Fun with Pet Peeves
December 14, 2007 by Deb
Filed under Freelance Writing
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?
My big one is misusing “good” and “well”. If you’re “doing good”, you better be donating to charity.
And from an editor’s standpoint, I can’t STAND when people type with two spaces after a period. It makes me want to scream. We don’t use typewriters anymore!
“I can’t STAND when people type with two spaces after a period.”
When I write for newspapers and magazines, most of them still want two spaces. When I write for the web, then just one.
I don’t have many pet peeves. However, its/it’s bothers me a little bit.
“I can’t STAND when people type with two spaces after a period.”
When I write for newspapers and magazines, most of them still want two spaces. When I write for the web, then just one.
Interestingly, HTML only recognizes one space — even if you type two, you only get one. So theoretically, you could type two spaces after a period when writing for the web, and unless the client is using a program that recognizes both spaces, it’ll only show up as one.
In any case, I’m definitely guilty of this one.
The two spaces gets me because about 1/2 of my clients want it and 1/2 don’t. It’s hard to keep track. When I went to college (early 2000s) they had just eliminated the rule for college level writing, so when I have to put it back in, it drives me nuts!
On the two spaces item, my sports editor in college (back when football players wore leather helmets) had me change from two spaces to one, even on typed copy.
Deb,
Great minds must think alike, as I was considering doing the same type of post next week. Instead, I’ll just add my $2.02 (’cause I have way more than two cents’ worth to say on this topic)!
“There’s a couple of things . . .” Please, please stop saying this, people.
The loose/lose thing also really gets me. I used to work at a place where most of our clients came to lose weight, and it didn’t seem unrealistic to me that the employees at such an establishment would be aware of the difference.
I have to be forgiving of the its/it’s thing because even though I 100% know the difference, I somehow manage to add in the apostrophe when it’s not appropriate. (It drives me crazy when I do it, too.)
Speaking of apostrophes . . . I see red when someone uses them to pluralize. To me, that just means that you weren’t paying attention in school.
This one is sort of hard to explain, but I’ll try. A lot of kids will say, “me and my friends,” and then get corrected and told it should be “my friends and I.” Somehow, this bit of information gets all distorted so that when someone is correctly saying, “she went with my friends and me,” people jump in with “my friends and I.” (Usually in a condescending tone of voice.) Um . . . no. In fact, I actually worry that when I’m writing this correctly, people will assume it’s wrong and will judge me based on their false ideas of what is correct.
Instead of saying “granted,” so many people say “granite.”
Also, I enjoy using the word “literally.” Of course, I enjoy using it correctly!
Oh, my. I need to stop this.
Haha…all this discussion reminds me of a bit in “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” where Schroeder is writing a book report:
“The name of the book about which this book report is about is “Peter Rabbit” which is about this rabbit.”
I know it’s for comic effect, but GAAAHHHH.
My personal pet peeve? When people use the word “myself” as anything other than a reflexive noun, i.e., “Please see John, Mike, and myself if you need a copy of the program.” It makes me absolutely crazy.
I also hate when people use apostrophes to indicate plurals. My local SaladWorks proudly advertises that they have “Panini’s.” Ack…panini’s WHAT???
I live in Southern Ohio, not too far from West Virginia and the dialect here drives me nuts! (Even though I’ve lived here all my life.)
Warsh= wash
crick= creek
agin= against
mind= remember
ideer= idea
flustrated= frustrated
drawl= draw
The sad thing is not only do they speack this way, they write this way, too!
I also hate it when people interchange wonder and wander, as well as affect and effect.
T have to admit, I always thought the expression, “all intensive purposes” was actually, “all intents and purposes.” I’m not sure that version is much better!
This isn’t a grammatical point, but my current peeve is people who say:
“No offence, but …”
or
“Not being funny, but …”
and follow it with some offensive or just plain rude statement, and expect you not to be upset because they’ve prefaced it with this nonsense.
Grr.
I’m glad ‘could care less’ was brought up. I hear it used more than the correct term these days, and people look at you as if you’re crazy if you try to correct them.
“I can’t STAND when people type with two spaces after a period. It makes me want to scream.”
I write with two spaces. I don’t think I can stop now, it’s too much of a habit. If only one space is required I can always do a search and replace.
My current pet peeve is people using made up txt speak to try and sound modern. One of the newspapers I work for has a section on their site called YorNews. It makes me want to cry just looking at it.
Also, people who say ‘ignorant’ when they mean ‘arrogant’.
I’m guilty of most of these. However, when I’m really paying attention while reading or listening to speeches (I’m a bad skimmer), these annoy me at times:
- A pleasant good morning to each and every one of you.
- Oh, common! (When it’s supposed to be “Oh, come on!)
- Irregardless.
I don’t know if anyone’s listed these; i haven’t read the postings, but here goes:
Using “that” when you should use “who,” as in, “the person THAT arrived late,” or, “the teacher that attended,” or, “the girl that won the race.” People are not things!
“Real-a-ty” instead of “realty” Now this one is really bad! Or, “real-a-tor” instead of “realtor.”
Constantly saying “um” as you speak. Or, beginning every other sentence with, “You know what?”
But the biggest act of stupidity of all is continuously saying, “Know what I’m sayin’?” or, “See what I’m sayin’?” or, “You know what I mean?” Shoot these idiots!
MORE:
Beginning every other sentence with: “It’s like this…”
I hate, “you bet.”
“you know, you know, you know…”
“WITH ALL DUE RESPECT…”
AND STOP PUTTING QUESTION MARKS AFTER STATEMENTS:
I wonder why he didn’t go to the party?
And then there was the agnostic dyslexic insomniac who stayed up all night looking into the heavens and asked, “I wonder if there really is a dog?”
To say “I wonder blah blah blah” is a STATEMENT, not a question! It should conclude with a period. Still don’t believe me? Insert a synonym for “wonder” and then see how weird the question mark looks:
I reflect why he didn’t go to the party?
I ponder why he didn’t go to the party?
Sadly, many journalists commit all of these blunders. Anyone need a master proofreader for their material? I’m available!
Wow. You guys are even pickier than me…or is it I?
Ditto on the two spaces and LOL. I can see lots of stuff that I’m guilty of doing…anyone else?
A doctor once corrected the way I spelled my last name. I watched in fascinated horror, then told him to correct it back to what it was. He did, and it felt great.
Believe it or not, I once had someone correct me for using ‘me’ instead of ‘I’ — correctly. The sentence I used was, “Would you like to go with Bernice and me?” The offender smiled apologetically and murmured, “That’s Bernice and I.” At first I thought she was joking, but she was dead serious. To this day, she probably thinks I don’t know how to use the subjective and objective properly. I know she doesn’t.
‘I could care less’ drove my mother wild, and she despaired of ever finding like-minded people who spotted the contradiction. The fact that several people have listed it here would have made her weep tears of gratitude.
@Katherine Swan – the book is called GRAMMATICALLY CORRECT by Anne Stilman.
I bought it from Writer’s Digest’s book club about five years ago, but there should be plenty of used copies out there or revisions over the years.
I had to look for it and now find myself starting to re-read it. Meanwhile, I found the book I’d bought at the same time (CAREERS FOR YOUR CHARACTERS) and as I’m currently doing career articles, I figure it might come in handy. So thanks for making me search!
Just heard one on the news this morning – “one yearS old”
IT”S JUST ONE YEAR!
Oooh. Here’s another one that drives me nuts and I see it frequently. Whoever does the school newsletter cannot spell. Kindergarden and congradulations have shown up more times than I can count. The newsletter is always signed by the middle school principal, so I’ve been known to leave him messages that if he is going to sign his name to something he should verify the content is edited properly. He’s given up calling me back. I stick firm to my feelings that if they are going to insist that the middle schoolers have 30 to 50 spelling words per week, the school staff should be required to spell correctly as well.
For Your Entertainment, Two Rants in One:
Irregardless of what some people think, here I sit, literally, at 7 a.m. in the morning feeling ready to loose my mind. Yet another person has proclaimed that as a writer I surely ‘do nothing’ all day. It’s like your a lazy bum if you write for a living, in the minds of others. Well, I could care less, because at the end of the day, I know I work my tail off and inspite of that, I truly do love what I do.
LOL
People who don’t use commas!
Oh, and this is just one that has come up recently, but the manager at my day job insists on reviewing and “correcting” all of my work, when she is actually making a grammatically correct progress report into a comma-free, garbled mess. It really irritates me that just because she is my manager, she thinks she is magically given super copy-editing skills. When I try to explain to her that I actually edit things as my other job and so know what I am doing, she informs me that she is the manager, and always correct. It’s absolutely maddening!
The Minnesota dialect has a number of strange and annoying things that are common. One is the apostrophe confusion, e.g. the sign for “Kat Key’s”. The key’s what? But one bothers me more than most.
It is the construction, “You want to come with?” or “You can come with.” This may seem foreign to most of you, and it is. This comes from the odd “seperable prefix” German verb “mitkommen”, which means … well, to come with. It was transliterated into English by the Germanic people who settled here, and became standard.
Knowing the interesting origin of it should alleviate the pain. But hearing my own children use this construction is nearly unbearable to me.
You guys should try living where I do.
Gibraltar – a place where Spanish and English are spoken within the same sentence, constantly.
Arrrggghhhh!!!
I’ll give an example:
Si, no?
As in “yes, no?”
Which obviously makes no damn sense to anyone except a Gibraltarian!
It’s spose to mean ‘yeah?’ as in agreeing with something that’s said or empathising.
Whatever.
Here’s a sentence that you often hear in Gibraltar using many places, not just a Post Office:
‘Me voy pa’ el Post Office’
Speak bloody English or bloody Spanish!
And in these types of sentences, they totally change the pronunciation of the words!
EG: ‘Post Office becomes Post ‘Office (emphasis on ‘)
That’s just a quick insight into the speech of a Gibraltarian.
It really is painful to hear.
Never mind nails across blackboard, more like sand scraped on every bone in my spine!
Yak!
My brother used to say congratulations as: congradulations.
Argh!
Glad you brought this up Deb cos these types of errors are my number one irritant of all time.
Another one is ‘oftentimes’.
What the hell is that??
And I don’t mean any disrespect but differences in words depending on audience: Organisation/Organization
Why the hell can’t we all spell words the bloody same?
One way or the other?
Gah!
It’s kinda related but Copywriter and Copyrighter (even though the latter isn’t really a word) are NOT the same thing!
I’m a copywriter, which has diddley-squat to do with copyright or that little c in the circle.
The their/there/they’re thing annoys the crap outta me too. Like its/it’s and all the rest.
Interesting origin or not, these things are wrong ok? WRONG.
And painful goddamnit!
Argh!
Like ‘Thanks for writing me’
Wow, a letter consisting of the word ‘me’ must have been fantastically riveting to read.
I have to stop now, I’m losing the will to live.
Irregardless.
People who ever utter this ‘non-word’ should be shot instantly.
Actually irregardless is a word–you’ll find it in Mirriam-Webster–the Dictionary of choice. It’s just that it’s not a widely accepted word, and honestly makes the person who uses it sound dumb.
My crusade is correct usage of quotation marks (which you used incorrectly). Periods and commas always always go inside quotation marks–please refer to AP Style, or the bible of grammar–Strunk & White’s Elements of Style.
Also, people often misuse and don’t understand the differences between convince and persuade, further and farther, persons and people. (If you’re curious, when there are more than two beings, use people. Many think that a small group should be persons. Nope. Quantify small group to me–again, it’s just as bad as irregardless.)
All this useful info can be yours with a grad degree from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism!
I’d say about 86% of the people I encounter don’t even try to pronounce it, they just say the letters. Deborah “N -G”.
That’s me!!
But now it will be Debbing. You are now a verb.
“flush it out” instead of “flesh it out”. How exactly does one “flush out” an idea? Dump some water on it?
And my best friend (a very intelligent and literate woman) used to say “gorceries” instead of “groceries”. It drove me so crazy that I taunted her relentlessly until she started saying “groceries”.
I think it’s okay for songwriters to tweak the language. We allow it in poetry, right?
Supposably – makes me want to scream.
Between you and I – I think people think that it sounds proper. I think it sounds awful.
I also hate “people that” so much so that I looked it up and apparently it is acceptable usage.
ur so groovy Deb. rock on. Yeah, for the poster above, sometimes the redneckisms (yes, I invent words like Shakespeare) drive me nuts, like “git.” Please don’t say “git” in my presence unless you are trying to get your pig in the barn. But what really gets me is 24/7. Just can’t stand it. Oh, and the word “awesome.” Hate this stupid word, way overused and it is not awesome anymore. Beginning to sound like a valley girl saying.
I don’t like when people say “Valentime’s Day.”
I hate it when text speak is used in articles – but as writers it’s something I believe we should learn, as it’s the future of grammar, especially in advertising. w00t was announced as word of year recently and I think text speak is a genuine evolution of language, although very ‘1984′ though.
I say “punkin” for “pumpkin”; drives my husband nuts. But he says “git,” so….
@Sarah,
I live in San Diego and it’s the same here. In fact, the little bit of spanish I know is used on my sons who are learning spanish from one of their pre-school teachers. So I’m guilty as charged.
You should have seen his teacher’s face the first time I (affectionately) called my son using the term guerro… (I’m a long-haired red-neck
)
I hate the quotes thing, too. So many people don’t understand the difference between MLA and AP, and it shows. I sometimes see these weird mixtures of the two, and the writer instantly loses any credibility in my eyes. Sometimes it’s just the use of a style that doesn’t seem appropriate for the format and subject matter. Do we really need a serious financial article written in MLA? That drives me batty!
OH. I almost forgot.
I HATE… hatehatehate this: ASAP. Either pronounced A-S-A-P or ay-sap.
Why do I hate it? Because it’s used way too much where I work. I’ll ask, “When do you need this by?”
The response: “ASAP.”
ASAP is NOT a time, a date or and excuse. If I’m asking for a time, a date or an excuse, please give me one that I can carefully calculate into my day….
… so, when people tell me “ASAP,” I tell them “Okay then… how’s two months from now for you?”
No shyness about pet peeves around here.
Lose/loose is one of my big ones. So is the misplaced apostrophe.
Where I grew up, there are so many speech idioms that I tend to ignore those mistakes. People just don’t know that they are wrong. But the one that does drive me up a wall is people who say crick when they mean creek.
Excessive use of adverbs.
But my biggest pet peeve is people who insist on calling me Susan because they see my name is Sue — it’s not my name. Call people the name they ask to be called, not one you think they should be called.
“All of the sudden.” Drives me bonkers.
“Nu-cu-lar” instead of “nu-cle-ar.” (Even our President does this!)
My husband grits his teeth every Sunday when the cantor at church says, “Please stand,” instead of, “Please rise.”
Sign recently seen at Ft. Meade, encouraging safe holiday driving: “Better late then never.”
Ack.
I think my pet peeve today is that I’m having far more fun reading these posts than doing my work. And here I promised my kids that I would be done work by 3:30pm so that we can go to the movies tonight.
Sarah had me laughing with the British/Spanish post. My mom’s a Brit and I grew up listening to the Yorkshire dialect. In high school, I used to get laughed at by classmates and teachers for saying “ExACTly”. There is a T in that word, but for whatever reason around here it becomes “ExACKly.” I could go on with more-
Milton becomes MIL’in
Essex becomes EX-ecks
Local dialects are another pet peeve. With that, I’m really going away and am going to resist all temptation to keep reading…
- then instead of than
- “Leave him alone” instead of “Let him alone.”
- pitcher instead of picture
- “I see what you’re saying” (Really? Last time I checked we were not in a comic strip.)
- your instead of you’re
Many years ago, I worked at an ad agency. One of the VPs (the owner’s son) was a constant source of amusement. Some of his pet expressions:
“This is so-and-so, which is our copy director.”
“…go through it with a fine tooth-and-comb”
“Come hell or hot water…”
And (our favorite): by combining “get your ducks in a row” and “all your eggs in one basket,” he’d say “line up your eggs.”
And yes, he did have a lot of client contact,
@Freddie: LOL!!!!
This is a fun thread. Thanks, Deb.
My mother says “egg-zachary” instead of “exactly.” One of her cousins said that once as a joke and years later, she is still doing it.
This is not a pet peeve as much as an example of what can happen when you are distracted. Back when I actually went to work in an office, a co-worker asked me how to spell the word “niceties.” I was distracted doing a rush job and started spelling it out loud off the top of my head. I inadvertently added a few too many “t’s” to the word, so instead of “niceties” my coworker was told how to spell “nice titties”! (Mucho Embarrassment….)
And of course, she told her boss, my boss, and everyone else she ran into about my “open mouth, insert foot” incident. So I guess I have a pet peeve about people asking me to spell niceties when I’m busy!
So
Ignore that last so…I guess I can’t type today….
“‘Leave him alone’ instead of ‘Let him alone.’”
Actually, “Leave him alone” is correct, as is “Let him be.” People tend to mix them up, though, which is how we end up with “Leave him be” and “Let him alone,” both of which are gibberish.
Like Bill Walsh says in “Lapsing Into a Comma”…”Let me alone” makes about as much sense as “Allow me to purple!”
Oh, this is fun. I have so many…
Here’s what you get when you grow up in PA Dutch country:
You’s (how are you’s today? what would you’s like to eat?)
I’ll second Erik’s “Do you want to come with?” and someone else’s (can’t find it now)”My hair needs cut/the grass needs mowed,” etc). Very PA Dutch.
And the strange use of “yet” instead of using “now.” As in, “Are you at home yet?” “Are you going to the store yet?”
Other peeves: “really unique.” It’s either unique or it’s not unique, it can’t get any more (or less) unique than it already is. It’s just unique. That’s all.
And those business-speak words and phrases, like: “get into bed with,” “let’s network,” “there’s a disconnect.”
Argh.
Oh, I just thought of another one that I hear daily at work:
“Do you have any bandwidth?”
?!????!!
I agree with the views on irregardless. It’s one of those constantly used, completely irritating words.
Other pet peeves of mine are double negatives, incorrect subject/verb agreement, statements like “more better,” and seeing that written every fifth word. I know that is a common word, but it isn’t needed anywhere near as often as it’s used.
Unfortunately, my husband knows all about my pet peeves and believes it’s funny to go around saying sentences incorporating irregardless, at least one set of double negatives, and top it off with something along the lines of “more better” or “more betterest” if he’s really trying to make me cringe.