What's your biggest grammatical pet peeve?

[MrLenny1]

To and too. Lets get this right.

 

[Orioles]

"I could care less".

This is complete nonsense.

 

[Jeff K]

So many. But just to pick one, I'd go with, "I could care less." Should be, "I COULDN'T care less..."

 

[Jeff K]

"I could care less".

This is complete nonsense.

I apologize for posting the same peeve directly below yours! I never scrolled through the entire thread. I read some on the first page and just added my post from there. It just happened to work out that it ended up directly below yours. Oh well, great minds, huh?!

 

[Orioles]

Ha ha - no doubt!

 

[Ostie]

PEOPLE WHO TYPE IN ALL CAPS
People Who Cap The First Letter Of Each Word

And people who refuse to use commas colons semi colons question marks exclamation marks dashes etc etc etc and just keep typing away in run on sentences with no periods or breaks or anything it gets so tedious to read it just makes me give up and move on to another post hahaha

 

[RichterScale]

I have too many to list. Plus, many have already been mentioned.
Unless English is not someone's first language and they don't speak it fluently, there's really no excuse for horrific grammar. I attended public schools and 8th grade was the last full year I attended.
So, no excuse for the laziness and/or dreadful academic systems (in the US).
I also understand that language is fluid and evolving, but I disagree with a word being misused for so long that it simply adopts it's new meaning(s). Language is important. Communication is important. It's important that we all have the same understanding of what established words mean,......so we can understand one another.
Anywho, I'll make a comment now and then, but I also deliberately type a lotta goofy things that irritate others. So, for the most part, this isn't a hill I'll die on.
We're due for a super volcano, or an asteroid soon, so, this is all pretty irrelevant.
Language will evolve and change again for whoever survives.

 

[Alkali Ike]

The blatant confusion between when to say “You and I” vs “You and me”. It’s so easy to sort out.

“Tesla stock has been a big winner for you and I”. Take out the “you and”. You have “Tesla stock has been a big winner for I”. BZZZTTT.

Or “You and me are going to a movie”. Take out the “You and”. You have “Me is going to a movie”. BZZZTTT.

Song lyricists mangle this all the time, partly out of laziness.

 

[LBS-bass]

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

I have a pet peeve about people who feel like this sort of writing should be policed like formal writing.

Someone up there, I forget who, said he dislikes "prolly," and that's fair, I suppose, but to me that's an obvious re-spelling of a common thing that comes out of a person's mouth in spoken conversation. A place like this is a community and the writing in a place like this shouldn't be a thing to worry over. I'll write the way I speak, and my informal speech includes a lot of y'all, prolly, and whazzup sorts of things.

Making my written "speech" conform to a formal standard isn't going to happen. I don't have any intention to proofread my words here with the same level of concern I'd give to something I was writing for a work assignment. That's prolly never gonna happen, no matter how much y'all wanna see it

None of that means I can't write well when I want to, but nobody's paying me for that here and I prefer a less formal approach when the setting is less formal.

 

[Alkali Ike]

I have a pet peeve about people who feel like this sort of writing should be policed like formal writing.

Someone up there, I forget who, said he dislikes "prolly," and that's fair, I suppose, but to me that's an obvious re-spelling of a common thing that comes out of a person's mouth in spoken conversation. A place like this is a community and the writing in a place like this shouldn't be a thing to worry over. I'll write the way I speak, and my informal speech includes a lot of y'all, prolly, and whazzup sorts of things.

Making my written "speech" conform to a formal standard isn't going to happen. I don't have any intention to proofread my words here with the same level of concern I'd give to something I was writing for a work assignment. That's prolly never gonna happen, no matter how much y'all wanna see it

None of that means I can't write well when I want to, but nobody's paying me for that here and I prefer a less formal approach when the setting is less formal.

And yet you consistently write well on TB.

 

[LBS-bass]

And yet you consistently write well on TB.

I prolly do mosta the time.

 

[buldog5151bass]

I have a pet peeve about people who feel like this sort of writing should be policed like formal writing.

Someone up there, I forget who, said he dislikes "prolly," and that's fair, I suppose, but to me that's an obvious re-spelling of a common thing that comes out of a person's mouth in spoken conversation. A place like this is a community and the writing in a place like this shouldn't be a thing to worry over. I'll write the way I speak, and my informal speech includes a lot of y'all, prolly, and whazzup sorts of things.

Making my written "speech" conform to a formal standard isn't going to happen. I don't have any intention to proofread my words here with the same level of concern I'd give to something I was writing for a work assignment. That's prolly never gonna happen, no matter how much y'all wanna see it

None of that means I can't write well when I want to, but nobody's paying me for that here and I prefer a less formal approach when the setting is less formal.

Notice I said formal. Posting on places like here, texts, etc. are one thing. Articles in websites, newspapers, writing for work and school are another.

 

[LBS-bass]

Notice I said formal. Posting on places like here, texts, etc. are one thing. Articles in websites, newspapers, writing for work and school are another.

Right, and that's what caused me to think about this. I don't necessarily think it's you-- that's not why I tagged your post -- but I do think that many people expect writing here to be much more formal than it needs to be, or believe that not conforming to a formal standard all the time means you can't write well at all.

There are obvious mistakes people make that might point to a level of literacy that may need a little work, but the sort of informal and deliberate misspellings (or, more properly, efforts to reproduce colloquial speech patterns) we see in settings like this don't really fit that.

I tagged your post because it jarred me to think about this. That's another thing, though. People assume disagreement when sometimes it's just "oh, that made me think this."

 

[Jeff K]

I have a pet peeve about people who feel like this sort of writing should be policed like formal writing.

Someone up there, I forget who, said he dislikes "prolly," and that's fair, I suppose, but to me that's an obvious re-spelling of a common thing that comes out of a person's mouth in spoken conversation. A place like this is a community and the writing in a place like this shouldn't be a thing to worry over. I'll write the way I speak, and my informal speech includes a lot of y'all, prolly, and whazzup sorts of things.

Making my written "speech" conform to a formal standard isn't going to happen. I don't have any intention to proofread my words here with the same level of concern I'd give to something I was writing for a work assignment. That's prolly never gonna happen, no matter how much y'all wanna see it

None of that means I can't write well when I want to, but nobody's paying me for that here and I prefer a less formal approach when the setting is less formal.

I don't really think most of us who have responded in this thread are thinking of it as "policing" others' writing. Simply replying to a question about personal peeves.

As for the "prolly", I don't really see that as an "offense" akin to the misuse of "to" vs. "too"; "affect/effect", and things like that. While I've never said "prolly", I'm sure I HAVE said, "prob-ly" while speaking (leaving out the "ab" in the middle). But I wouldn't do it while writing unless it was a typo!

And believe me, I'm not about to lose any sleep over any of these minor peeves. But since the OP asked...

 

[slobake]

"I could care less".

This is complete nonsense.

How can someone care less. Either you care or you don't.

 

[slobake]

Have family members that use the word "seen" a lot. As in "I seen your friend yesterday," or "I seen that movie." Don't know why it bugs me but it does.

 

[LBS-bass]

As for the "prolly", I don't really see that as an "offense" akin to the misuse of "to" vs. "too"; "affect/effect", and things like that. While I've never said "prolly", I'm sure I HAVE said, "prob-ly" while speaking (leaving out the "ab" in the middle).

The funny thing is that I was taught by my parents to speak the Queen's English as a kid, and we lived in this rather rednecky town, so you can imagine how that all went over in a social sense. I quickly learned how to speak in the vernacular of the area I was living in so that I would fit in a little better in school and with the kids in the neighborhood. I guess that adaptability has stuck with me and comes out in the way I write in these informal settings, too.

 

[slobake]

The funny thing is that I was taught by my parents to speak the Queen's English as a kid, and we lived in this rather rednecky town, so you can imagine how that all went over in a social sense. I quickly learned how to speak in the vernacular of the area I was living in so that I would fit in a little better in school and with the kids in the neighborhood. I guess that adaptability has stuck with me and comes out in the way I write in these informal settings, too.

Had a similar experience. It helps to consider my audience.

 

[socialleper]

affect/effect

It's really hard to keep those two straight. I use different words if I can. I just know Effect works for pedals. Or FX.

 

[socialleper]

English is a terrible language. It's a ugly smash up of 4 languages. The grammar rules are written in sand and change endlessly.

Anyway, irregardless drives me nuts. Not a word and it's usage makes no sense.