I find myself stopped in my tracks when somebody writes that they are 'bored of' something, instead of bored with, or bored by. I'm bored of reading about all this bad writing. AARGH. I don't know if this phrase is grammatically incorrect or not. I can't think of any rule it violates, but it irks the shit out of me. Doesn't anybody say they're bored with reading about bad writing, any more? Okay, tell me you're bored by my constant griping! But please, don't be bored OF my constant griping, or I'll jump off a cliff, die horribly, and come back to haunt you forever. BWahh ha haaaa....
Since many of the peeves I have are already mentioned, I'll just leave this: Subject-Verb Agreements; the inability people have thinking that an organization isn't a singular entity.
I, personally, can't stand people's opposition to semi-colons. They still serve a function in linking sentences that share an idea (so to speak). I don't find them very obstructive as long as people know how to use them. The same could be said for any punctuation mark. One should learn when to use them, not be discouraged from using them.
There are a lot of good ones already mentioned, but not the one at the top of my list: lose vs. loose. The words don't have the same meaning; hell, they don't even sound the same, yet I see them misused time and again. Ugh!
Yeah, that's the danger of relying on spell-checkers to correct all mistakes. Spell-checkers are useful as a preliminary run-though to catch typos and spelling mistakes, but even then, a human eye needs to proofread as well, just in case the 'typo' or spelling mistake turns out to be another real word. The wrong word, but a real one. Folks need to master their grammar, spelling, punctuation and word usage if they are planning to become 'writers.' It's a basic requirement. There is no short cut to it.
Making inanimate objects do things. This pet peeve falls more in academic writing, but it drives me up a wall to read something like: The books says in chapter one, "Go and blah blah." No! It doesn't! The book CAN NOT SPEAK! Because my focus is in Old Testament studies, I can't tell you how often I read things such as: The bible says . . . Joshua says (when, if he was even the author, which is doubted, he wrote, he didn't say). This issue gets even worse with the use of possession. "The project's goals." "The book's binding." Etc. I want to smack myself in the head whenever I read these things. I know it might be different in narrative writing, but in academics (at least those using Turabian), only animate objects or time can be possessive. Along with that, and this issue extends into narrative, is using a word where the definition doesn't match. It's kind of the same thing with "bored of" rather than "bored with," but it goes so much further than that: "My eyes flew to the page." I didn't know eyes had wings. "...And they all fell on the floor laughing." Really? every person in the room fell to the floor and laughed, all 200 people? I mean, I don't mind descriptive language or the little twist, something like: "The morning breeze caressed her skin, she inhaled and found that it smelled . . . purple, if such a thing could be." or something like that. But that is purposed, rather than "flew to the page," which is just lazy, in my opinion.
My pet peeve isn't really a grammatical thing at all but ever since I was about three I hated it when people would over emphasize a certain feature, like a description of "Kara stared at her long brown hair in the mirror and begun pulling a bursh through her mousy hair. How she loved her brown hair." We get it, she has brown hair or when children say "aw look at the little baby kitten." We get it it's a baby cat.
This post really made me laugh. Nice to see somebody else besides me doing a General Rant on the forum every now and again. Well said. And you're right, pretty much—but I did have to cringe for a moment at "My eyes flew to the page." Cranky. I'm guilty as hell, of making eyes do things like leap, drop, touch and fly etc. I try to find another way to describe this 'action' whenever I catch myself doing it, because I just KNOW it seems awkward ...but the incidents do sneak in. And substituting with 'gaze' or some permutation involving 'look,' somehow doesn't create the same immediacy as 'eyes' in certain passages. (By the way, do fingers fly?) I just looked 'fly' up in my Webster's New World College Dictionary, and one of its primary meanings is to 'move swiftly.' (Wings aren't required.) More interestingly, I just looked up "eye." The 5th meaning is: "a look, a glance, a gaze,' and the 6th meaning is: "attention, regard, observation." So ...maybe the intention of the person writing "My eyes flew to the page" is to use one of the accepted meanings beyond the primary ones. That is: "My gaze moved swiftly to the page." I don't know about you, but I certainly feel better!
You know what's an even bigger pet peeve of mine? Reading back through a paper/story I've written, and finding that I've done the exact same thing!
Dangling modifiers. Annoying! Especially when you read them in a newspaper, reading the sentence a few times, convinced *THAT you're a complete idiot, but then you see it's actually the writer's fault. Ahh... * Lil subjunctive issue there
I just about lose it when someone lets loose the wrong one of this pair distinctly different words. Loose, as an adjective, is the antonym of tight. As a verb, it can mean to launch or let fly, as in an arrow. To lose is to cease to possess or contain.
I don't like to see people using phrases like these: - a mute point - 24 carrot gold - to rain something in - it didn't phase me etc. People who use these phrases must have a very strange idea of how the language developed. They must also have brains clouded with bizarre images.
-"I could care less" is something that really annoys me because it's so non-sensical. Afaik, the bastardization comes down to laziness. -The misuse of "literally." -The misuse of "per se" (South Park parodies this with the goth kids, so spot-on). -It's / its. This also seems to often come down to pure laziness. I find it quite weird. If the writers of diacrictic languages manage to add the dots and lines and circles, how difficult is it to add one apostrophe? -Mixing up plural and possessive, e.g. cats vs. cat's. -One of my most common blunders: He's/his I don't quite get this. Do you mean saying "I and my dog were run over yesterday"? I've never heard a native make this mistake. EFL/ESL speakers, yes.
Yes! The thing that makes this so annoying to me is that it's so common, at least around here. Plural's formed with apostrophe's! These thing's are everywhere!
One thing that get's me is the possessive form of something that ends in 's'. I was always taught that if you have a name like Douglas, and Douglas owns something, then the thing is Douglas'. But I guess people don't understand that anymore and it has become acceptable to write Douglas's... It may be right, but I don't like the way it looks...
I wonder if this is more common actually than forgetting the apostrophe from a non-plural possessive. A cats toy instead of a cat's toy... @Andrae Smith : I was taught Douglas's and cats' at school...
If I remember right, Strunk and White recommended "the Jones's house" and "Douglas's false teeth." They said the only exception was the case of Jesus, as in "Jesus' Harley-Davidson Ultra Classic Electra Glide touring bike." It always seemed to me, though, that hardly anybody ever paid attention to them. Everyone wrote "the Jones' house" and "Douglas' false teeth." When and if I muster up the necessary ambition, I'll check my other references on this. Right now, though, it's getting late and I've taken some melatonin.
I was never taught Douglas's. I read found it online a couple years ago and couldn't believe it. I took it to my English teacher and he said just don't do it. Douglas' and Cats' are clear enough. I know Douglas's is correct, I just don't like it. (Yes, I was that weird guy in class who looked up grammar rules instead of just wingin' it like everybody else. >_<)
While to me Douglas' looks unnatural. It's like there's Mr. Dougla, and then a bunch of Douglas, who then possess something Another pet peeve: taught vs. thought. Which I totally did not correct after posting in my previous post. *cough* In general, I hate it when my stupid brain messes up the words that are pronounced similarly but spelled differently, and then while I'm proofreading, just won't pick those mistakes up, no matter how many times I proofread. After pressing 'Post reply', lo and behold, all the mistakes glare back at me.
