For those of you bothered by grammatical errors, what one common error bothers you the most?
The personal blog of author Kelly Sedinger, chronicling the adventures of one overalls-clad wanderer.
The personal blog of author Kelly Sedinger, chronicling the adventures of one overalls-clad wanderer.
11 comments:
I'm slightly annoyed when people write "loose" for "lose".
Fewer and less. I hate it when less is used for things that can be counted.
There, their and they're
I'm blurring 'usage' and 'grammar'... The thing that bugs me most is misuse of the word 'borrow.' As in, "Will you borrow me $5?" Or "No, you can't use my calculator. I already borrowed it to Joe." Blech.
"Loose" for lose and "noone" for no one. Also run-on sentences. Periods and semi-colons exist for a reason, people!
So many to choose from! It's not a grammatical thing, but I detest the way kids use the word 'random' when they mean 'spontaneous' as in, "Are you a random person?" or "My BFF is so random!"
And I know it's perfectly legit, but I'm always bugged when people use 'that' instead of 'who' as in, "I know a girl that saw the movie." People are whos, not thats.
"Which" used in place of "that." And both split infinitives and prepositions at the end of clauses still raise my hackles, changing usage notwithstanding.
It's the apostrophe, used willy-nilly:
Sticking it into someone's name. It belongs to Fred Jones. It's Jone's - (shudder)
Or close'd. (WHY?)
Or it's when they mean its. (Almost too common to complain about.)
Late to the party, but as I proofread for a living, you know I've got my opinions on the subject...
There are so many things, some of which have already been mentioned -- their, they're, there; loose vs. lose; an inability to comprehend hyphens, i.e., when you should use them, when you shouldn't use them, and why -- but the one that drives me absolutely bugshit crazy -- probably because I see it EVERYWHERE -- is the incorrect use of "it's" when people mean "its."
I argue this with my mother constantly, who retorts that you ALWAYS use an apostrophe to express possession, and that's how SHE was taught back in the day, and they must've CHANGED the rule in the decades since...
Um, no, Mom... "it's" is a contraction of "it is." Always has been. Now, if only I could get that through the heads of every restaurant owner in the country
Sigh.
Oh, and on a related note, I'm annoyed by people using an apostrophe in the plural of their family name:
"Smith's" instead of "Smiths"
Using interruption marks (or any other form of punctuation) to replace quotation marks. I know it's a popular way for the literati to flounce their skirts at convention, but for the reader it's tedious and annoying.
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