Irritating grammatical errors - what's your pet peeve and why?
Mine are as follows:
". . . may as well of. . ." You mean "may as well have."
PIN number, ATM machine, and other related acronym misuses. You just said "personal identification number number" and "automatic teller machine machine."
"5 times smaller than. . ." or "3 times larger than. . ." We don't measure how SMALL things are, so saying something has 5 times as much smallness makes no sense. Similarly, you're saying "3 times larger" instead of "3 times as large" so does that mean it's larger 3 times over, making it 4 times as large?
"Where is the phone at?" You could say "Where is the phone?" and it would mean exactly the same thing at.
Those are the main things that bother me. Your turn!
Anonymous2011-07-19T08:46:07Z
Favorite Answer
It bothers me that many people do not know the proper use of there, their and they're. The same is true with your and you're. I also cannot stand when people fail to use commas or use them at the wrong spot in the sentence, completely confusing the meaning of the sentence. For example, "A woman, without her, man is nothing." Or did that person actually mean, "A woman without her man, is nothing." It could really get ugly if you failed to use it in the sentence, "I am helping my uncle, Jack, off the horse." If you failed to use the commas and to capitalize his name, it would look like this, "I am helping my uncle jack off the horse." Uh, okay!
Well, I hate slop, or spacing type words such as starting a sentence with, "OK, like I was with this guy...." Or confusion of word meaning misuse like, "Rather then go there" which should be, "Rather than." Or confusing effect with affect, where effect is the consequence of something and affect means to influence. Or "May I use that?" means you have permission and "Can I that ?" means asking for permission. My greatest peeve, however, are those people who refuse to learn how to spell. I could go on and write a book about this topic.
Mine would be something like.. "I ain't done nothing wrong." Hillbilly talk and people using swear words every other word. I also hate when people don't know the proper use of to, too and two. But I say "funner" all the time at work just to make my co-worker mad... ;)