I remember being crestfallen the day I learned that 'irregardless', though not as optimal as 'regardless' was, in fact, acceptable English.



Sorry, whole nother ball of wax there...

grammar nits are the scum of the internet

But the opposite is sort of obnoxious too. When people preface their statements with, "Honestly," or "Frankly," it tilts me a bit. The honest answer is the default expectation. Those words come off to me as a subtly conceited abbreviation for STAND BACK AS I TEAR THE ROOF OF THIS MUTHA WITH THE BLISTERING, UNFLINCHING TRUTH OF MY STATEMENT!

It's even more obnoxious if they make you acknowledge it before proceeding:

"Do you think I would have a shot with Laura if I asked her out?"

"Honestly?"

No. Lie to me please.

Apparently, the use of quotation marks for emphasis is a practice that comes from people not having the option for italics with old-school typewriters.

The thing that annoys me the most is people typing "of" when they mean "have" such as in the phrase "would have".

while grammar nits are certainly the scourge of the internet, so too are people who feel compelled to communicate like 12 year olds. it's very difficult to argue that the internet has increased the clarity of communication - which, in the end, is what grammar is supposed to be about.

< raises hand > Guilty as charged.

I'm also in the camp that uses ? on non-questions for purposes of tone in informal written situations.

God I'm so gun-shy of everything I type in this thread.


P.S. I know this isn't the pronunciation thread (which has been done a million times) but I have to get this off my chest-
< clears throat >
"Jaguars" IS NOT PRONOUNCED "JAGWIRES." MOTHER ****ERS.
Thank you.

Tangentially related to the thread . . .

My wife likes to correct my grammar when I misspeak. A few years ago, she did this at some point when I was inebriated. In a fit of pique (there's another one - piqued your interest, folks, not peaked), I misremembered the relevant Simpsons reference and called her a "grammar horse." She actually enjoyed that and to this day occasionally refers to herself as a grammar horse. Good times!

wtf, JAGWIRE? something like that is so tricky imo because who knows how they are pronouncing "wire" to begin with? i mean you'd think it would be obvious but i could totally see someone pronouncing "wire" like "wahrrrr" like a southern type accent. so jag-wahrrr could be correct! does anyone know what i'm saying here.

like if you don't know how people are pronouncing the reference word then you're ****ed. example: many may remember the poster "shant" who used to post here. one time on the forums someone was talking about how to pronounce his name, and someone said "it rhymes with font"

i was like W T F? but it turns out they actually say "font" like "faahnt".. which could definitely rhyme with "shant"! then i found out that a LOT (maybe most of the country) pronounces it like that and it blew my mind. i really hope that's not true.

I've heard people say 'Jag-u-wahr'. I even think I heard them say it like that on their commercial.

I, too, prefer saying "myriad errors" in lieu of "myriad of errors".

Using "myriad" by itself just sounds way more baller to me. But as Miajag said, both are technically correct. I remember this being discussed in an old thread.

It's like saying "I'm alcoholic" and "I'm an alcoholic". Both work. Or "I'm Catholic." and "I'm a Catholic." Or the best, "I'm an alcoholic Catholic."

"The traditional convention in American English is for commas, periods, and question marks to be included inside the quotation marks, regardless of whether they are part of the quoted sentence, whereas the British style places them inside or outside the quotation marks according to whether or not the punctuation is part of the quoted phrase. The American rule is derived from typesetting while the British rule is grammatical (see below for more explanation). Although the terms “American style” and “British style” are used, it is not as clear cut as that because at least one major British newspaper prefers typesetters' quotation (punctuation inside) and BBC News uses both styles, while scientific and technical publications, even in the U.S., almost universally use logical quotation (punctuation outside unless part of the source material), due to its precision."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark#Punctuation

so yea "British style" ftw imo

i think the funniest part of us americans is that we can't get enough of bagging on "immigrants" for their lack of english, yet the majority of us "native speakers" can't even define a preposition, let alone distinguish it's from its.

I wonder if it would be OK if just once in awhile if you posted like every post you made wasn't some elaborate level? I mean you're awesome and all but most every post I stare at it and think "am I at the same level as this guy this time?" Exhausting. Once in awhile feel free to just make a post.

Well, you corrected my "us" to "we". I don't know if you're making a joke and/or being clever but there's finite nitiness for which I am willing to sign up. The really easy stuff - you're/your/etc., I have no problem with this bothering me but to get deep into pronoun usage and such, I don't know. If you're picking everything apart that thoroughly then perhaps the internet isn't for you (where "you" = anyone, not you specifically). Particularly since very few people sit at their computer and think stuff like, nerdily, "ok, is this the proper tense usage here...?", much less get it right.

A minimum of basic expectations in the writing of others makes sense to me. Not to mention it's only considerate of them to make sense in their communication.

The real humor in this thread rests with the number of times the average respondent is likely rereading his or her post to avoid obvious grammatical pitfalls.

Man, I level probably less than 10% of the time

To prove my point, I will now link to one of my recent posts:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=817

This post is clearly not a level. What it is is an awesome video of a dog eating sashimi.

Out of curiousity, because I am kind of confused and was too lazy to read through the entire thread.
Is it "you're jerking me off while i shoot in your eye and you better not have contacts you fat nerd?"
Or, is it "your jerking me off while I shoot in you're eye and yee better not have contacts you fat nerd?"

another misused term: peruse.

It drives me batty when someone uses the plural "they" or "them" in places of the singular he/she/it so he won't have to define a gender for whatever generic person he's talking about. Subject-verb agreement is important! But six-ish years of Latin will do that to you.

Here's a REALLY nitty one:

When people confuse "ambivalent" with "indifferent."

similarly, confusing uninterested and disinterested.

In my opinion.

Yeah this is extremely nitty. Frankly, I don't even know or care to know what the difference is. But if we're gonna go there then I'll say I can't stand when people say or type "random" when they really mean "arbitrary".

"So this girl started talking to me AND IT WAS TOTALLY RANDOM OMG!"

I hope people that use this phrase die in a grease fire.

One of the most annoying things for me is that adverbs have apparently disappeared.

I think fewer than 1 in 10 respond to "How are you?" or "How's it going?" with well instead of good.

My mom tells me to "drive safe" when I leave her house.

Poker players "run good." Some people say run well but even most of those people would say they are running bad instead of badly.

I even catch myself saying run good/bad sometimes