The Absolute Awfull Use of words....JFF

Ooooo, oooooo! Also..... "I could care less." vs. "I couldn't care less." One means you care, and the other means you don't.

Also CONVERSATE is not a word!

Oh, and I had someone with a Master's Degree (who liked to lord his education over people) once say "Delusions of grandiose." I said, "What?" He repeated himself. I said, "Grandiose, what?" He wouldn't believe me when I told him he had a dangling modifier.

Oh, I love conversations like this! :-)

I have to do it. I am throwing myself under the bus here because this post just reminded me of it. I am guilty of using some horrible grammar and when I say it I want to kick myself in the a$$ for it. I admit that I say 'No more good'. OMG what is that? I know its the worst grammar and I still do it.
I just had to share

I find myself on conference calls mumbling to myself "impact is not a verb, impact is not a verb, impact is not a verb..." trying to keep from twitching. My parents made me stop correcting grammar at the dinner table.

How about the horrible misdeed committed by Alanis Morrisette in that song "Ironic"? *Absolutely nothing in that song is ironic.* It is all *coincidental*. Irony is actually a form of speech and nearer sarascm. Rain on your wedding day is not a form of speech, it's just bad weather. Nonetheless, many people now use the word "ironic" incorrectly because they are so witty and urbane. (and that, my friends, is irony!)

Wow, I didn't see anything here that would make you mad enough to quit mamapedia. You were not attacked!
If you are going to be critical of others, then you must be able to handle some criticism in return.

Peg: I love you!
JB: I'm weeping with joy over your correct use of apostrophes for colleague and boss and nodding my head vigorously in agreement for the use of affect/effect.

The concept of apostrophe-s just baffles me. Too many people think that if the letter s is at the end of a sentence, one has got to use an apostrophe. Nope!

My sister does this all the time when she's talking about the "Knight's of Columbus". Drives me nuts!

Apostrophes are used for either possession or contraction. For example if we say that was Emily's apple, we've used an apostrophe to demonstrate that the apple belongs to Emily. On the other hand, is we say that Emily's going to the store, we've used an apostrophe to demonstrate that "Emily is", and we've used the punctuation mark to join the two words together. The list below demonstrates some errors:
-Cherry's are on sale $1.29/lb.
-Please put the almond's away.
(Neither examples require an apostrophe as there is no possession or contraction. Plurality does not require the use of an apostrophe.)

It makes me wonder if students are still required to learn how to diagram sentences in school. It would go a long, long way in understanding the English language. Don't even get me started on adverbs...

Sincerely,
Your Mamapedia resident spelling and grammar freak
(I fully realize I have a problem...)

Totally laffin at Peg M's post. I had to read em all to make shure nun of them bloopers was mine.. Ahahahhahahaha!

Mitzi R. I can't tell you how much time I spend at work editing "impact" as a noun and verb out of my colleagues' and boss's presentations. I will weep for joy the day that they independently use "effect" and "affect" correctly instead.

I'm surprised sometimes by what gets past my children's teachers at school. My step-daughter is in an honors-level English class (7th grade). Last night, I worked with her on editing a story that she wrote and in one line she wrote "both are horribly destine to fail." Not only did she think that "destine" was the correct form of the word in the phrase, she said that she has been writing that for years and it had never been corrected by her teachers. Great!

On a funny note, she also wrote "...my first encounter with Sally is Intercourse training aka Gym" and I nearly choked on my dinner. I asked her what she meant and she swore that in her old school, they called gym class "intercourse training." I explained what "intercourse" usually means - especially to seventh graders - and advised that she use another word. Turns out that she meant "interval" training LOL. Of course I also corrected the random capitalization and explained that a/k/a is not an actual word but stands for something. It drives me nuts when adults don't know that it stands for "also known as" - I can't tell you now many people I know think it's an actual word. One colleague asked me how to spell it!

Great topic!

Don't leaf! JK!

One of my favorite books is Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lunne Truss. It's a funny book.

Look, grammar, spelling, and punctuation do matter, to an extent. If my co-worker had bothered getting his Power Point presentation checked for proper spelling, he would have realized that 'assess' is spelled with two of the letter s at the end. How embarassing for him! LOL.

My favorite sentence suggesting that punctuation matters:
Woman without her man would be nothing.

Try punctuating that!

I literally explode when people do that. I'm like the proverbial angry lady who gets mad. Lol

Just joking. The misuse of "literally" annoys me as well. There is an upswell in stupidity, but not many people seem to care.

Your example doesn't bother me much. It is being used to show how dramatic the scene or situation was.

What bothers me is the use of words that, well, aren't really quite words.

- Expresso (Um, you mean espresso?)
- Irregardless
- Supposebly
- Bof

Also, the incorrect use of "your" versus "you're".

Also, putting a comma in the, middle of a, sentence where it doesn't belong. =)

"Loose" versus "lose" - When someone types they are loosing their mind, it just makes me cringe. I see it daily.

"Too" versus "to" - I mean, really? It is just one extra letter people!

I could go on, but I will just irritate myself.

Almost everything mentioned here bugs me a little too. Mostly because spelling and grammar come pretty naturally to me. I've mentioned before one mom that used elipses incorrectly every single time. Not only that, but the same mom inserts hard returns at very strange places. The times I can overlook her strange sentence structure, she actually has some insightful things to say. When I am unsure of the spelling of a word, if I don't have a way to check it, I'll switch to a different word. I really cringe when someone is trying to use a big word and sound intelligent and then misspells it. It takes the intellect out of what they are saying (in my opinion).

One recent irritant of mine is mispronunciations in songs. One yesterday was "give me the strenff I need" - strenff? WTH is strenff? (don't answer, I know)

My 9 year old son is like me, he spots misspellings on signs and in print quite often. There is a bakery we go to where there is a poster on the window advertising "Ham and Chesse Croissants". He saw it before me.

While on one hand, on some level, I think they sound a bit ignorant, I would really hate to try to hold my own on a board where mathematical equations were part of the daily discussions. OY! I have a math mental block, and I know that a lot of people have a grammar/spelling mental block, too. Most of the time, I'm able to ignore the grammar/spelling mistakes and not get too irritated! :)

English is not my first language,I make mistakes all the time.So what,
I have better things to do, than dwelling on how other people spell,or use words.
I bet, I have 500 mistakes right here.
Be more compassionate with us illiterate :)
At the end, what really counts is, am I a good person?
Will I come to your rescue, when you are stranded on the road?
That for me is important.

You speak good! lol
It irks me when people use "good," when they should use "well."
Your for you're
There for their
A lot of teachers don't find it worth the fight. I once had an english teacher tell us kids it dont matter because computers will fix it for us!
(wait!! my stoopid computer didnt do its job!)
**Oh how it hurt to write that. lol**

AAWW Bee, your being overly sensitive. I read every post and saw only a couple snippy things.

I do know what you mean though. Things like that get on my nerves too. Most of my spelling/grammar mistakes are from laziness. I'm too lazy to go back n correct what my retarded fingers did.

Peg you are hilarious!

Your examples are for exaggeration to make a point. A lot like how idioms are used. Those don't bother me too much, if at all.

Now the mispronunciation of words are my pet peeve. Such as 'jewlery'. I have even heard 'professional' speakers pronounce this wrong - drives me nuts! Bush has ruined our youngsters by having them think nuclear is pronounced nucular. The first time I heard my son say that I about blew a gasket!

Oh,Bee, please do not go away!!!

I am somewhat of a grammar Nazi with my son. I hate idioms, slang, and, to a lesser degree, contractions. I find that the spoken language has become much more relaxed during the past several decades, and, much of what I hear makes me cringe.

My absolute worst is "conversate". It is not even a word!!!! But I hear it often - "Well me and Mary were conversating and I told her..." How many grammar errors are there in that one sentence? Urrrgh.

So maybe that makes me a snob. I have been told that I use 4 syllable words where a one syllable word will suffice.

My son has a wonderful vocabulary, always has. He is also not afraid to ask the meaning of a word if he does not know it. So, I suppose that he will be called a snob later in life because he respects the English language.

Be happy Bee!!!

God Bless

I agree with Peg M.!! I was talking to an English teacher that said some of her COLLEGE students turned in papers in TEXT SPEAK!! She corrected a student using 'u' instead of 'you' and the student DID NOT GET IT!!

I think it is sad that students don't learn simple English. Even the word English doesn't always get capitalized, and that irritates me as well. There are myriad more offenses, and I won't list them all; however, one more I want to mention is when someone doesn't capitalize 'I.' The personal pronoun 'I' is always supposed to be capitalized. It is as if the person writing "i am important" doesn't believe it.

People are not robbed when their house is burgled. Robbery takes a face to face confrontation.

That is why Editors (capital E) are worth their weight in gold, and should be carried about on palanquins by beautiful boys, while they're being fed strawberries and champagne and truffles by hand. Ostrich feather fans. Masseurs. Out and out worshiped like the demigods they are.

People have always had atrocious spelling and grammar. But in days gone by Editors made sure that before a piece was published it was whipped into something worth the paper it was printed on.

My Editor would be rolling in her grave if she ever saw the tripe I hit "send" on in this board and on others (My god, you actually let people READ those run on sentences of yours??? WHERE did you get the idea that '...' is a habit that shouldn't be broken immediately? Aaaargh. Get out of my sight."). I'm periodically baffled that she hasn't come back to haunt me. Possibly because she's given up all hope of my ever writing anything readable again.

((Hey! I use myriad correctly!!! One! At least one thing I do without error!))

I think it is because they don't teach vocabulary words and require their use in a sentence in school anymore...

btw: awful only has one "l". ;)

p.s.:
My 9 yr old daughter has taken to pointing out all the grammatical errors she sees in public digital form. It started with a roadside construction sign that said "right lane closed 1 miles ahead". Yesterday it was when "communication with Wii remotes has been interrupted" ... She's like me. It just comes naturally. I remember still the frustration of sitting in Language Arts (formerly known as "English" ) class in about 10th grade, completely dumbfounded that some of the kids STILL didn't understand when to use "lie" and "lay" or "affect" and "effect" etc... (which I had to explain to my BIL within the last year). We would have drills for the entire class period and they just didn't get it. I think it has a lot to do with what they hear/see at home. If they hear/see it used properly, then they notice when it isn't. If they hear/see it used improperly, then their ears/eyes just don't notice.... :/

EDITED---Bee's MOM! Come back! We've all had our black eyes on this site! :)
______________________

People know that the jaw isn't literally on the floor, just like they know it isn't on the floor at all. The whole thing is meant to add to exaggeration.

That's not as bad as "All the sudden".

Or the Pennsylvania phenomenon of leaving "to be" out of sentences:

The car needs washed. The baby needs changed.

You're means you are, your does not! That is the biggest one for me :)

I'm trying to do my part, and so my daughter started using "literally" and "figuratively" correctly by age 8. I was so proud ;-)

I know what you mean, though. As an example, her father and I took her to her elementary school's science fair recently, and as I was scanning the students' posters describing their science experiments, I noticed that every one of them used "affect/effect" incorrectly. I could only assume that their teacher didn't know the correct usage! It drove me (us both) crazy!

It's not just the internet, it's everywhere. I have no idea if it was "always" like that, but I do know that English is not a topic that's really well enforced or cared about. (Ended a sentence with a preposition right there!)

I have a pretty good vocabulary and I get weird looks from people *all the time* because they don't understand what I just said. Keep in mind I'm not dropping esoteric or archaic terms, they're just more than two syllables. Like "esoteric" would probably get me a "huh? eso-what?". It makes me sad.

English can be a tricky language so I try to look the other way when people confuse "that" with "which" (I've looked it up 3 times and still have trouble with that). I do get annoyed by "their/they're/there" and "its/it's", but that's my hangup more than anyone else's. I think a lot of people have spelling/grammar pet peeves. "Definately" just kills me.

Some of the worst is what the business world is inflicting upon the language. My second day of work after college, I had to come up with ideas to "achieve the strategy". UGH you don't achieve a strategy, strategy is what you use to achieve a goal!!

LOL Bee's Mom, this was the best. I'm sure I could think of a million of them. These are things that I see and hear all the time, and I am a naturally-born editor (lol) so I always have a desire to correct people. Of course, politeness keeps me from doing so unless the person in question is one of my children or one of my students.
You are right - cashiers cannot count change. When I worked one summer in a supermarket as a teenager (back in the 80's), there were no scanned prices. We had to weigh the produce and figure out the correct price. We had to know what was taxable or not. The register did not tell us how much change to give, so if a customer's order was $28.76 and they paid with a $50 bill, we had to know how much to give back.

"Nucular" annoys the living daylights out of me.

Aggravate and annoy - to aggravate is to make worse. To annoy is to be bothersome.

I'm sure people who use some words incorrectly aren't too keen on your spelling ;) (ps, I'm not the best at that or all grammar either).

As for the jaw on the floor... I believe when people use the term "literal" in a non-literal sense, they are being facetious.

But, I do agree to an extent, I've been seeing a rise lately with groups of people who actually try and act dumb, as in the literally outdo each other with how stupid they sound. Text/twitter speak definitely has something to do with it.

Oh yes... and double negatives... that drives me insane!

yeah....everyone has their little things. mine is capitalization. i rarely use it. yours is obviously spelling. Peg M's is obviously being obsessive about others' grammar mistakes. so why are we on here throwing stones, from our glass houses, again?

I hate when people use "nauseated" and "nauseous" incorrectly. If YOU feel like you are going to throw up, you are NAUSEATED. If you physically make other people throw up, then you are NAUSEOUS.

I'm really sorry some moms on here get really uppity any chance they get. I think some people forget that there's an actual person behind these screen names and not just an automated computer, and that words do hurt. A few times I've thought about leaving this site because of nasty responses that served no purpose except for the responder to be rude and cruel. I'm sorry it happened to you too on such an innocent/funny post like this!

I actually had an argument with a friend once over her use of the phrase "chomping at the bit" - I nicely pointed out that the correct term is "CHAMPING at the bit" - she didn't believe me - and was so indignant that it precipitated the end of our friendship.

My biggie (hehe) is that "anyways" is not a word. It is "anyway" not "anyway(s)!

Nobody ever uses "myriad" correctly.

Also, it's "preventive" not "preventative."

I notice most people use "i" when it should be "me," and vice versa. Also when I have told someone we had an armed robbery home invasion they almost always ask if we were there!

I say things like this all the time! It's just an exageration and I like to get my point across AND be silly. I do get annoyed when I see people spell things wrong like "I like that to" what? it's too! "Sue said your going"...it's you're (you are going) I could go on and on..I have a couple facebook friends that I always want to correct but figure I would look like a big jerk and make them feel stupid for not knowing how to use correct spelling of words!

I agree with the other moms, you should not leave. There are always going to be people that send snarky responses, but it's definitely not the majority. I agree it can be hurtful, but try to ignore those people.

Some of the ones I can't stand:

Loose=not tight; Lose=to be unsuccessful in retaining possession of something.

Apostrophes drive me crazy when used incorrectly.

It's = IT IS. Its=something in possession of IT.
Her's=NOTHING; Hers=something in her possession

There=in or at that place; Their=something in possession of that group of people.

And Scarlett - irregardless is actually a word! I'm with you, I think people should just say regardless. They mean the same thing. The only reason I know this is because I had a big debate with my husband about how irregardless isn't a real word - and found out I was wrong.

Wow. Never thought about it.

It is sad that native English speakers, literally, are worse off that people that speak English as a second, third, fourth language. Literally. =)

My husband speaks English as a third language and it is amazing sometimes how great it is. If I really think about it, teachers are unable to correct students sometimes if they are of a certain ethnicity because that would be racist. I think sometimes people try to sound intelligent and end up sounding like idiots. Oh well!

Oh stop about not coming back to mamapedia! You put yourself out there with your somewhat controversial question that most people on here are guilty of :) including me! But, I'm not going to rake you over the coals. Chill out and don't let the responses get to you!