Irregardless, Grammar is our Friend

[Deleted]

I hear ya. Last night, I literally described the hamper as "You know... the blue thing that is about this tall." Unfortunately, a decent night's sleep eludes me and my brain's word-finder suffers.

[hasbro]

Does "You name me one____" translated to "You name me another valid example that proves me wrong and I will brush it aside and continue unabeted with my dumbass line of reasoning."

[cyclonevkc]

I hear ya. Last night, I literally described the hamper as "You know... the blue thing that is about this tall." Unfortunately, a decent night's sleep eludes me and my brain's word-finder suffers.

Yes, Mulva and Bonsai, I completely understand. I have called the Post Office the "Mail Place" about a dozen times in the past year. I have no idea why.

[gauss]

Recently I read "intensive purposes" instead of "intents and purposes" and it made me smile because, frankly, I used to mess that up. Even though I should have known that was wrong, because "intensive purposes" makes absolutely no sense. What's an "intensive" purpose? A super-concentrated purpose?

And now I've typed the words "purpose" and "purposes" so much that they are looking funny.

[shawnalanne]

More dressier is my peeve of the day. As in, "I like this shirt even if you guys liked the more dressier one". Much dressier might have worked. Does dressier need to be qualified like that? No it does not. This particular co-worker makes this sort of mistake all of the time, thinks he's a great writer, and he doesn't know the meaining of 1/3 of the words he uses. And he has a Masters degree.

[hobocamp]

My students constantly confuse definitely and defiantly. For instance, "I would defiantly recommend this film to other students." That image always makes me giggle. "I don't care what you say, I'm going to recommend this film to you whether you like it or not!"

Also, misusing whether and weather bugs.

[Deleted]

I work with people who constantly use the word "which" when it should be "that." I no longer recall the precise rules about when you should use one rather than the other -- My rule of thumb is that if there's a comma just before, that's when you use "which." But for some reason people seem to think "which" sounds more formal, and over-use it.

[batmom]

Which should be used when it's an aside, or a parenthetical comment (which is why it's preceded by the comma) whereas that is used for additional information that is more germane to the preceding sentence.

For example:

That dress, which looks very nice on you, needs to be ironed.

versus

That dress that looks very nice on you needs to be ironed.

In the first instance, "which looks very nice on you" is just an aside and can be taken out while still retaining the meaning of the sentence.

In the second instance, "that looks very nice on you" is used to distinguish the dress that needs to be ironed from the other, unflattering dresses.

Probably more than you're looking for but I just figured this out a couple of years ago and I'm keen to spread the knowledge.

[Deleted]

Batmom -- You are bound to raise very grammatically correct little bats!

We have a woman in our office who is absolutely compelled to not only offer the correct grammar but to explain the rules behind it. Is your name Lucy? No, wait, Lucy isn't a mom... but man, does she know her grammar!

[batmom]

Hee. Nope, my name isn't Lucy and I'm not sure who good my son's grammar will be; we keep having the same discussion about much.

Batboy: There's too much people here.

Batmom [gritting her teeth and ignoring there's: Many. When you can count them, use many.

Batboy: Too many people here. And they all brought too much bags with them.

Batmom: Arghhh!