What's your biggest grammatical pet peeve?

[Old Fart]

"researching."

 

[mongo2]

People who have grammatical pet peeves.

 

[Jazzdogg]

My biggest grammatical pet peeve:

INDIFFERENCE

 

[sleddogn]

oh for number zero

 

[fdeck]

The verbing of nouns.

Also, "utilize."

 

[IamGroot]

"researching."

I believe "Researching" is the gerund or present participle of "Research"

In German, "reseaching " is a noun "das Erforschen" and "research" is "Erforschung"

 

[IamGroot]

My biggest spelling problem is words with ie vs ei.
I was taught "ie" is always pronounced "ee" and "ei" is always pronounced "ai".
That doesn't work in Englisch, er English.

 

[Tom Bomb]

'And', in formal terms, where writing words as numbers is concerned, is a decimal point. So what's the point? And.
​

 

[Richard Lindsey]

The verbing of nouns.

Also, "utilize."

"Utilize" does have a shade of meaning beyond that of mere "use," and that shade of meaning sometimes has some, ahem, utility.

Is 'Utilize' a Word Worth Using?

But when "utilize" is clearly being employed as nothing more than a wannabe-fancy substitute for "use," it is indeed annoying.

 

[4string5string]

“For sell”

I realize this is a zombie thread but I win. What is my prize?

 

[shadowtippy]

Then and than being used incorrectly.

 

[fdeck]

"Utilize" does have a shade of meaning beyond that of mere "use," and that shade of meaning sometimes has some, ahem, utility.

Is 'Utilize' a Word Worth Using?

But when "utilize" is clearly being employed as nothing more than a wannabe-fancy substitute for "use," it is indeed annoying.

I once watched a project manager pull up a report of mine, on the projector screen in front of the entire team. While he was talking, he did a global-search-and-replace to turn "use" into "utilize" throughout my document.

Later on I changed it back.

 

[LBS-bass]

The verbing of nouns.

Also, "utilize."

Oh, yes. I intensely dislike this. It's a three-syllable word where one will do.

 

[Richard Lindsey]

I once watched a project manager pull up a report of mine, on the projector screen in front of the entire team. While he was talking, he did a global-search-and-replace to turn "use" into "utilize" throughout my document.

Later on I changed it back.

Good for you! I would have done the same thing.

 

[Richland123]

Here are two.

Prolly used for probably.

Whole nother used for whole other.

 

[Laurentian Dave]

Don't even axe.

 

[bwildt]

Anyways.

Anyway, just stop saying that.

 

[buldog5151bass]

There is no specific peeve. It's more that many peo0le seem to feel that grammar rules are irrelevant in formal writing.

 

[The Owl]

Example from a commercial: "This is why we science"

ARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGHHH!

 

[Jigmay]

The librarian at the elementary school where I teach pronounced the word “libary”.


Thats correct…she pronounced it “libary”, that’s not a typo.

This makes her a “libarian”.