Irregardless, Grammar is our Friend

[vacationland]

Oh, the "myself" thing...arrrgh, hate that!

And yes, bad spelling = true genius, sure, why not? Apparently, Einstein wasn't much of a spelling bee contender.

[Shanmac]

There is a business in my hometown called "Illussions of Beauty." Even if it were spelled right, it would be wrong on so many levels ("You're ugly, but let us create the illusion of beauty"). There's also a place called "Hair is Us," which I think is a terrible pun on the name of a casino next door to it. No, really, I don't live in the ghetto. Ok, so I kinda do.

Typing "next door" reminded me of another pet peeve: people who say "next store." No! Just no.

In my line of work, I receive a lot of press releases, and I can't believe how many people can't spell, or don't know the difference between "its" and "it's," or PUT EVERYTHING IN CAPS SO I CAN'T FUCKING READ IT WITHOUT MY EYES BLEEDING. Ok, good, got that off my chest. What gets me is that these people write for a living. Also, many of them, in notes to me, refer to press releases as "adds" (not even "ads," which they aren't, but throw me a bone, guys). Sigh.

[snacktastic]

For my family, this is a classic sign and a family business that was owned by a great uncle:

Grave's Shop N Save

Now mind you, our last name is Graves. Luckily, upon checking the website, I found that they finally corrected their mistake of thirty years.

[Deleted]

"Irregardless" is one of my biggest pet peeves in life. I used to have a boss that said it con.stant.ly! I wanted to throttle her on a daily basis.

It really drives me insane when incorrect words are used so frequently that the dictionary people just decide to finally add it to the dictionary and make it an officially okay word. This happened with "irregardless" and "normalcy." I know there are more but I can't think of them right now.

Re: the misuse of "I" instead of "me." I get the impression that people just think they sound smarter when using "I" every single time they reference themselves. This is very apparent in the Real World confessionals/interviews. Jesus Christ on a crutch - those people would drive a grammar nazi to violence.

Re: the misuse of quotes. I had a landlady that used to sign all of her notes to us "Edna." It was always like "Now, who really left us this note?"

[vacationland]

One of my first bosses had the worst grammar and a real talent for overusing wrongly worded cliches. And, because she was my boss, I couldn't correct her (except to fix written copy), so I suffered through six years of:

"...for all intensive purposes" instead of "...for all intents and purposes."

"...in actual fact" and referring to an additional feature of something as "...an added bonus." (Aiiiiee, alert the Redundancy Police!)

The use of "worse" when she really meant "worst," "suppose to" instead of "supposed to" (oh! and this was "supposably" okay), and "infer" when she meant "imply."

Mother of God, why don't they make supervisors take a basic English competency test?

[Deleted]

My friend's old boss would email saying, "We need to touch basis" about this or that. Arg! It's infuriating to work under stupid people.

[jennipoo]

I am in an email war right now with a friend who says it's not waiting with bated breath, but with baited breath. I'm sorry, but my breath does NOT smell like fish chum.

[pepper67]

Chiming in with the mispoken word angst...

"In particlear" instead of "in particular". This one drives me NUTS. Seriously. I was talking to someone once and she kept. on. using. it. ARGH!

On a related note, there are apparently a set of people who think it's "nucular" instead of "nuclear". A friend of mine complains all the time about that one.

I also have a friend who says "sangwich" and "anuxrexic", but it's not worth the hassle to correct her. Plus she is a really nice person, and she doesn't spend all her time talking about anuxrexics who won't eat sangwiches. If she did, I'd HAVE to say something.

[cyclonevkc]

May I start out by saying that I love you all and agree with everything you say! Ahem.

My parents got a nomad mat as part of a gift for my dad's 25th anniversary at 3M (free lettering included). It sits on their front porch, so naturally they wanted it to read

Welcome to the Connells'

but some jackass took it upon himself to change it to

Welcome to the Connell's

Yes, more than one person lives at the house. And no, even if my dad lived alone, he's not the type to refer to himself as The Connell. It's so frustrating!!

[Deleted]

For instance, I read this sentence last week: "Alfred gave Bob and I a ride to the airport." Arrgghh!

I used to make this same mistake in my writing until I figured that if you take out the "Bob and" part, you would figure out that "me" fits better.

And I havetwo of my own grammar pet peeves: 1) people that say "loose" when they should be using "lose" and 2) people that talk about one singular woman and constantly spelling it with an "e". There was a woman on a Passions Yahoo list (back when I liked the show) who ALWAYS would spell "woman" women and I ended up not reading her posts because her constant misuse of it pissed me off so much.