Grammar Pet Peeves
 

You'll hardly ever see me correcting someone's grammar, but there's one specific grammar error that completely bugs me:


When people say "would of" instead of the proper way, which is "would have."


I have no idea why this bugs me. Maybe because it MAKES NO SENSE when people say "would of." How does that make sense to the people that write it? Yes, I understand WHY they make the mistake; it's because it sounds like it when you say it, but anyone who has a 6th grade education in grammar can obviously tell that "of" is the incorrect word to use. Simply knowing what "of" means will ensure that you don't make that error. So anyway, if any of you say "would of," "could of," or "should of." Please know that it's actually "would have," "could have," or "should have."

Any of you have any other pet peeves when it comes to people's grammar online?

There's only one really trivial thing that gets on my nerves (more so a spelling error). It's how people on the internet (and not on the internet =O) spell the word definitely. It must be the word in my life, which I have seen misspelled the most frequently. I've seen many variations, the most notable one being "definatly". I'm not bustin' anyone's chops here who occasionally misspell the word, it's just those people who do it over and over again that get on my nerves.

(A mixture of spelling and grammatical errors)A couple of years ago I would frequently use MSN messenger, and boy, some of the people who I had "conversations" with had no fucking clue what grammar was. Just one extract of one of those conversations could have me create a post in this thread 20 paragraphs wrong.

But I won't. It would definitely give me a headache.

Fortunately, as I grow up I see less mistakes of said word, and if I ever go on MSN anymore, I can expect intelligible conversations.

The misuse of its and it's bugs me more than any other language mistake, mostly because I frequently see it all over the place, including publications. Then again, typos of any kind in a published work generally piss me off, but when people throw in an apostrophe in the possessive form of its, I sigh in irritation.

I also hate it when people throw in apostrophes for plural nouns. CD's, selection's, etc.

Ditto all that have been listed. A big one for me is usage of "their" where it should be "they're" - if you're going to mess it up, at least use "there." Your vs. you're is pretty ugly, too. Of course, none of those are grammatical.

I'm still peeved by people who say "me and __" instead of "__ and me" or "__ and I." I've heard that they've accepted the other way as essentially correct, but it will always bug me.

It frustrates me to see everything written in lower case, just because I like my capitals. Also, the use of single letters as entire words is extremely annoying to look at, and usually makes a bad impression on me in regards to the person's mental faculties. If you went to school, type a sentence. I can handle bad spelling, but at least spell easy words like you/your/are. Come on.

I think whenever I've put "Would of" (because that's the way it sounds), I use 'Would've" because that's the correct way to make it into a contraction and retain the sound, without completely writing the wrong words.

Also, an otaku pet peeve: when people say "Animes" or "Mangas." It's a plural and a singular, people. That's the way Japan is with their nouns.

I guess as an English and Writing major, I find alot of things to be pissed off about, but I try to suppress it, that way when I fuck up I'm less likely to get laughed at.

However, there is one thing I absolutely HATE. The Puerto Ricans in my home town have decided to ignore grammar rulles with the word 'Mines.' As in, "That's not her book, it's mines."

I'm sure I can think of more, but all the ones listed above are pretty accurate... especially Drex's and the ones about internet talk.

It bothers me when people say "I seen that..." It should be, " I saw that..."

Additional Spam:
I have been teaching for several years now and it's amazing the grammer errors! The latest is principal and principle

Additional Spam:
What I have found is that I make several grammar mistakes too. For example, in the last message I wrote, grammer instead of grammar. I've decided to buy the Idiot's guide to grammar and spelling.

Pro-tip: spelling and grammar are two different things

If you're referring to me, "would of" is hardly a spelling error. It's a grammatical error because the words used are incorrect. None of the words are spelled incorrectly; the words are USED incorrectly.

If you're not referring to me then ignore me.

I hate when people just refuse to put punctuation anywhere. It makes their separate thoughts into one ugly run-on. I always see people requesting anime or asking what's wrong with an episode and they'd say stuff like:

"ok isant the ep of blrach 109 sapost to be realesed 2 days ago and it still hasent bean out yet !!!! so where is it >?< the subed vertion"

If you could perfectly translate that into something logical, I would love you forever. And that was an actual question someone asked on a board I go to.

Don't most gangstas do that anyway? Always adding unnecessary plurals everywhere. Saying things like, "Yeahs, I know whatchu mean." or "That man is my Boos" or something like that. I even wonder why most of my community does that... We live nowhere near a hood so we're not exactly gangsta.

I'll never understand the hip hop/rap world...

And I agree with what Drex said. Most people at the place where I got that quote from are constantly guilty of that.

Can't anyone spell definitely right? Also I see people on forums who claim to be 35 spell tomorrow wrong. Tommarrow, tommorrow, tommorow, etc. Sorry, but if you can't spell tomorrow right and you were born in the US(I'll give people who don't speak or type english a pass) then you have no excuse not to be able to spell the word "tomorrow" at 10 let alone 35. I could spell it when I was like 8. Unless you are mentally retarded, and I mean that literally not as an insult.

All of the ones mentioned and many, many more bother the hell out of me, but I guess my biggest grammatical pet peave is when people misuse the word "I." For Example, they'll say, "Why don't you come with Jennifer and I?" ARRRGGGHH. That bugs me.

You can only say Jennifer and I at the beginning or what?

GRAMMER

Me and JazzFlight hate when people mixup their/there/we're/were/where, etc.

Best rule of thumb is to drop the first person from there and see how it sounds, like so:

"Why don't you come with I?"

Therefore the correct sentence would be "Why don't you come with Jennifer and me?"

I don't like it when people don't use punctuation or capital letters at the start of their sentences. If someone doesn't use punctuation at all in what they write then it can look very messy and be very difficult to read.

Who's all going? Who's all there? Are amongst the most serious offenses in the English language. However, nothing tops people who end their sentence with "so". "So" is not a proper way to conclude a sentence. It's a word used to indicate you have more to fucking say. So don't fucking close your thought with "so" you dumbass. :mad:

I hate how people commonly misuse to/too. Either they're typos or they just seriously messed it up.

Most cases i've seen was "to" replacing "too"

"I got an XBOX360 to."
"To bad."
"You're to noobish, GTFO."

I hate when people mess that up. Plus, I don't understand how it seems right to you. I know people can careless about stuff online, but does it really satisfy you to mess up your grammar that much? It annoys me how people's standards on typing are that high...

One that bugs me, and I presume it's from people hearing the phrase spoken aloud, is "all intensive purposes" instead of "all intents and purposes." I guess I can understand it 'cause a lot of the time people are pretty lazy speakers, but it still irks me some.

I can't tell you how much thier/there utterly galls me...partially because a girl I know always gets on me for misspelling thier. :P

However - where I see "there" subsitituted for it, it just annoys the high holy hell out of me. :P

This doesn't just apply to grammar, but I hate when people say "do you want to come with?" Just finish the god damn sentence already. "Do you want to come with me?" or "Do you want to come with us?" Whenever someone says that to me in person I always respond by saying "... with who?" just to tick them off, because it ticks me off. I don't know why, it just does.

Saying 'can I' instead of 'may I'.

When a question is asked, for example, "Can I go to the bathroom?"
And the response is, "I dont know, can you?"
So the question has to be changed to "May I go to the bathroom?" to get the actual answer.

I used to hate when teachers did that to me, but I've found myself doing it more and more lately.

People using "bestest" - the best is the best; there is no such thing as "bestest" -__-"

My dad finds it weird that I use the word "one" a lot.

As in:

"Hey, my phone is dead, can I use your one?"

Instead of saying:

"Hey, my phone is dead, can I use yours?"

I dunno, it always seemed more natural to me to say your one/my one/his one instead of yours/mine/his.
I think that's the only grammar mistake that I prefer to keep.

'Your' and 'you're' CONSTANTLY getting mixed up. That's easily my no. 1 pet peeve.

I can't say I have pet peeves in english, mainly because I'm not english and I'm not an expert in that language...

but I'm pretty sure I do a lot of those errors. One I can think is with then/than, every time I right it I stop for like 10min asking myself what are the difference and what is the one I should use in that sentence >.< I do almost the same thing with the to/too.

There was a time that i didn't really care if I did some errors, but lately (maybe about 6 months ago) I found out that I was trying my best to right better in english, and I just can't thanks enough the spell checker in firefox now because it sure help me a lot XD

About the mistakes like would of instead of would have, I do a lot of those errors, but not just in english. I have the tendency of typing too fast and some time without even noticing it I type a word that sound the same thing as the word that I was thinking, but the word mean a totally different thing. I do that even in french. I think i do that because I write more like I talk and that's the problem. :\

I'm trying my best to correct those error now, I started to read my post 2 time before posting them now XD which I wasn't doing before...

Along those same lines, I've always had a problem with the phrase "the best of the best." Simply call them the best and be done with it.

My friend says "hurted" a lot on that same note.

There are tons that I dislike, and a few that I'm guilty of that bug the heck out of other people, the most common being "a whole nother" instead of "an whole other" ... but I'm getting better!

My list:
its/it's, their/there/they're, who's/whose, would of, your/you're, then/than, to/too/two, will/well, ones, quiet/quite, wich/which/witch and probably many others that I just can't think of at the moment.

Oh, here's another annoying one: "make due." As in, "You will have to make due with what you have." FYI: IT IS "MAKE DO."

Also, I get pretty irritated with people who say "supposebly." Please, if you say this, know that "supposebly" is not a word. It's "supposedly."

One that bugs me is when people use "per say" instead of "per se".

The little errors do not bother me as much when I am speaking, but flaunted displays of ignorance really make my blood boil. My math teacher (Statistics: never take this class) CONSTANTLY tells us 'you're supposed to times it by two.' My eyes dilate and my hands start shaking every time he repeats this.

I disagree with many semantic inconsistencies, but I do not let it get in the way when I talk. For instance, I silently correct people who use the wrong 'your,' because they are, in fact, pronounced differently.

I remember having a writing class one semester, and most of our time was spent correcting essays. I had so much trouble going through my partner's essays because she had so many grammatical errors, and I couldn't find the main points in the paper. I ran out of time going through the 15+ pages we had to correct during those sessions.

I guess my biggest pet peeve is when people use colloquial language in academic papers, and they're not aware of it. I remember how several people told me I was wrong when I tried to explain why using "ain't" wasn't appropriate during some cases.

I have to go with the very first one pointed out; would of instead would've. I've seen would'f a few times too which makes me cringe...

how about the abundance of folks that use "you're" when they should be using "your" or vice versa

Also mixing up "atypical" with "untypical" seems to be very popular

People who say "anyways" when they mean "anyway".

I cringe when I see 'alot'.... Ewwww.... even writing it wrong gave me the chills....

I really don't like when people mix their future/past/present tenses together. That really gets under my skin. I had to review a doctoral dissertation just lately and the guy's grammar was terrible. It was like, a grammar nightmare. In fact, the entire paper didn't really make sense. It was awful infact! Man, ugh, bad times seriously. OH! And people that over use exclamation points! Don't get me started! Seriously! See how annoying this is! I realize it's not technically grammar but, hell! AND... those "..." they're also annoying when over used.... see... yes it is annoying... sure... I love these little continuation ... deals...

*raises eyebrow*

Yay.