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You'll love this one...!! A book club & more discussion
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Grammar and Spelling - What bugs you?
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Not knowing the proper use of words: "Your" instead of "you're".... Ex.: Your a good reader; "Their" instead of "there" or "they're"... Ex.: It's there book... Most of the examples shown in that article irritate me! LOL
A good explanation for "between you and I".
not really an excuse but as an aside....spell check sometimes insistes on spelling words the way the computer programer said to, another wonderful example of this modern techno age :)
so maybe I should not have even said anything as my usage of insist was not correct
Dian wrote: "so maybe I should not have even said anything as my usage of insist was not correct"LOL! That's funny. I find this kind of discussion makes me more aware of my grammar and spelling.
Welcome to You'll Love This One Dian. :)
Thanks for the welcome....I knew it was wrong as soon as I saw it but could not figure out how...I am sure spell check would have had plenty to say about just how incorrect it was :)...Computers are great until they get too pushy:)
You've got to love auto-correct! My email address starts with bbos which is the anchronym for my business. My iphone always wants to change it to "Bobs".
I'm always entertained when people use isle instead of aisle. I imagine them on an island rather than in an aisle at a store or theater or wherever they actually are.I must admit that I am awful with effect and affect, especially the special cases. I've looked those up tons of times and can never keep them straight.
I agree with effect and affect and add than and then...Janice, as you can see my name is spelled differently and even after spelling it I will still get things with the "e" on it. Add the fact that I have no middle inital and the "incorrect" spelling of first name and you can imagine what happens when I try to work with government.
LOL! Yes, everything is so compartmentalized with the government. A thing like a missing middle initial can cause problems.
It irritates me when people try to belittle you and then can not form a proper sentence.
It sounds to me that those kind of people are the type who belittle others to make themselves feel better about themselves. That usually backfires and they feel worse.
All grammatical and spelling errors irritate me endlessly! Of course, I find my own typos when I look back at the posts that I make here at Goodreads. I try to bury my head in shame but it doesn't work. I think that it's better when you're ignorant of the errors! And I also don't know where anyone finds help with the computers. Auto correct works for me occasionally but not often enough. One of the most often found errors are with the apostrophe. I find that most people aren't aware of the correct usage for possession.
Typos annoy me, along with the sort of mangled sentences that are hard to understand, but I'm more relaxed about the sort of shibboleths that make many others squirm (starting with a conjunction, ending with a preposition, adverbial "hopefully" etc). Even with typos, my tolerance varies according to how much I am enjoying what I am reading (or not).
I have two that irritate me:When "presently" is used to mean "currently" and careen instead of career, although that one has changed in newer dictionaries so I guess I will have to suffer in silence. Or maybe it is a difference between UK, Canadian and American English?
The meaning of "presently" that you dislike is the older one, and apparently the one that is the norm in AmE:presently.
There are two meanings which serve well to illustrate the interactions of British and American English. The older meaning ‘at the present time, now’ dates from the 15c and is still the dominant meaning in AmE. In BrE it has been largely overtaken by the second sense ‘in a while, soon’, although the older meaning has begun to reappear under the American influence. The two meanings are shown by the examples that follow: (newer meaning)
Her feet hurt and she was thirsty. Presently she set off to walk back to her lodgings—Hilary Mantel, 1986
/
(older meaning) According to the spokesperson, the study presently is under peer review—The New Farm, AmE 2003 [OEC].
The context normally makes clear which meaning is intended, but ambiguity can be avoided by using synonyms such as at present, now, or currently in the older meaning and soon, shortly, in a while, imminently, etc. in the other meaning. See also momentarily.
How to cite this entry:
"presently" Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage. Ed. Robert Allen. Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.
Regarding your careen/career issue, "career" has several meanings and I don't know which is the one you dislike. If it is the "rush headlong, in a reckless way", then it's a use of "careen" that I've only encountered from Americans, and both Fowler and Oxford list it as the dominant meaning in AmE. In BrE, it's an obscure word meaning to turn (a ship) on its side for cleaning or repair.
I guess another pet peeve is just plain old writing that is unclear! My apologies.To clarify, I have only ever known presently to mean in the near future, soon etc but have seen it used to mean now, currently etc. When I read it that way, I lose the flow and train of thought. A reading stumble occurs.
I see careen used very often to mean career or to swerve about wildly, rush headlong in a reckless way however,I know careen to mean to tip a boat over on its side (often for cleaning the hull). I have often found that North American writers (of the unpublished variety as I do not know any published ones) have not even heard the word career other than its meaning for a person's course through life. I am Canadian and so perhaps I come across an odd mix of AmE and BrE and so have trouble sorting them out. Also, I come from a boating background and careen is not so obscure in its meaning in that context.
I have been guilty of using irregardless and once I was corrected I have seen it all over and I am now one of the ones who "gets bugged" by its use.
Hope I have made things more clear as to my intent in my original post.
I will also add that I have much more tolerance for grammar misuse in emails, postings and texts than I do in the published works.
I have greater expectations for published works as well, Shannon.
I too would be happier if people would use currently for now, and presently for the near future. But please don't take me to task for punctuation!
Are there errors that bug you? One of the common errors that bugs me is when people say "yous" instead of "you" which is already plural. Another one is "Irregardless". It's actually "Regardless".