Let’s have a little fun today. The past few days were entirely too serious, so let’s laugh a little.
I was listening to the local news and a county official used a word I hate “irregardless.” Actually it’s a non-word. it doesn’t exist. Irregardless, like “for all intensive purposes” and “where’s it at” are the grammatical equivalent of nails across a black board for me.
Here are a few more I can’t stand:
- 1 AM in the morning. – Um…doesn’t AM indicate morning?
- Using “loose” instead of lose – Two different words meaning too different things. They’re even pronounced differently.
- its/it’s, their/they’re, your/you’re – Admit it. It bothers you too.
- “Home in” instead of “hone in” and vice versa – Update: please see comments for discussion regarding home in/hone in.
- Text messaging type abbreviations in email or blog posts. U no wht I mean?
- Using the word “literally”. It literally makes me cringe when people use this word to illustrate a point.
- “I could care less.” Really? Well I couldn’t care less.
There are also expressions that bother. For instance, if I hear the expression “At the end of the day…” one more time, I’m going to pull my hair out.
So … share. What things to people say or write that make you want to bang your head against the wall?
Great post “Irregardless” is one of the words I also find funny when I hear it. It used to make me cringe, but now it’s almost like a joke to me. The one mistake that still gets on my nerves is when people misuse “your” and “you’re”, come on people it’s not that hard.
Sarah,
Actually, “no” is Spanish for “no.” Seriously, the word is the same in both languages, so they aren’t necessarily mixing Spanish and English.
As for the sentence with “Post Office” in it, I think that would actually be correct, because “Post Office” is a proper name. Translating it to Spanish would be like calling you the Spanish version of your name, instead of your real name.
“then” and “than”
“per say” rather than the correct “per se”
“grammer” and “grammar”
I try to keep my list of pet peeves to a minimum. We all make mistakes at one time or another, after all. And honestly, I’m not a nit-picker. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to edit another article in Wikipedia. I just saw a period typed after the quotation mark. Que horror!
Mine is something I did as a kid, although I’m careful to avoid it now…picking up new words from print and then mispronouncing them. For a long time in my preteen years, I thought “adolescent” was pronounced (ah DOLE sent) even though I heard people using the word in speech…
So when I hear people doing the same thing, I understand how it happens, but I want to tell them that they need to look up pronunciations for new words…knowing the meaning isn’t enough if you’re going to use them in speech!
Also, one of my grandmothers used to say she needed to “get shed” of something. Even as a kid, this drove me nuts.
The expression that makes me froth at the mouth is: “different than”.
I keep asking myself, how could something be “different than” something else? How can “different” be used comparatively when it means one is different FROM the other?
Excuse me, I am frothing at the mouth…
I worked with someone that said “supposebly” — the first few times I thought I must have heard incorrectly, but sure enough she was saying it “supposebly.”
“Unthaw” — isn’t it just “thaw”?
All the business-speak: “take it offline,” “bandwith”… used to work for a VP that would constantly pepper his speeches with “at the end of the day.”
Fun topic. Thanks Deb!
SO WE’RE ON THE SAME PAGE
I refuse to jump on the bandwagon with this one. Someone started it and it caught on like wildfire: “Oh, I just wanna make sure we’re on the same page.”
And I hate 24/7. Is articulating, “Twenty four hours a day, seven days a week,” too much for one’s brain to handle? What’s with all the abbreviations in the English language lately? Like that pie I had last night, Oh, it was DEE-LISH!
People who are always abbreviating must have some kind of disorder in the Broca’s region of their brain.
SPECIALITY !!! Take that $#%$# extra i out !! Try our speciality steaks!
Oh, here’s another I frickin’ can’t stand, and I see it all the time in the depositiont transcripts that I read:
“THERE YOU GO.”
Something that is a huge pet peeve of mine is a particular phrase that I hear coming from the mouths of not only teenagers, but also from 30 year-old mothers. The phrase “My bad” just drives me insane!
Basically, it is the shortened-down version of “Sorry, my mistake” or “My fault”, which are two perfectly good phrases that have been used for a very long time. But all of a sudden, I hear everyone saying “My bad” and thinking that everyone in the population knows what it means. I seriously doubt that my 80 year-old grandmother would know what it means. What I want to know is where did this phrase come from in the first place? I can’t wait until it is eradicated and people start using proper English again.
Hey Deb,
Off the topic here, but I just want to thank you for running that big piece way back I think at the end of 2006, about Associated Content. To date, I have made about $1,000 from AC.
I actually don’t get too peeved with incorrect speech, since speech and documents are different. Being multilingual, I can understand how immigrants (my family included) shaped our language into American English and as a student in Linguistics, I’m fascinated by dialects and “mistakes”.
I would just like to say that while we all have our pet peeves, making comments about getting back to proper English is a bit off-base and one of my biggest peeves. I haven’t seen anyone here post in “proper English”. People wanting to learn English as a second language study English in its more pure form – that would be the type that comes out of Britain.
And as far as the Kindergarten thing goes, we don’t (usually) spell sauerkraut w. the “u” and we don’t say “Volkswagen” as folks-vagen, so the difference b/w “Kindergarden” and “Kindergarten” seems a bit silly. [/german rant]
To Patty
Are you referring to quotation marks (“.”) or inverted commas (‘.’)
I did misuse my inverted commas at the end of my post, yes. I guess that one slipped through the cracks during my furious typing! :S
Well don’t we just have a little group of Devil’s Advocates here, now?
I did laugh at most of the posts here though!!
1) “I stuck my neck out on a limb for him/her/them.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that expression mashup.
2) Liberrians. You know – the men and women who work in a liberry. Checking out books and such.
I’m afraid to read the many responses because I’m sure I must do a number of them. I’m learning!!! Please, give me a chance to stuff up while I learn!
Am I the only one who would appreciate readers to point out if I err? We seem to be a shy community who get peeved but won’t correct the mistakes of others with a polite comment/email. Feel free to call me out if I goof and let me know if you would appreciate notification of errors too. We all do it sometimes.
Yeah Rebecca, that’s a good point.
I have to say that it hurts me if I don’t point these things out.
In fact, sad or not, I have sent messages to Ebayers correcting them on their item listings!
And other stuff but I was here to say something else….!
Patty brought up a good point about quotation marks. I’ve just been reading that there are differences in the way that Americans and Brits use quotation marks.
These: ” to the Brits are quotation marks and are used when quoting speech. These: ‘ are inverted commas and are used when emphasising a word or quoting speech within a quote.
If ye ken whit ah meen…
hehehe!
Oooh, I’ve got one: people who say or spell “kindergarden” instead of kindergarten.
Drives me absolutely nuts.
Um…Jessica,
Not to be a nitpicker (I am sorry – I really don’t want to be mean), but if we’re going for German purism here, Kindergarten should then be capitalized (Germans capitalize nouns). If we’re not going to capitalize it, then we might as well Americanize the rest of the spelling as well
As far as pronunciation goes, saying Kindergarten with a “t” is ridiculously incorrect. For a native English speaker, it sounds more correct to say the German word with the “d” sound, instead of butchering it with a hard “t”. Articulating that “t”….well, it makes me cringe.
If we’re going to discuss the correct spelling, then we need to pronounce the word correctly. I’m all for the incorrect spelling, because at least people will pronounce it correctly (and I get to keep an ounce of my sanity
)
[/fighting for language]
“All’s I need is…”
You hear the most idiotic English spoken in areas with large percentages of German ancestry.
When people say “needs washed” instead of “needs to be washed”
Also,using “anyways”…”Well, I wasn’t going to do it anyways”
First, this is a great website and I’m glad I came across it!
Second, sorry for the late response.
Third, and forgive me if someone has already brought it up, but the correct phrase is “for all intents and purposes”, not “for intensive purposes”. The correct version comes from the shortening of a legal phrase “to all intents, constructions, and purposes”. This was found in an act adopted by King Henry VIII in 1547. Perhaps I misunderstood the posts on this, but I just wanted to clarify.
With regard to pet peeves, I think my biggest peeve is misspelled words in general. I always proofread my work, and spell check is not always right (Eye can tell you that my pea see is rare lea ever wrong, as soon as a mist ache is maid, it nose before two long). So, it is incomprehensible to me that others, especially writers, do not do the same. With informal writing it is not so much an issue for me, but it drives me batty that college level students write with no regard for their grammar or spelling!
They’re/there/their – one of them is a contraction and I think those who do not know how to use them should refrain altogether.
When business people say “going forward”, I ask myself, “is there any other way to go?”