Welcome to MyRagan Forum. Browse through any forum, sign in or register here and you'll be on your way to creating your own discussions and posting replies for the whole community to see :D
I'm fed up with correcting agents who insist that companies are plural; 'They [the bank, for example] acquired new accommodation' instead of 'it acquired'.
Misuse of contractions, especially "there's" in a plural context. E.g., "There's (there is) two or three reasons for that." ... when it should be: "There are two or three reasons for that." And please don't tell me everyone does it, so it's now OK. It's not OK. It's wrong.
Also, misuse of pronouns: e.g., "Me and her went to the store," when the correct usage is: "She and I went to the store."
Misuse of contractions, especially "there's" in a plural context. E.g., "There's (there is) two or three reasons for that." ... when it should be: "There are two or three reasons for that." And please don't tell me everyone does it, so it's now OK. It's not OK. It's wrong.
Also, misuse of pronouns: e.g., "Me and her went to the store," when the correct usage is: "She and I went to the store."
Violation of the which vs. that rule drives me nuts. People sound so pompous when they violate the rule.
The Strunk and White rule says don't use unnecessary words. I see that constantly, especially when people start sentences with conjunctions. Gratuitous use of the word "up" is an epidemic.
My biggest current pet peeve is a style issue. I despise garbage idioms like the literally nonsensical, inexcusable, and ubiquitous “when it comes to.” Strunk and White would say not to use four words when one would do, and the asinine phrase usually means something as simple as “for” or “regarding.”
“When” is a time reference, but the phrase has nothing to do with time. “It” is a pronoun that references a previously used noun, but I frequently see this phrase at the beginning of articles, even in the NY Times. “Comes” is an action verb, but the phrase describes no action. Nothing arrives, happens, or has an orgasm (various meanings of come). “To” is a preposition, but in typical usage, no prepositional phrase exists (e.g. “When it comes to cheese, blah blah blah.” “To cheese” is not a prepositional phrase, it’s a cheesy construction). “Come to/comes to” is an idiom meaning recovering consciousness after fainting or being knocked out.
kdfagan wrote:
Here's one I didn't see so I'm going to put in my two cents... My 11th grade English teacher taught that it was wrong to say "I feel badly." According to her, when you said that, what you were really saying was you do a bad job of touching - when what you really meant was you feel remorse or sad about something. The correct thing to say is "I feel bad." I think I'm the only person in the world who is bothered by this though, so maybe I'm remembering wrong. I just know you'd never say, "I feel sadly," or "I feel happily" about something.
I was also taught this and it drives me crazy too.
"I could care less" should be "I couldn't care less." Most people say the former, which means nothing, when they are trying to say "There is nothing in this world I care less about."
Waitstaff: "I'll bring you guyses check." There probably should be some sort of punctuation there, but I can't look at it long enough to determine what.
"Their" misused as a gender-neutral pronoun: "Every employee needs to bring their best game." Will be standard usage in 10 years but it rankles now.
Where do I begin?
All of the examples cited (not "sited" or "sighted") indicate a common failure to absorb the fundamentals of the language.
Other examples:
-- "tact" for "tack", the former being "discretion", the latter a sailing term for going forward into the wind. The latter should be used to describe coming at it from another angle; instead, almost everyone blithely uses the former.
--"affect" for "effect" and vice versa. Does anyone understand the difference any more?
Two things: 1) I knew a guy in high school who always asked "How comes?" instead of "How come?" 2) My own daughter (and countless others) drive me crazy by pronouncing the "T" in "often."
I work with a guy who does not know the word "when" exists. Instead, he ALWAYS uses "whenever." As in "Whenever I got to the doctor's office, I went up to the front desk." "Remember whenever we were at the restaurant and you..."
