Pet Peeves

[iggy]

Originally Posted by garyspk

Also, my English teachers in school were WRONG. It ISN'T always "I before E except after C!"

cuz the rest of the saying goes:

or when sounding like a
as in neighbor and weigh


Of course English being English....they are always a TON of exceptions (eg. science)!

What I find really aggravating about the "your" when they mean "you're" is that you see it so often that you can easily start doing it too and have to watch out for it...every time I catch myself doing it (something I NEVER used to) I get aggravated all over again!

[Adelina]

The "it's-its" confusion is another diabolical terror, similar to the "your-you're" conundrum, but with the opposite frequency of misuse. That is, in the former case, "it's" is usually misused as a possessive; but in the latter, "your" is usually mistaken for a verbal contraction. I've seen "it's" used incorrectly on billboards, in advertisements and articles. The error has become so common that the editors don't even seem to notice anymore, as if the wrong version is subliminally becoming the right one. To my horror, I've even caught myself making the "it's" mistake, more than once.

Gary and Amber,

Thanks for the feedback and comment.

With regards to "know-it-alls" I've got to tell this story on myself.

As you know, I spent a career in the Navy and had the good fortune on several occasions to find myself stationed in San Diego. (For those who have never been there, put it on your list of "things-to-do-before-I-die.")

Back in the late 1980's I was an avid fan of the sport of sailing and crewed with some winning amatuer crews in San Diego. We were pretty good...not great.....but good enough to have fun. Certainly not anywhere near good enough to consider professional competition but as I say we were pretty fair weekend sailors.

Through a friend of a friend, I was invited to the San Diego Yacht club for a cookout after a local regatta. I was about one beer away from being totally tanked when I started up a coversation with a guy at the bar. I began holding forth at great length about the sport of sailing and sharing various techniques for getting better speed and balance and on and on......

He was polite and listened to my babble for about five minutes before excusing himself.

When we were leaving, as I was passing through the lobby there was a photo of the 1987 America's Cup crew. Guess who was on the crew????? Yeah, the guy to whom I'd been running my mouth......

rangerboy

[RG_]

Originally Posted by iggy

(just makes me want to light my hair on fire and start screaming)

Originally Posted by garyspk

That's a whole other fetish, Iggy.

Yeah, I've heard that Richard Pryor and Michael Jackson are both into that fetish. :grin:

[sandy]

Ok, I'm with the folks who can't stand the assault on the English language. One of my pet peeves is when people say "I could care less." The phrase is "I couldn't care less." The point is that you don't care at all, you couldn't care less. If you could care less, than it means you care on some level. Aaarrrggggghhhh.

The other one that makes me cringe is "less" and "fewer." You always see things like "Jello pudding, now with less calories." Groan. It's fewer calories. If something can be counted individually, it's fewer. If it can't be counted individually, it's less. You can't count pudding. But you can count cups of pudding or calories in pudding.

Yes, I know, I'm a word geek. But I just can't help it.

[RG_]

Originally Posted by dotty

Oooohh...that drives me bonkers too!!

And one more thing: using "their" instead of "they're" as in "Their not supposed to be here". Geezus!!

Another thing I can't stand is when the letters e and i are switched in certain words, like "thier" (their) and wierd (weird).

LOL...I can go on and on about this. Now that I think about it, most of my pet peeves have to do with grammar/spelling. I mean, it only takes 10 seconds to go to Dictionary.com and check the spelling of a word when you're not so sure how it is spelled!

I'll shut up now.

You tell'em, girl!

And for the information of MSF members, these astute observations on the use of the English language come from someone who's native language is not English! Kind of tells us something about the respect that we have for our own language, huh?

(And as an added comment, while I very much agree with the claim that we should make English the official language of the U.S., I wonder what it says when many of the people supporting that desire don't have a clue themselves on how to actually use it.)

[emily]

my major pet peeve is ppl who get on an elevator that ppl are trying to exit from.. geeshhhh ppl cant you wait halfa second while the ppl who are already on it get off??

[BlackVelvet007]

Emily, you wouldn't last long on the New York Subway. That happens every stop.

We get pet peeves all the time at my job. I work in a wax museum where we get tourists from all over. Every day, I see the bar for human stupidity lowered more and more. How many people here would bring an infant or small child into a "CHAMBER OF HORRORS" (our haunted house section)? What part of "no pictures" and "no touching the actors" is difficult to comprehend? Would you go into a haunted house if you were six months pregnant? Let's not talk about the number of people who ask "Is it REALLY scary??" (It's a CHAMBER of HORRORS!!!)

Sorry, just got off work a few minutes ago and this was the perfect thread to vent.

[emily]

BV i work in a Pediatric Dr's office.. The stupidity i seen in parents every day just simply amazes me so yes unfortunately i can see parents doing their children that way..

[emily]

After a really horrid work week lastnight it made me remember another major pet peve of mine. Which is people that try to talk to you while you're on the phone. HELLOOOOO!!! On tha phone here!!! And then have the nerve after you get off the phone to ask if you heard what they said??!!??!! wow!! i hada bad week last week lol.. my co-workers were lucky to have made it out alive *giggles*