Grammar and language issues that drive you utterly berserk - Pet peeves

[Overly Serious]

Maybe it's me, but I'm noticing more people don't proofread themselves. That gets doubly embarrassing on an official document or sign. How hard is it to download Grammarly as a free spell check?

Ah, Grammerly. The world's most successful keylogger. Install it, give it permission to scan and submit every single thing you type on that device. I'd love to take a look at all the data they have amalgamated and see just what kind of a pot of gold it is. Is it enforcing Inclusive language, yet? Wouldn't surprise me.

I hate how "noun of color" is used to describe Black people now. It's clunky to say or write. That's like saying a juice of grape instead of just grape juice. Less is more in writing. And another thing, why do people feel the NEED to point out that somebody is colored?

Yeah, that's maddening. Being non-American I sometimes play the naive outsider and troll people a bit. Like an American colleague said I should use the term People of Colour. I replied "Well it's your country but I find the term Coloured People sounds a bit antiquated in all honesty". To which I got a hasty "No, no - not Coloured People. People of Colour!" As if they're not just desperately trying to talk about people who aren't White without using the term "non-White" because it sounds exclusionary. Well no shit - that's because it is. Dressing it up in an ever churning cycle of different terms doesn't change that. Negro -> Black -> Coloured People -> African American -> Black -> People of Colour -> Black. The level of discomfort Americans have about race is insane. If for some reason I need to refer to someone's race which I don't usually need to, I just say "White" or "Black" or whatever. The one that really winds me up is "Asian" to cover everything from Tamil to Japanese to Mongol to Indonesian. It's absurd and honestly feels insulting. If you're that unable to distinguish then there's something wrong with you.

The British adoption of 'haitch' as the pronunciation of the letter 'H'. It was for a long just an Irish thing. If you watch any TV or film from before 2000, everyone still said 'aitch'. Variations in pronunciation are not annoying in and of themselves, I just hate how conformist and malleable people are. You can make the masses say and think anything you want if you put it on TV. Terrifyingly, most of them can't even remember ever pronouncing it as 'aitch'. Once it's in the memory hole, it never existed.

That's an interesting one. Do you mean specifically when someone is saying the letter itself? I don't come from a particularly fancy background and I honestly can't remember what I called it as a child. I will say that TV in the UK used to be all about the Queen's English but the British obsession with class led to a lot of Middle Class kids putting on working class accents (as they saw it) to pretend they weren't Middle Class. Those kids are now adults. Perhaps that's at the root of it.

 

[Flatline]

Ah, Grammerly. The world's most successful keylogger. Install it, give it permission to scan and submit every single thing you type on that device.

LanguageTool is better.

 

[Apustajan apustaja]

Doesn't autocorrect begrudgingly accept a word it doesn't recognise if you choose it enough times?

Yes. And in all languages you type in, so it will autocorrect to that when you are typing in another language also sometimes. Great.
And on my phone I cant keep the keys in the normal place if I wan't autocorrect to be in English, my keyboard changes, if I want to keep the keys where I'm used to having them, including åäö, my autocorrect slowly learns English spelling for when I'm not typing English. Sorry for being mad at technology.

With that said, I think English should stop capitalising the language: "english" but keep it for the country and nationality: "English". It works so well. And the Germans should stop capitalising nouns in german, it as retarded looks as your word order.

 

[Friend of Dorothy Parker]

Another homonym pair that might occur in a TTRPG. You do not have a moat in your eye, nor would a mote be of any use to a castle.

Rogue and rouge aren't homonyms!

(Moat/mote, yes)

when people care about grammar in informal communication
i dont mind grammar mistakes on forums and stuff but if you're publishing a work without knowing how to organize your words properly you need death

But why not care (a least a little) about it all of the time? I get informality - I don't write as correctly here as I do in general* - but how much harder is it to add a comma or capitalize reasonably close to correctly? Especially when phones/computers default to a couple of basics (like capitalizing the first letter of a sentence/after a period, or auto-adding a period if you hit space twice).

* I deliberately do things like writing non-full-sentences, as I did above, when online bc it's closer to oral phrasing.

The 'never start a sentence with because' shit. Also the 'never end a sentence with a preposition'

First of all

Ok so I'll change it to

First of all,  bitch.

Because why?

LanguageTool is better.

Just fucking learn the rules.

Seriously, auto-cotrect is shit. See, it let "cotrect" exist.

A lot of sentences containing split infinitives are awkward enough to rewrite, but I'm not going on a jihad against them if it actually makes the sentence worse to "fix" the split infinitive.

99% of split infinitives can be fixed without being awkward. Occasionally, it is unavoidable for clarity's sake. But if you don't know/respect the rule, you don't know when it makes sense to deviate from it.

Rules can be broken, but imo you don't get to break them until you have mastered them.

“If you want to break the rules of grammar, first learn the rules of grammar.” - Kurt Vonnegut

“Every English poet should master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them.” - Robert Graves

"Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist." - Pablo Picasso

 

[AnOminous]

99% of split infinitives can be fixed without being awkward. Occasionally, it is unavoidable for clarity's sake. But if you don't know/respect the rule, you don't know when it makes sense to deviate from it.

I don't consider it a rule at all, though, just something often better avoided, like passive voice.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

Thats what I never got like say you're talking about a famous person

"Because of her contributions to the medical world, she did a lot for blahblahblah"

Yet thats apparently a no no according to the grammar police

 

[AnOminous]

"Because of her contributions to the medical world, she did a lot for blahblahblah"

"Her contributions to medicine improved treatment for lumbosis, dropsy, and numerous other illnesses."

 

[Kid Named Rocket]

I fucking hate people that Type Like This

 

[Friend of Dorothy Parker]

I don't consider it a rule at all, though, just something often better avoided, like passive voice.

If the (English-writing and -speaking) world would get to a state of mostly avoiding it, except when to do otherwise would torture language, meaning, clarity, or elegance, I'd be happy. But most split infinitives I see are not done because someone knew the guidelines and disregarded them in service of better flow or rhythm or sense. Rather, it's done because people don't know they shouldn't, or because they can't be bothered to craft something better, or are relatively limited in their expressive options.

Iconoclasm is great; ignorance or laziness is not compelling; and masking ignorance or laziness as iconoclasm is just...Joe Lavery-tier.

 

[Preferred Penne]

Apparently the words "too" and "to" are to similar too be mistaken for each other.

 

[innocent jogger]

A lot of the issues discussed here depend on context for me. Shit like IRC/texting/shitposts (including casual emails), etc.? I could really give a shit as long as I can read and understand it.

Anything meant to be professional? Well...be fucking professional. I'm not as nit picking as a lot of people seem to be in this thread but any kind of obvious mistake or typo will take me out of whatever I am reading.

Also (this probably belongs more in the Current Year Term hate thread) but the stupid fucking acronyms that journos use now that seem disrespectful. Like SCOTUS and POTUS.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

Your and you're
Subject verb agreement
I before e except after c
Double negative phrases

 

[Flatline]

Your and you're

ur wrong

 

[The Last Stand]

Rogue and rouge aren't homonyms!

I'm confused of the difference between inflammable and flammable. Flammable means easily ignited, combustible. Inflammable means the same thing, but has figurative usage for other meanings. Why?

 

[Friend of Dorothy Parker]

I'm confused of the difference between inflammable and flammable. Flammable means easily ignited, combustible. Inflammable means the same thing, but has figurative usage for other meanings. Why?

Here you go!
Short answer is Latin verbs. The root verb in Latin is flammare, meaning "to catch fire"; the prefix, in-, means "to cause to," so there is the verb inflammare. English started using inflammable in the 17th century. In the early 19th century, some translator coined "flammable" from the root flammare, and so now we have two words that in English look opposite but are more or less synonyms.

The source I cited advises using "flammable" (and for its opposite, "nonflammable") because that's the general trend in usage, but personally I think "inflammable" is more pleasing and elegant than "flammable," and it also has some figural uses that I don't think translate well to "flammable."

Case in point:

"Flammable" seems very utilitarian to me, best for warning labels on combustible substances and the like. Just a preference.

...

Another error irritation: "peaked" (or worse, "peeked"), when someone means "piqued."

 

[The Last Stand]

Here you go!
Short answer is Latin verbs. The root verb in Latin is flammare, meaning "to catch fire"; the prefix, in-, means "to cause to," so there is the verb inflammare. English started using inflammable in the 17th century. In the early 19th century, some translator coined "flammable" from the root flammare, and so now we have two words that in English look opposite but are more or less synonyms.

Thanks! I don't see a lot of words with in- as a prefix. I think it's important to not just learn words but HOW words are formed.

Break/brake are often misused. I feel it will come to a point where commonly misused words will be accepted as taboo because that's how the majority uses it.

 

[Aunt Carol]

As someone who plays TTRPGs every once in a while, no, your character is not a rouge, and that lady over there isn't putting on rogue.

Fanfiction people need to have their taut buttocks privileges taken away from them until they can guarantee they will not write "taught buttocks" or, somehow, "taunt buttocks."

The latter would be a succinct description of mooning, but for some reason that's not a subject that comes up in my yaois.

 

[PipTheAlchemist]

When people say "n-word" instead of nigger.

 

[Preferred Penne]

Putting a belt around your waste is a waist of time.

Also, there appears to be a growing society of sheboons known as the "Cool Calm Collective".

 

[The Last Stand]

I thought ordnance was spelled "ordinance."

Mac's default spell check is ass.