Wow I can't believe I missed out on this thread. My friend is a linguistics major (uber nit) so he always complains about dumb grammar mistakes that our mutual friends make.

One guy always uses "should of" instead of "should've".
One guy always mixes past perfect and present perfect.

Hypercorrection is probably the most tilting to me -- "Play with Matt and I". These people try to sound intelligent but actually make themselves sound like fools.

I'm guilty of always using "who" instead of "whom", but I am slowly correcting this through frequent reminders. ("Whom are you going to be for Halloween?")

Actually that one would be "who."

"The Joker is cool. I am going to be him for Halloween."

Or is that sentence incorrect?

ak is correct it should be whom in his example

but **** that ****

Always go with the American way/spelling. The English know nothing about English.

Paul Brians* seems content to use who there. He says that "whom" used at the beginning of sentences has died a slow death and only extreme traditionalists cling to it. I'm okay with that. Misusing who/whom in the middle of sentences is probably a bigger sin. It's one that I don't know very well, unfortunately.

*author of Common Errors in English Usage
http://wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html#errors

like i said, correct... but **** that ****

Old-school grammar nits would say that "I am going to be he" is proper. At least, him/he is in the nominative case, which means that you should use "who."

It annoys me when people say "anyways". Am I alone?

Sometimes I say, "acrosst" instead of across.

Half grunching

Is it correct to say "bored with" or "bored of"?

Great thread BTW

Oh, I see. It should have been Britney Spear's is miss understood.

He wrote miss understood when he meant misunderstood. He was being ironic because all that hype is hilariously stupid but he didn't realize the clever mistake he made.

Has "in lieu of" been mentioned?

In lieu of the cold weather we decided to stay inside the house.

It does NOT mean "in light of"!

Oh.

I have Swine Flu, dick. You're not better than me!

lol sorry to hear that dude, post less sleep more

okay, I actually teach composition at the college level and for the life of me, I STILL can't figure out when to to use "affect" and when to use "effect."

I actually thought this one was fairly straightforward and simple but then I looked up different possible usages in the dictionary and there are some crazy scenarios where I would definitely choose the wrong one.

affect is mostly a verb and effect is mostly a noun. Pooring hot soup on someone would be the affect and them screaming would be the effect.

this must be at a soup kitchen?

Soop kitchen, ok, I'm done for today.

"Who are you going to be for Halloween?" is correct:

"The rule for what he and others consider technically right is
*not* (as is commonly misstated) that the nominative should *always*
be used after "to be". Rather, it is that "to be" should link two
noun phrases of the same case, whether this be nominative or
accusative:

I believe that he is I. Who do you believe that he is?
I believe him to be me. Whom do you believe him to be?

According to the traditional grammar being used here, "to be" is not
a transitive verb, but a *copulative* verb. When you say that A is
B, you don't imply that A, by being B, is doing something to B.
(After all, B is also doing it to A.) Other verbs considered
copulative are "to become", "to remain", "to seem", and "to look".
"

http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxitsmev.html

As stated, "affect" is used primarily as a verb.

"The delay affected the rest of the train schedule."

Effect is a noun.

"The train schedule was all out of wack, the effect of a delay earlier that day."

But effect is also used in cases like "effected a change." I just looked it up and found this:

http://www.diffen.com/difference/Affected_vs_Effected

"You can affect something that already exists; but when you effect (verb form) something, you usually bring it into existence."

This thread is way too long for me to check ... have we commented on "a whole nother" ...? Drives me nuts. It's "another". Or "a whole other". Nother. Blech.