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The past tense of "lead" is not "lead." It's "led." (Spelling/Grammar Pet Peeves)
- Thread starter activepassive
- Start date
Ah, the comma splice. I see people of all nationalities mess that one up.
"payed" instead of "paid" is mine. People get bent out of shape over grammar because not caring about it shows a willing ignorance which is abhorrent.
I found the one whom's've'ly always been corrected.
voilà*
I spat so hard it made a splat.
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"yay or nay" instead of "yea or nay" - people have probably just heard the spoken version and are confusing the homophones "yay" and "yea" in their ignorance - i often see this in thread titles here, here are a few:
Baseball Era - Yay or Nay on an automated strike zone?
Digital Movie Collection - Yay or Nay?
Has anyone played Star Wars Destiny? Yay? Nay?
Cam Sites - Yay or Nay?
i.e. and e.g. are distinct and not interchangeable, again i chalk this up to ignorance in an attempt to appear smart by using latin phrases. unfortunately, you don't look smart when you use latin abbreviations incorrectly.
"per say" - instead of "per se" as emag pointed out
"should of" - a nonsensical pairing. most often seen used by native speakers. not sure if people who use this construction critically think about what they write.
Baseball Era - Yay or Nay on an automated strike zone?
Digital Movie Collection - Yay or Nay?
Has anyone played Star Wars Destiny? Yay? Nay?
Cam Sites - Yay or Nay?
i.e. and e.g. are distinct and not interchangeable, again i chalk this up to ignorance in an attempt to appear smart by using latin phrases. unfortunately, you don't look smart when you use latin abbreviations incorrectly.
"per say" - instead of "per se" as emag pointed out
"should of" - a nonsensical pairing. most often seen used by native speakers. not sure if people who use this construction critically think about what they write.
All languages have some bullcrap in them
Have you tried learning japanese?
Did you know they write 'wa' as 'ha' but still pronounce it 'wa'?
Find a language without bullcrap in it.
Have you tried learning japanese?
Did you know they write 'wa' as 'ha' but still pronounce it 'wa'?
Find a language without bullcrap in it.
Less has always been used for both countable and uncountable in English. That rule has never held true.
I fact, it was never really a rule, it was a preference, mostly of one person, and while preferences in writings are more than fine, somehow along the way it turns into a rule that must be followed at all time, and that's just silly.
This one slays me. I thought people were doing this to be funny, but as it turns out...
To be fair, i always read DF's Richard Leadbetter as Richard Ledbetter. He leads the way better than everyone else does.
My only real pet peeve is when people write k. instead of ok or okay. If you are too damn lazy to add in the extra letter, get out.
My only real pet peeve is when people write k. instead of ok or okay. If you are too damn lazy to add in the extra letter, get out.
Nah, no one has corrected a single post of mine in this forum and I'm not sure there were many cases of that being needed anyway, but thanks for great contribution.
The point is, you guys are taking for granted the fact that there are people from all over the world here. I'm sure no one actively wants their spelling and grammar to suck, and they are doing their best so people will not lose their shit because a single word is wrong.
You have a point. Most of the time people aren't being helpful or constructive when correcting others lol
I try to be, honestly. (At least in person)
Thank you! It got so bad that I had to google it some time ago, thinking I'd been mistaken all along. Turns out I was right and everyone else was wrong.
Casted was widely used since the word cast entered into the English language, in fact, it used to be the common form. It went out of fashion a bit and now it's making a comeback of sorts.
Not sure why any of this worth condemning anyone to hell, even as a forum hyperbole to drive home a point.
It's not used in modern english, it belongs back to the 14th century.
I don't mean this to be a pompous ass, but I know it'll come off that way. I'm used to reading books, articles, documents, and other published or other written works correct spelling and grammar as part of my job. It's jarring and confusing to then read a message from someone who throws all the rules out the window. Here's the pompous ass part: it's like I have to translate it in my head as I read. Most of the time I'll just skip past the post.
This one bothers me. The fact that only one other person has commented on it saddens me. It's entirely too common.
One of my friends spells lots and lets as "lot's" and "let's" every single time. He will only accidentally get them right.
He can't be bothered to spell your or you're correctly either (always uses "ure" in any situation). He actually argued that it's faster but then he's inserting extra apostrophes all over the fucking place. I want to punch him.
He can't be bothered to spell your or you're correctly either (always uses "ure" in any situation). He actually argued that it's faster but then he's inserting extra apostrophes all over the fucking place. I want to punch him.
Of course it's being used, if it wasn't, you wouldn't hear pedants whining about it so much. I think it's perfectly fine to decide to not use that form, but it is pretty common and it causes no confusion whatsoever, so I don't really see the reason to get upset about other people using it.
If you read books for a living I'm going to guess you know how common is non-standard English, even among great writers. I can easily fill pages here with examples, but really, just flip through the pages of a Faukner, Mark Twain or a Melville book (just as examples) and you'll soon find plenty of instances of grammar "mistakes".
Also, I'm sure you're intimately aware of the fact that almost all writers require an editor to achieve a strict standard English an/or adhere closely to a style guide. And I'm going to assume most people who post here don't have an editor to look over their posts.
For what it's worth, I don't think it makes you pompous, but you should consider that your stance, especially in a place like ERA that have people from all over the world, pretty much translates to "I don't really read non-native speakers". And that seems a bit of a shame to me.
This one really gets me >_<
I also don't understand how people can mistake led for lead.
"I lead you on" doesn't make sense. "I led you on" does.
Just an example. saying those two things out loud, one sounds correct, one doesn't imo
It's not worth getting upset over on forums etc.
The vast majority of those types of things or your/you're or there/their/there and what not are just typos/brain farts. I'm well educated, do a lot of writing for a living etc. and make plenty of those mistakes on forums as I type very fast when typing from thought, or I'm on my phone and a typo gets autocorrected to the wrong world/form and so on. I try to go back an edit mistakes if I see them, but I post way too much to be proofreading all my online replies.
I only get annoyed when it's professional documents, student papers I'm grading etc.--things that should have been carefully proofread. And even then, it's easy to skip over things like that if you're not using a grammar checker as the spell checker won't flag it usually. So silly to get to annoyed over and assume the person doesn't know proper grammar as more often than not it's a typo/brain fart rather than ignorance of grammatical rules/spelling.
The vast majority of those types of things or your/you're or there/their/there and what not are just typos/brain farts. I'm well educated, do a lot of writing for a living etc. and make plenty of those mistakes on forums as I type very fast when typing from thought, or I'm on my phone and a typo gets autocorrected to the wrong world/form and so on. I try to go back an edit mistakes if I see them, but I post way too much to be proofreading all my online replies.
I only get annoyed when it's professional documents, student papers I'm grading etc.--things that should have been carefully proofread. And even then, it's easy to skip over things like that if you're not using a grammar checker as the spell checker won't flag it usually. So silly to get to annoyed over and assume the person doesn't know proper grammar as more often than not it's a typo/brain fart rather than ignorance of grammatical rules/spelling.
OP
OP
My written English is far from perfect, so maybe I should refrain from throwing rocks in glass houses. But, regardless...
People getting then/than wrong can be funny sometimes. I remember nearly falling off my chair reading one of the posts on a forum saying they "would rather cut [their] own arm off then die from starvation".
Also, 'worse' and 'worst'. I just don't understand how people can mix these two up in the first place.
It kind of irks me when people use company stylization for trademark names rather than commonly established grammar rules for proper noun capitalization.
The use of 'literally' to mean the polar opposite 'figuratively' annoys me to no end. How we ever let it get to the point where the two is accepted as synonymous is beyond me since the difference in meaning can be extremely important to get a point across. Using context as a measure for meaning also seems quite error prone in some instances.
People getting then/than wrong can be funny sometimes. I remember nearly falling off my chair reading one of the posts on a forum saying they "would rather cut [their] own arm off then die from starvation".
Also, 'worse' and 'worst'. I just don't understand how people can mix these two up in the first place.
It kind of irks me when people use company stylization for trademark names rather than commonly established grammar rules for proper noun capitalization.
The use of 'literally' to mean the polar opposite 'figuratively' annoys me to no end. How we ever let it get to the point where the two is accepted as synonymous is beyond me since the difference in meaning can be extremely important to get a point across. Using context as a measure for meaning also seems quite error prone in some instances.
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I'll echo a lot of the stuff mentioned in this thread and throw in my own one. As a software developer, this is one I see a lot: people writing setup or login when they actually mean set up/log in. The former two are nouns whereas the latter two are the corresponding verbs.
Worse/worst may simply be a product of pronunciation, where the "t" is often dropped in rapid speech and some end up conflating the two in the written language as well. I've certainly never seen better/best confused in a similar way, although depending on who you ask statements like "the better of the two"/"the best of the two" can cause a debate.
And to date I've literally never seen a case where context wasn't sufficient to suss out whether "literally" was being used in a literal or figurative sense, to the point where an extremely important point was missed. Exactly no one is confused when someone says their head literally exploded or they were literally dead serious.
As a non-native speaker of English, my experience is that these mistakes are made less often by us than native speakers, simply due to the fact that our training in English veers far more closely to the formal version of it. Native speakers will tend to write the way they speak, and their spelling and word/grammar usage can be entirely strange to read for those of us used to textbook English.
