thickly, and the hidden ground was full
Of wombat holes, and any slip was death.
But the man from Snowy River let the pony have his head,
And he swung his stockwhip round and gave a cheer,
And he raced him down the mountain like a torrent down its bed,
While the others stood and watched in very fear.
He sent the flint-stones flying, but the pony kept his feet,
He cleared the fallen timbers in his stride,
And the man from Snowy River never shifted in his seat —
It was grand to see that mountain horseman ride.
Through the stringy barks and saplings, on the rough and broken ground,
Down the hillside at a racing pace he went;
And he never drew the bridle till he landed safe and sound,
At the bottom of that terrible descent.
That the colt from Old Regret had got away,
And had joined the wild bush horses - he was worth a thousand pound,
So all the cracks had gathered to the fray.…
When they reached the mountain's summit, even Clancy took a pull -
It well might make the boldest hold their breath;
The wild hop scrub grew thickly, and the hidden ground was full
Of wombat holes, and any slip was death.
But the man from Snowy River let the pony have his head,
And he swung his stockwhip round and gave a cheer,
And he raced him down the mountain like a torrent down its bed,
While the others stood and watched in very fear.
He sent the flint-stones flying, but the pony kept his feet,
He cleared the fallen timbers in his stride,
And the man from Snowy River never shifted in his seat —
It was grand to see that mountain horseman ride.
Through the stringy barks and saplings, on the rough and broken ground,
Down the hillside at a racing pace he went;
And he never drew the bridle till he landed safe and sound,
At the bottom of that terrible descent.
By the way, the second "sentence" of your post (best I can tell) contains approximately 100 words. Are you claiming that's actually one sentence?
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It should be "proper" context."literally"... I am "literally" annoyed by the overuse of "literally" without "literally" right context.
Are you claiming "bu the way" is an English expression?Bu the way, the second "sentence" of your post (best I can tell) contains approximately 100 words. Are you claiming that's actually one sentence?
If anyone’s going to be doing any claiming here at least do it right!
I'm not understanding how this relates to the post you quoted. How does this relate to simple grammatical errors, like spelling, punctuation, sentence structure, etc?
Deliberately misspelling words, using slang, etc, is one topic. Languages evolving over centuries and millennia is another and simple grammatical errors is yet another.
If I purposely type "y'all, prolly, git'r done",.....well, that's on purpose. If I type "your" instead of "you're", or "there" instead of "their",.....or, type an entire paragraph that's a run-on sentence with zero punctuation, that's just simple errors that make it difficult to communicate. I agree with the post that you quoted, as far as those errors not being the end of the world, but it comes off as a little lazy. Both by the person typing and whoever failed at educating them in grade school. Same goes for misusing words like "vintage", or using words that aren't actual words like "irregardless".
Just because we don't speak/write the same English from 1000 yrs ago, our current format is fairly well established and a lot of the small errors folks make, should've/could've been addressed during grade school.
And I don't think this is a crusade to rid the internet of bad grammar. Just a passive/aggressive piss&moan about things that are a little annoying.
But I don't agree that the errors being discussed equate to language evolving. If that was your point.
Do we know what someone means when they type "your" instead of "you're"? Yes.
Is it a big deal? No.
At the same time, is it a big deal for the writer to know it's incorrect and add 2 more characters? No.
So, 6 in one, half dozen in the other. But I tend to lean toward- c'mon man, a little more effort.
Thank you, RichterScale, for understanding my position and defending it so well.
I get that language changes. I have no problem with things like slang, colloquialisms, or regional dialects. But as I mentioned in my previous post, "Today, virtually everyone in the advanced, industrialized, tech-driven world has access to educational recourses such as public schools, libraries, dictionaries, and various reference sources both physically and online." (I will amend this and state that I'm specifically referring to the USA.) Because of this, not knowing the difference between your/you're, their/there/they're, to/too, plural vs. possessive, etc., at a time when standards of grammar, punctuation and spelling regarding the English language in America have been well established for decades, represents language regression, not legitimate language change.
I have nothing more to add without becoming redundant (if I haven't already!), so I'll just leave it at that.
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"Where is Dave at?"
Do you mean, "Where is Dave?"?
"That's where we are at."
Do you mean, "That's where we are."?
No "at" needed.
Unless, of course, Dave is over there at.
"He did that on accident."
Nope. By accident, or on purpose.
"I've literally asked you a million times not to exaggerate."
Oh, while we're here:
Colour, valour, humour, harbour, parlour, rigour, splendour, behaviour, labour etc. have a 'u' in them.
Buoy is pronounced, "Boy." It comes from buoyant/buoyancy. Neither of those words are frequently mispronounced [say it in your head].
Also, let's talk about the letter 'z.' The letter 's' works really well in most cases.
Do you mean, "Where is Dave?"?
"That's where we are at."
Do you mean, "That's where we are."?
No "at" needed.
Unless, of course, Dave is over there at.
"He did that on accident."
Nope. By accident, or on purpose.
"I've literally asked you a million times not to exaggerate."
Oh, while we're here:
Colour, valour, humour, harbour, parlour, rigour, splendour, behaviour, labour etc. have a 'u' in them.
Buoy is pronounced, "Boy." It comes from buoyant/buoyancy. Neither of those words are frequently mispronounced [say it in your head].
Also, let's talk about the letter 'z.' The letter 's' works really well in most cases.
Sometimes I'm running low on vowels, so I make due without the U.
