What are your grammatical pet hates?

Question

Mine are:

1. "Should/would of"
2. People misusing "literally". "I literally exploded with rage" - can you imagine the carnage?
3. People who can't conjugate "to be". Other languages you have to conjugate into six persons. In the past we have two forms, was and were, and people STILL say "you was".

Do you think I'm really anal?

Answer 1

People who say 'you know' no I don't damn well know otherwise i wouldn't need you to be relating the tale! Also why do people preface their sentences with 'basically'' ''basically I was walking to the loo and basically I tripped over the stair and put my foot in my mouth!'' aarghhhhhhhh

Answer 2

You're not anal and I'm glad to see that there are so many other people out there who are annoyed by all of these grammatical errors as well. I think that just about every one that bothers me has already been listed. It's too bad that so many people aren't able to speak or write the English language well anymore. We must not focus on it enough in our schools and many parents don't have the knowledge (or the desire?) to correct their children when they make these mistakes.

I am always surprised and a little disturbed when I receive a letter or an e-mail at work and a professional person has made some of the grammatical errors listed above. We're all human and can make mistakes, but when you're sending something professionally, check it over or have someone else review it before sending it out!

Answer 3

Aaaaaaarrgghhhhhhhhh! is my reaction to most of the examples listed above. I, too, am pleased that so many of us are "anal", but I still think we are a dying breed.

I think the only thing that hasn't been mentioned before is something that I have only seen on computer screens, although I would imagine that the people that do it must do it when they are writing on paper as well. I am talking about a COMPLETE LACK of punctuation. No commas, no full stops, no capital letters, no paragraph breaks, nothing! I have to read the things a number of times to try and understand what they are trying to say; sometimes I can't because the lack of punctuation makes the sentences ambiguous. How can anyone be so oblivious of basic punctuation?

Answer 4

I think my best grammar/spelling on this site is when I'm answering a question posted by someone who's first language is not English. SOMEBODY has to be a good influence here, right? There's literally hundreds of people on this site that come from non-English speaking countries, and attempt to learn the English language from interacting with us. What do they find here? Internet-speak, and illiterates.

And there's always the one idiotic 14 year old, who uses Internet-speak to tell them off about learning the language. Yahoo Answers is global, and yet the earth still revolves around American teenagers. Except now, everyone on earth knows it.

One other thing that bothers me. When is answers going to add italics, bold-face, and underline? I'm getting sick of capitalizing everything.

Answer 5

Leaving aside grammar that's so poor as to be incompetent, I would say that details such as greengrocers' apostrophes and the use of i.e. in place of e.g. are particularly annoying, because they indicate an inattentive disregard as distinct from unfortunate ignorance.

Answer 6

I hate the way people sometimes use text message type spelling, it's awful and looks like they are lazy and can't be bothered to spell properly. I also find it annoying when people don't use capital letters in the appropriate places.

Answer 7

I don't think you're anal for thinking like that, I'm the same, I agree with all of yours. I tend to mainly hate the new generation of spelling, for example "how r u?" things like that. good question though, most intelligent question I've seen on here in a while.

Answer 8

No, I don't think you're anal. Since many of us in the U.S. only speak one language, we should at least try to speak that one language well.

It bothers me when people improperly use the word "myself." For example, they'd say, "Bob, Jane, and myself are going to the party." They should say, "Bob, Jane, and I are going to the party." I think people think they sound more intelligent saying it the improper way.

In the movie "Austin Powers", the title character even mildly jokes about this misuse by saying, "Allow myself to introduce...myself."

Conjugation problems generally bother me, such as when someone says, "I don't like them people."

Maybe *I* am too anal, but I also don't like run-on sentences with no punctuation or capitalization, which is a common occurrence on-line these days. It's sometimes tough to know what someone is trying to say.

Answer 9

I hate the word 'basically'. It's a nonsense word used by the illiterate. It's not only individuals who misuse the word 'literally'. I went into a restaurant recently, and was disappointed that my dessert didn't 'literally explode with raspberries' as the menu promised it would. Punctuation is also a hobby-horse of mine, particularly misuse of apostrophes.

Answer 10

I don't know if it applies to grammar but I hate the word 'hospitalised', does it mean you've been magically transformed into a hospital.