What Are Your Grammar Pet Peeves?

A few tips:

1. Remember to never split an infinitive.

2. The passive voice is to be avoided.

3. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.

4. Don't never use no double negatives.

5. Verbs have to agree with their subjects

6. Don't overuse exclamation marks!!!!!!11!!11one!one!!11!

7. A preposition is generally a bad thing to end a sentence with.

I admit I often mistype "its" and "it's" even though I fully understand the difference between the two.

Having said that, I'm surprised no one has mentioned "good" and "well."

It's (whew) a bit like nails on the chalkboard for me.

I don't see or hear it too often, but there is a difference between "further" and "farther." "Farther" always refers to physical distance.
That just reminded me of my "between" and "among" peeve.
I don't think this is a grammatical error, but I read it all the time and can't stand it, "what with." "The Jaguar has all the amenities you'd expect in an English luxury car, what with its leather seats..."

My Pet Peeve is Grammar itself... Sorry....

I suppose I've (I have) developed a *pet peeve* over the misuse of imminent and eminent....ever since the local daily paper incorrectly used eminent in a big, bold, headline. The headline went: War Is Eminent....I was aghast.

Have you ever listened to Neal Boortz?...His lack of enunciating ending letter g's peeves me to absolute bother....What do Lester Holt and Charles Bronson have in common?

I'm a writer and copyeditor, so I have lots of conflicted feelings on these various comments. Purists frustrate me, and I used to be one. I gave it up when I realized that the language is always evolving (whether we like it or not) and that if you want to be an effective communicator, sometimes you have to compromise. I learned that the hard way when I worked at an ad agency.

That said, my biggest pet peeve is when people write "insure" when they mean "ensure." No. 2 is "irregardless." They both drive me crazy.

If you want to become certifiable, watch the CNN crawl for 10 minutes. :*o/

Thinking on this today, my biggest pet peeve is overuse of the word "that."

The word "that" is a pronoun, meaning "the object over there." Ninety nine times out of a hundred, it is an unnecessary word and used to introduce a subordinating clausal phrase. To wit:

Incorrect: I have several habits that I want to quit.

Correct: I have several habits I want to quit.

On some rare occasions one can use "that" as a subordinating conjunction; however, it can almost always be simply deleted without changing a sentence's meaning.

-J

I'm fixin to stop tracking this thread. It is imminently clear to me that it is a ginormous waste of time. I'd rather reed something informational then to waist thyme jawboning colloquial peccadilloes and anal grad student language preferences. Y'all have fun, now, Y'a here?

Less/fewer and defuse/diffuse. Amazingly I've seen major newspapers state something like "the conflict was diffused" - really? Sprayed all over the place? - when what they meant was defused, to keep from blowing up. Oh, I hate hyphens, too - and don't get me started on ellipses. . .

A few months ago there was a standoff where some nutter held up a convenience store and took some people hostage. The news lady covering the story said "The police have set up a parameter around the building."

I was so distracted by yelling "PERIMETER!" at the television that I never found out what happened to hostages.

I CAN'T STAND PEOPLE WHO TYPE IN ALL-CAPS IN A PHALLIC ATTEMPT TO MAKE THEIR WORDS "MORE IMPORTANT" BECAUSE THEIR LETTERS ARE BIGGER THAN YOURS. MANY OF THESE IDIOTS ALSO WRITE "RUN-ON" PARAGRAPHS WHICH ARE 12 INCHES LONG, RESULTING IN A COMMENT THAT LOOKS AS THOUGH IT WAS WRITTEN IN THE 18TH CENTURY AS PART OF A THEOLOGIC DIATRIBE. AND IN TRIBUTE TO URBANE GORILLA'S COMMENT -THIS ENDS UP IN A MARATHON PARAGRAPH BEING DIFFUSED ALL OVER THE COLUMN, WHEN IT SHOULD BE DE-FUSED AND DISBURSED IN THE RECYCLE BIN. WHEN I READ COMMENTS LIKE THIS, I AM REMINDED OF A SMALL CHILD ABOUT TO SLIP INTO A CONNIPTION AND WHO IS TRYING TO RUSH IN AS MANY WORDS AS POSSIBLE BEFORE THEY START SCREAMING. IF I TYPE IN ALL CAPS, SURELY NOBODY WILL HAVE THE AUDACITY TO IGNORE OR INTERRUPT MY COMMENT BECAUSE I AM USING BIG LETTERS AS THREATS AND INTIMIDATION. THEY'LL SURELY THINK THAT I AM A LARGE AND ANGRY PERSON WHO IS NOT TO BE TRIFLED WITH. IN REALITY IT COMES ACROSS AS A PERSON WITH A SMALLER BRAIN ATTEMPTING TO COMPENSATE. NOW IF YOU WILL EXCUSE ME, I'M GOING TO THE STORE TO FIND A JAR OF THOSE COLLOQUIAL PECCADILLOES THAT NEWBROOM JUST HAD TO MENTION AND MAKE ME FEEL HUNGRY.

Another of my pet peeves are public speakers who feel the need to fill every second with the sound of their own voice. They seem afraid to pause for fear that they'll lose some sense of "control." This is the source of many insipid fill-in remarks like, uh, and so..., the overuse of the word apparently, insomuch, ....and...., uhyeahyauh, and the many Valley-Girl terms previously mentioned.

loose & lose

I think I've figured it out. In general internet commentary isn't writing so much as it is speech transcribed. "Meh", "heh", "sh'yeah, right!" and, of course, the execrable w00t, are all attempts to add a tone of voice to our commentary. Instead of using good writing to establish the tone of our comment, we offer the reader a glimpse of - what? - our inner Teleprompter, perhaps. These sound-effect words invite the reader to imagine how we sounded, causing me to wonder if what we then end up reacting to is tone rather than content. Thus are flame wars started or quenched. Likewise emoticons offer a (usually) friendly face to people who don't know much about us. Even at newsvine, the social aspect of the internet informs the exchange of ideas more than in print media.

One way I know this is by looking at my published letters to the editor (NY Times, Chicago Trib, Cleveland Plain Dealer, and a few others). They are short and specific - and they usually took me hours to write. Writing's hard. After reading this thread, even harder - believe me. I went on an assiduous "that" patrol. I whacked away at "also", and merely ask that you forgive me my hyphens.

Here on newsvine, I would say that BlaiseP seems to carry the torch of true writing, and does it so well.

Advice please? I get so confused over periods (waits for lauhal). This is probably a residual effect from being a COBOL programmer where a period always marked the end of a statement and thus followed any quotes, which generally identify data. So, in standard English do they always go inside quotation marks, or only when the marks are for an actual quotation?

Here are some examples:

She said, "see Spot run."

Obvious, right?

But what about:

Did she really say, "I'm gonna get you, sucka!"?

Is that correct?

Lastly -

Biff is an "intern".

{elbow poke}

Do we have a resident grammarian?

Anybody?

"Where are you at?"

On the road looking for typos
Grammar-conscious pals set signs straight

Here's an article that looked relevant to this seed...

Someone out there is doing something about spelling at least...advanced functions like subject-verb agreement and tense we'll leave to the next-gen to solve. Along with the deficit.

When people say things like "more bigger" or when a sign punctuates incorrectly,
e.g. "Denis's barber shop". DRIVES ME NUTS!

-Dave

And in an attempt to write my most obnoxious post of all...

I jest hate it when youse peoples' aint got no sense tall and don spell kerectly. My gawd peple! Horsed on Phoenix is out der fer ya'll to utilize, use and usage. And yer usage, utilization and usageness of apostrophes' is' atroc'ious' ain't no body never heard of not using no double negatives nowhere? Fer instance, when you're on the parameter of a nucular facilitage trying to werk out the perimeters of your anti nucular argument, ya defuse yer hole argument by not spelling right and they don't even let you in the place - make you sit out on the parameter. I feel I can gooder present my ideals if I say that I represent the misuse of conjunkshuns! They got that Conjunkshun Junkshun fer yall to watch. We're just too fast and lose in the utilization of loose and lose - maybe they oughta make it one word - luce, then none of us could loose.

Those colloquial peccadilloes gave me a massive case of heartburn. I am going to have to take to, too or two of those Tums. I don't know whether I through up or went threw some sort of epiphany, but rest assured I'll clean up after myself afterwords AND afterwards. I can insure you all that ensurance is getting way too expensive for most folks and them peccadilloes probably have something to do with it.

Oh well...I guess I can....JUST GET PISSED OFF AND GO BACK TO TYPING IN ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME.

Or apparently, I can over use the word apparent for no apparent reason to apparently offend the entire NV community. Insomuch and bytheway.

I just read an article in the latest Wired magazine about a new gender neutral pronoun: yo. First heard in Baltimore schools, it has now been written about by excited linguists enough that they are effectively promoting its usage. Example: "Yo is a clown" meaning he/she is a clown. I wonder if it will catch on? It might lead to tragedies like "That's what yo said!".

So then...would it be....
Yo've gotta be kidding?

yo ho! yo, ho?

Yikes. Way too many peeves. Guess I'll add mine to the mix. Everybody's going to hate me.

My biggest peeve about grammar is people who criticize other people's grammar. Just seems a little elitist to me.

My Biggest grammar pet peeve is when people look more at grammar than content..maybe that's a control thing IDK.