Grammar Freaks: What, makes Yoo Crazie?

When people confuse your/you’re

This is a tough one. I can’t name specific examples, but basically…

ppl who typ lik dis all da tim

I also get really annoyed at some of those lolcat pictures. I’m sure you know which ones are relevant. And yes, the your/you’re thing.

can i haz cheezburger?

NO YOU CANNOT

@uberbatman You have opened Pandora’s box…...

Old people (ie anyone over the age of 15 and possibly who work in marketing) who use text speak because they think it makes them look young, cool and hip.

Oh but I luhs the lolcats…maybe because it’s on purpose. Your/You’re is awful. Also sit/set, though that seems to be a regional thing. “I’m just setting here waiting on whatever”
And LOL…if you say it I assume you’re 15. I can’t help it.

In before the “but language changes!” crowd comes whining in…

In terms of grammar, there aren’t a whole lot of things that really bother me that much. I suspect that a lot of “your/you’re” mistakes are due to typing too fast and not truly misunderstanding the difference. At least, I sometimes type the wrong one online but it has nothing to do with me not understanding the difference.

Maybe one thing that annoys me especially would be when people actually type out “could of” for “could have”. Also, in terms of pronunciation, thou shalt not say “pointsetta”.

Txtspk doesn’t annoy me when it’s used in the context of texting because that’s what it’s for. People are always like “OMG the whole language will fall apart!” All I have to say to that is a sarcastic “oh noes”. You really think teachers are going to allow “lol” in an essay? Kids will still be taught the proper way.

@kikibirdjones

I find “lol” a useful away to indicate you found something funny or to indicate that you mean something as a joke online, where it’s difficult to indicate that you’re joking. I’ve said some things meant as jokes that could be taken the wrong way, but putting “lol” at the end shows that I’m not being serious. I have nothing against “lol”.

And yes, this is coming from a self-proclaimed grammar freak, okay, I even know the terms for grammatical phenomena, which I assume many people do not know.

I don’t like like.
“And she was like i’m not going there, and i was like, why not?”
I don’t get that.

Seconded @teh_kvlt_liberal‘s answer.
The confusion of you’re/your, but also there/their, they’re/there and where/were.

I’m waiting for the time when i will read: “I like to where my sneekers in the shower.”

Good points Dominic….LOL is useful, it just has that pre-teen stigma to me. And as I read in an email recently, receiving a text that just says “LOL” basically means “I have nothing more to say”. Heehee.

Also, when people forget the I before E rule
It’s I before E except after C
Or when it sounds like an A
As in “neighbor” and “weigh”
Exceptions
seize, either, weird, height, foreign, leisure, conscience, counterfeit, forfeit, leisure, neither, science, species, sufficient, weird

@teh_kvlt_liberal

NVM you added it. Ignore comment.

I love the English language: NEVAR without exceptions. I don’t think any of the rules don’t have at least one exception.

Grammar mistakes usually don’t ruffle me much, but there is one weird quirk that has emerged recently that just baffles me: the double “is”. This is only a spoken, not written, phenomenon, as far as I can tell. Here’s an example: “The thing is (slight pause) is that…”
Once you’ve become sensitized to it, you hear this all the time, even by very competent speakers. Obama does it. Reporters do it. How did this happen?

I just found this one out
i.e. for e.g.
No: Use an anti-spyware program (i.e., Ad-Aware).
Yes: Use an anti-spyware program (e.g., Ad-Aware).
Note: The term i.e. means “that is”; e.g. means “for example”. And a comma follows both of them.

Definitely when people don’t know the difference between “you’re” and “your.” They’re 2 totally different things. I get even madder when they try to explain to me that they’re the one in the same.

When people use “dis” to replace “that”

Oh, and when someone types in something I’m automatically suppose to understand. Such as zomg. What exactly is “ZOMG?” I’ve heard of just omg, but never zomg.

I especially hate “LOL” Seriously. How many of us are actually laughing out loud when we type that? I just smile or use haha when I find something funny.

@harp I totally get the weird quirk annoyances! But is that incorrect? The “is is” thing. Since they are separate “ises”? Or are they? That made me dizzy to type.
Always wondered…

@ashlynm EXACTLY!!!!!

@kikibirdjones No, the thing is that only one “is” is needed.

And (lack of) punctuation

edit: .

Ha, pretty much everything! Misuse of : ; ” ’ – for starters, closely followed by their, there and they’re. Too, to and two also have a tendency to p*ss me off :-)

@OreetCocker

What gets me down is that a lot of people don’t even know how to use semicolons and thus don’t bother using them at all. I love the semicolon; I don’t want it to die out. :(

I remember my English teacher in 11th grade would make us use at least two semicolons in our essays and we would have to circle them before we turned in the paper.

I just don’t like it when it appears that people don’t put effort into ensuring what they’re writing is readable by the intended audience.

Breaking the rules is okay by me when you know what rules you’re breaking and it helps make your point.

@AshlynM zomg is just an overly sarcastic omg.

@Harp damn you! im going to be noticing “is” all the time now. Within two minutes of reading that, someone said it on tv -_ -

@robmandu

Breaking the rules can be effective. My 11th grade English teacher would, in addition to the semicolon usage, also have us begin a sentence with “and” or “but” and would have us use at least one sentence fragment. Some things that we’re taught never to do can actually be quite effective. I remember the first thing my 10th grade English teacher told us was “up until now you’ve probably been taught never to begin a sentence with ‘because’; that is not true.” Some rules can be misleading in that sense because a sentence can begin with “because” without being a sentence fragment for “because” has more than one usage. ;)

People that don’t just have a different political view from them, but have less than flawless grammar as well.

If it weren’t for the former, they’d not have nearly so much of a problem with the latter.

@Harp, it’s not the same context, but here’s a prominent case of is is.

If I had to pull a guess out of thin air, I’d speculate that all of the seemingly endless discussion of that topic has somehow gotten the is is concept into our collective subconscious. To the point where we now use it in other non-related ways.

@AshlynM I laugh when I use it in capitals (LOL), or other variations of significant intensity (lmao, rofl, etc). But the undercase lol is typically used either as Dominic stated; to indicate saying something jokingly, or just as a smile and nod, or an acknowledgment that you typed something but they don’t know what how to respond to it.

@uberbatman You’ve now pierced the veil; nothing can ever be the same again.

@robmandu Interesting hypothesisis.

I’m really “bugged” by inappropriate quotations and apostrophe’s.

This

LOL

@RareDenver Good one! You can send one of these to any offenders of the your/you’re rule.

pronoun mistakes, as in pronoun + I, for example him and I or she and I instead of he and I or she and I

and then there’s mines as in That’s mines! instead of That’s mine!

Then and than. It irritates me to see how often people mix them up. For instance; I love you more then I love him…. ~shudder~

It’s a question of register and matching it to your audience. On a lolcats site, I expect misspellings and odd grammar; on this site, it’s repugnant.

At the same time, I’ve seen more than one person look utterly ridiculous by trying to write sentences and punctuate them at a more complex level than they could handle. If you don’t know how to use a semicolon, you’re better off not using it until you learn than you are attempting to use it and looking ridiculous.

I think that everyone has covered those that I dislike. I’m afraid to write any more than that!

i am so in love with you all right now. and by right now i mean write know.

@kikibirdjones “I am like likewise.

@kikibirdjones can you explain why it is wrong for me to name a photo John and I? I actually would typically write John and me, but I am not sure what the rule would be affecting it? I was thinking if you further labeled the photo, “John and I in NYC,” then I would be correct, so I am unclear on what would be correct when not followed by a preposition.

@DominicX I enjoy the semicolon also.

@cwilbur exactly why i dont use the semicolon lol

@JLeslie….just take away the other person and see if it’s right….
This is a picture of John and I in NYC
This is a picture of I
This is a picture of John and me in NYC
This is a picture of me in NYC
Me wins.
I think we’re so beaten into thinking “me” always sounds wrong that we hesitate to use it.

@JLeslie

@kikibirdjones covered it, but basically the thing is that when you label a photo, you’re omitting the first part of a sentence, i.e. ”[this is a picture of] John and me”. In that case, “me” is the object of the preposition “of”, so it’s being used correctly. “John and I” doesn’t stand alone. Think of it like “John and me in San Diego”. That’s a fragment, but what you’re really saying is ”[Here is a photo of] John and me in San Diego” or ”[here you can see] John and me in San Diego”.

DOm rules

@DominicX That makes sense. Like I said I write John and me…I just looked at my pics on facebook and I always use me, I guess it just sounded right to me, but I didn’t think I could explain it if I had to, now I can.

Off of.

My use of the semicolon is probably the one being bashed, but.. row row fight da powah.

Is there anybody left on the Internet who even knows that loose (meaning to release something) and lose (to misplace something) are two separate words?? I keep seeing loose universally used to replace lose when the context clearly indicates something that is lost.

Loser is generally used correctly so what’s up with that. Can’t they make the connection.

And when did dieing suddenly become a word? Aarrgh

Didn’t they ever hear of lie and lying??

@Buttonstc That irritates me, too. I’ve mostly just seen it from teeny-boppers though.

WORSER IS NOT A WORD!!!!

Scrabble nazis, unite.

I’m feeling a lot of pressure now. The your/you’re, their/there/they’re, than/then thing bothers me. So does loose/lose, and improper use of pronouns. When “tomorrow” is spelled “tomarrow,” I can’t help but sigh and roll my eyes.

I’m sure I’m guilty of overuse of quotation marks, and I tend to just slap a dash here and there in the middle of a sentence. The correct use of the semicolon is not a high priority to me, but I can see how others might feel differently!

@teh_kvlt_liberal sorry, I am horrible with the “i” before “e” rule.
It drives me nuts when my friends speak (on purpose) with excessive amounts of slang and ghetto talk around my children. All I need is for my five year old to walk around saying, “wut up dow”.

What about gestures that drive you nuts? Too much of the quotation mark gesture of the hands and touching fists is getting old…dude…ya know what Ima saying…like – fashizzle.

@valdasta

Oh don’t even get me started on rappers and their crap. I despair of kids ever learning to spell properly when it becomes a source of pride to these dimwits in a contest of who can pronounce and spell the most egregiously.

Does Ludacris ring a bell here?

“Could of” and any variation thereof.
It makes me want to commit genocide on a planetary scale.

@Buttonstc – I belong to a website that is dedicated to weightloss. I continuously tell people that if they want to “loose” weight, they may end up unhappy with the results of more jiggling, loose places on their bodies. However, if they want to lose weight, many of us will be happy to support their effort.

@MissAusten – I, too, am guilty of the random dash where it might not be appropriate. I’d rather read that than anything written with multiple ellipses in a paragraph.

@tedibear39 lose and loose, bugs me also. I can’t get dessert and desert straight, but I know it so I look it up over and over again.

@JLeslie Yanno what’s funny? Whenever I come to those words, I still remember the way my English teacher explained it in 2nd grade;

Desert. One s = sand.
Dessert. Two s = strawberry shortcake.

I’m sure I didn’t phrase it right. It was a long time ago. But you get the gist. That’s how I tell them apart.

Another handy way that may help is that many people would like more than one dessert (thus two esses) but would only want to be stranded in the desert once.

Hope that helps.

in text messages, “da” or “de” is exchanged for “the.”

come on: what’s 1 extra letter and/or character?

In addition to the many listed above: RefriDgerator and ConraDulations

I’m not very upset by short cuts in texting, as long as I feel confident the person knows the correct way of spelling the words. I do have a fear of children not learning the proper spelling and grammar, but then I see young people like @DominicX and I feel better. :).

Thanks for the tricks for dessert and desert, I think it will help.

@JLeslie

^_^ Thanks.

Also, remember that “stressed” spelled backwards is “desserts”. lol

@DominicX That’s a good one, too. Problem and solution. X)

@Piper_Brianmind i always learned the desert dessert thing like this. Do you want two desserts or two deserts? Two desserts duh! So two s’ is dessert.

@uberbatman Does that come to mind every time you go to type out one of the words?

@Piper_Brianmind yes lol

I always hate ‘quite’ in place of ‘quiet’.

@Piper_Brianmind I am seriously going to use that trick for myself…thank you!

Yes, loose is baaaddd. @Astrochuck do you mean something like “He’s that guy off of MacGyver”? Cause I hate “off of”.

@kikibirdjones I thought @AstroChuck meant when people spell off when they mean of and vice versa (or is it visa versa, I have seen both, maybe they are both correct?). It will be interesting to see which it is.

I think I’m ready to move off of this sub-thread.

@JLeslie

It’s “vice versa”. It’s Latin for “the other way around”; literally it means “with the change turned”. “Vice” is the ablative singular form of the Latin word “vicis” meaning “change, turn, interchange”, etc.

Off of is a redundancy. It’s never needed and is incorrect grammar.

Jack jumped off of the diving board is wrong.

Jack jumped off the diving board is proper.

@DominicX- Actually vice versa is a bastardization of Latin.

And Urbi et orbi are not siblings.

@AstroChuck

Well, they’re real Latin words; they just don’t translate well into English. I think there are plenty of Latin phrases we use that when translated literally, they don’t mean much.

@astrochuck are you sure about “off of”? I thought it had to be followed by “of” to be correct. But I believe anything you say, so it must be.

@DominicX- It’s derived from Latin but isn’t really Latin.
Btw- If it were used by the ancient Romans it would be pronounced week-eh where-suh.

@kikibirdjones- Positve. FYI, I was once an English teacher (not that that necessarily means much).

@AstroChuck Good to know! I thought I knew it allllll…..

@Astrochuck….along those lines…what about “that”...
Did you know that I’m awesome?
vs.
Did you know I’m awesome?

@AstroChuck

Well, it is, though…like I said, they’re real Latin words. I mean, yes, the Romans didn’t use that particular phrase, but they’re still real Latin words, both in the ablative case, even if their translation is kind of meaningless. I could come up with a Latin phrase right now using real Latin words and the proper cases and it would still be Latin, even if no one who ever spoke Latin used the phrase.

@kikibirdjones

They’re both correct. You simply choose which one you want to use. In English, the word “that” as a conjunction can be omitted often, but it’s your choice whether you want to omit it or not. Sometimes omitting it can make the sentence confusing if it has a lot of clauses.

Does “to where” instead of just “where” bother anyone? I had never heard this until I moved to the midwest.

@JLeslie

In English, we used to use the word “whither” to mean “to where”; likewise “hither” meant “to here” and “thither” meant “to there”. It wouldn’t bother me if you said “to where” as in “to where are you going?”; I say “whither” sometimes for S&G.

@DominicX They use it differently, I wish I could think of a perfect example. It’s in the middle of a sentence, I know it when I hear it. If a sentence pops in my head I will wirite it, maybe someone else will know what I mean. I have to log off now, I’ll be back.

I know sit/set is a big one in my Okie classroom….I hear teachers say it even and it makes me INSANE

Oh! I thought of another one. “I’m going to the store. Do you want to go with?” Uh, with whom???

This one is not grammar, but when people mispronounce “wash” as “warsh,” I just cringe.

I thought of another one too! I hadn’t encountered it until I moved to CO, so maybe it’s a regional thing?

“That table is dirty. It needs washed.” or “Those walls need painted.”

WHA?!?!

@Likeradar

That is definitely regional. I’d laugh in someone’s face if they said that. :P

When people say ‘impacting’ to mean affecting.

S&G Lurve @DominicX

@tedibear

I think “go with” is much more of a regionalism or a cultural idiom.

I grew up on Long Island (which has been said to contain more Jewish folks than Israel) and that is a very common shorthand expression. The “with me/us” is understood as implied

And the question “Did you make?” or “Do you have to go make?” may sound like nonsense to the unitiated, but every little Jewish toddler and even older kid knows EXACTLY what is meant. :)

As I said, cultural shorthand and rather endearing—doesn’t bother me a bit.

:D

@Buttonstc I clearly remember the first time I heard my aunt ask my cousin that. I thought it was funny. My NY Jew parents were a bit less discreet, and would throw on the “doodie.” “Do you have to go make doodie?” Good times.

That’s a new one on me. I can’t remember ever hearing the “doodle” part. It’s memorable enough so I’m pretty sure it would sick in my mind because of the association with good ol’ neon cheese doodles.

I also wonder if it kind of migrated a bit with all the successive generations. All the Bubbes from the old country used it in the original unadorned “make” as well as “go with”

I really hate “Guess what I done” or “I done this yesterday”. argh

My dad says warsh. I cringe every time.

Texting bothers me so much that when I text someone, I spell everything out properly. I use capitalization and punctuation. I can’t even bring myself to text “luv u” to my husband. I know it’s just texting and it’s OK to take those shortcuts, but I can’t bring myself to do it.

@Buttonstc @tedibear39 “go with” or “come with” is Chicago to me, I had not heard it until I lived in MI, but said by Chicagoans (is that the correct term for people from Chicago?). I am Jewish, raised mostly in the Washington DC metro area, and my parents are from The Bronx and we always added the “with me” and we never used “make” for pee either. I think it is a Long Island thing not a Jewish thing, even though it’s true a bunch us are living there :). But, I will add that in SE FL where all of the Jews have moved to, and mostly Long Island Jews are there, we consider Long Island Jews a different group than other Jews. I think it is more th eplace than the ethnicity or religion.

My Catholic co-worker from The Bronx knew more yiddish than I did. You start to become your surroundings.

How about half an hour or half hour? Do you guys care which way that is said? Is one more correct than the other?

@JLeslie I think half an hour is redundant. But only slightly. Not so much where I would notice it. I say half hour. I think it depends on the situation. Most people probably alternate depending on the who, when, where, what, and why.

People who advertise dressers on craigslist, and title their postings “6 Draw Dresser.” I only need 5 draws, dammit!

@JLeslie where in the Bronx, Riverdale? Can’t think of anywhere else up there that’s particularly Jew-heavy.

Now we’re getting into regional stuff…I could be here all day with my experience in the inner city AND the country…

Just don’t get me started. For years I tried to convince my inner city students that if you aks (axe) someone rather than ASKing them, you may very likely get arrested. All to very little avail.

And there is no such thing as a birfday.

I like some grammar mistakes actually… I get my nails did regularly.

@Likeradar The phrase “needs washing”, etc is big here in West Virginia. I just noticed myself saying something like that the other day. <shudders>

Where is it at?

@valdasta I read not too long ago that no preposition at the end of a sentence is an antiquated rule and doesn’t matter anymore. But for those of us that were taught it it’s still annoying!

@kikibirdjones- It never was a rule in English. You can’t end a sentence with a preposition in Latin. Many grammarians tried to carry Latin rules over to English. A good example of this where the rule stuck would be splitting infinitives; something you really can’t do in Latin. I ignore that rule because it’s just stupid. I mean “to go boldly where no man has gone before” just doesn’t sound as good.

@AstroChuck I think I lurve you

@kikibirdjones- That’s what David Cassidy/Keith Partridge told me.

@AstroChuck So I can say, “Where is it at?”

@AstroChuck: you simply cannot end a sentence with a preposition in English, because if you do, the preposition is not a preposition but (almost always) an adverbial particle.

@Chuck and cwilbur

Well the way I look at it:

It is one of many inconveniences of life, up with which I must put.

:D

*with profuse apologies to Sir Winston Churchill…

:)

@Buttonstc

But I don’t understand how it would be wrong to say “which I must put up with”. Relative clauses reverse order all the time. In that case “which” is a direct object and the clause can be reordered as “I must put up with which” to put it in standard SVO-order, but we don’t say that in English, so I don’t see how it can be wrong to put “with” at the end.

It was just a silly little joke. Take a look at Churchill’s original comment and you’ll see what I mean. (I can’t post links on the iPhone so just Goog it)

I have so many random bits and pieces of flotsam and jetsam floating around in my head that some of it just comes spilling out when it randomly connects with something relevant (or even irreverent, if you will.). :)

@Likeradar – YES! “It needs washed,” “It needs painted,” etc. make me crazy! “It needs to be washed,” thank you very much.

I didn’t realize “fixin to” was colloquial until college, and I refuse to stop saying it. Some things are sacred, like fixin to, ranch dressing, and dr. pepper.

@wildpotato my mother grew up on 161st I think? Near the stadium, went to Taft HS. Not sure of the street my dad grew up on, but he went to Roosevelt HS. My parents are in their late 60’s, so this is a long time ago. They moved from the Bronx in 1960’s.