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Misspellings which make you mad.

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23:46 / 25.03.03

The misreading thread has prompted me to start this one. Do you have any particular spelling or grammar pet peeves? I'm not at the stage where "8 items or less" sends me 'round the bend - it should be "8 items or fewer" - but I do have one.

Sandwich's

As in: "We sell pies, hot dogs and sandwich's."

The possessive apostrophe being used to indicate a plural. When I see a sign which advertises CD's I want to walk into the shop and ask what it is exactly that the CD owns.

I make silly language mistakes all the time, but if I was going to get a sign painted, I'd make doubly sure it was correct.

23:54 / 25.03.03

i spell pendant wrong all the time.

00:04 / 26.03.03

Rakehell: Your pain has not gone unoticed...from the glory that is Bob The Angry Flower :

00:17 / 26.03.03

'Wierd'. I don't know why, but it grates on my eyes, probably because when someone argues with me when I say it's spelled 'weird', the say "I before E except after C".

01:28 / 26.03.03

I've always misspelt phoenix as pheonix. It makes me mad that I still do it though I know it to be incorrect...

Jack Rock-a-Pops

05:20 / 26.03.03

"Wierd" is also a pet peeve of mine. All American spellings are also frustrating.

For some reason, I seem to always spell definite "definate". I know it makes so sense as well, it's like that temporary lapse that prevents you from spelling the word "meant", only it's permanent.

ONLY NICE THINGS

07:41 / 26.03.03

Incorrect spelling or grammar *that* makes you mad, surely? Unless you're drawing an antithesis with incorrect spelling or grammar that *doesn't* make you mad,

(tee hee. See my pedantry)

"I" for "me", usually in an attempt to sound more intelligent than whoever is disagreeing with you, is spectacularly annoying. "Who" and "whom". The belief that one of these usages is classy and should be taken out of its mothballs when you want to bitch somebody out in a clever way has always seemed to me somewhat self-defeating.

Poorly-spelled accusations of hypocrisy are a particular irritation - hypocrisy is a very serious allegation, and if you are going to make it you should be familiar enough with the concept to know how it is spelled. Likewise may "shut up thicko" posts involving creative interpretations of Nietzsche.

It's not a spelling issue specifically, but the transposition of l and d in "would" and "should", and the similar transposition of n and g in "-ing" infuriate me, because I can't type for toffee and those are the two things I always do, which is maddening.

08:35 / 26.03.03

I find these people who spell America 'Amerikkka' most, most irritating, and believe that such godawful wretches should be forcefed cheeseburgers and Pepsi until they learn to love the Land of the Free.

No, rilly. Why, if it wasn't for Uncle Sam, I'd be posting this in German (etc etc).

08:37 / 26.03.03

Kegboy, thanks for that. Putting apostrophes where they don't belong is a major pet-peeve of mine. My mother runs a craft business and people often get things personalized. For some reason, they ALWAYS get something for their house that says,say, "The Smith's", apparently unaware of the fact that the thing they actually want to say is, "The Smiths", "The Smiths' (House)" or possibly simply "Smith." Only a handful of people realize it's wrong.

Arrgh.

ONLY NICE THINGS

08:43 / 26.03.03

Not exactly incorrect spelling per se, but whenever the apparently departed Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen is My God (bless him) told somebody asking for him to support his claims that they were displaying "insane pedanticness", it was something of a struggle not to murmur "that's *pedantry*".

Which urge makes me a metapedant.

08:59 / 26.03.03

'Myself' instead of 'me'. As in, "If you've got a problem, speak to either Steve or myself."
I don't know why it pisses me off so much, and for me to criticise other people's grammar does rather leave me open to charges of kettle-racism, but it's the faux-gentility - the holding-your-knife-like-a-pencilness - of it. Just bothers me.

09:32 / 26.03.03

I make silly language mistakes all the time, but if I was going to get a sign painted, I'd make doubly sure it was correct. - rakehell

That reminds me. Elizabeth Duke - the popular Argos-based jewellers - once carried a gold necklace bearing the legend Your So Special. It occurred to me at the time that at one stage this design would have been just a drawing, which was then viewed, appraised and deemed worth making. I assume it then became some kind of cast or dye or whatever, and perhaps a couple of samples made. These must have been through some kind of quality control before approval granted and the production line updated.
...Then photographs must have been taken, edited and selected. These sent to the department which compiles the catalogue, and finally to the printers. And at no stage did anyone point, laugh and say "No, you're the one who's special".

Damn I wish I'd bought that thing.

09:50 / 26.03.03

I'm confused by the Special necklace. Regardless of the bad grammar, who wears it, who gives it, what's it all about?

I mean, if I wear it, then surely I'm saying "You're/Your so special" to everyone I meet? Or at least the ones who stare at my neck.

Shouldn't it say "I'm so special"? Or "my bo'/girlfriend thinks I'm special"? Or "Please be aware I'm special and treat me accordingly"?

The possibility of misunderstandings is high.

10:09 / 26.03.03

cieling, freind, acheive, any mistransposition of i and e. Also when my spellchecker puts itself onto 'U.S.' and tries to correct me WRONGLY, uppity bitch.
That and 'To Boldly Go'.

10:31 / 26.03.03

mistransposition of i and e
Yeah, but those are generally typos. I have trouble with l and double ls. Do they exist? Where do they go? Never been able to get it right in my little head. Perhaps a bit dyslexic.

10:36 / 26.03.03

Re: Your when it should be you're (eg: "Your fired!")

Ooooh, yes! Incorrect spellings don't bother me very much because it's usually pretty obvious what the word should be, so I don't have to do a lot of mental fiddling about to put things straight, but that really gets on my cob.

It's annoying because it sets you up for one thing and delivers another. When you see the word 'your' you expect it to be followed by a noun, don't you? So you open the noun slot in your brain, fully expecting to have a nice noun-shaped object placed in it - a nice 'bun' or 'face' or 'corpse'. But do you get a noun? No, the wanker who's dishing the sentence up shoves a bloody adjective in there. Bastard! Once you've got over the shock, you have to go back to wherever you put the 'your', take it out, glue an 'e' on the end of it, saw it off at the 'r', stick in an apostrophe, glue the f***ing end back on and put it where it should have gone in the first place. Then you have to wiggle the adjective free of the noun slot and put it in the adjective box. All because some dozey lump couldn't be arsed to check their output before putting it out. Grrrr!

Whisky Priestess

12:53 / 26.03.03

I used to think that everyone who couldn't spell or punctuate should be shot, but I'm all right now - especially now that, as my typing speed has gone up, my accuracy has gone wayyy down. I regularly (in fact, always) use semicolons instead of apostrophes because of where they are on the keyboard. Damn those pesky typos.

(seven typos excised from this post)

13:14 / 26.03.03

Hang on, I'm talking rubbish again. 'Your' doesn't have to be followed by a noun at all - "Your sticky bun, Sir", for instance. Bollocks.

13:36 / 26.03.03

Yeah, but that adjective folds right up out of the way. You were right the first time.

I hate when some asshole writes "midnite" or "greatful".

14:05 / 26.03.03

Have to put my hand up and be counted as an apostrophe fascist, I'm afraid.

And a friend of mine had to suffer weeks of humiliation from me after writing about "social piranhas".

14:08 / 26.03.03

I have heard apostrophe misuse termed Grocer's Apostrophe (or possibly Grocers' Apostrope). As in "Apple's 50p a lb."

Whisky Priestess

14:13 / 26.03.03

"Social piranhas" is OK isn't it? Did they put an apostrophe in there?

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:14 / 26.03.03

She meant "pariahs", presumably, Whisks.

14:20 / 26.03.03

She did indeed. It went past a newsdesk, a sub and a deputy editor and made it into the newspaper, and was pointed out only when I rolled on the floor laughing. Very popular, I was.

14:20 / 26.03.03

In the same line with apostraphes, I think, is quotation marks used for emphasis: EVERYTHING "MUST" GO!

And aren't there cases where apostraphes "do" (heh heh) make for plurals? 1990's, for instance? And with abbreviations?

14:22 / 26.03.03

So many peeves, so little time...

Straightjacket.
Definate.
Iraqui.
Sacreligious.
Differance.
Etcetera.
Yeh or Yah when you mean "Yeah."
Alright.

My eyes hurt from looking at these, and my fingers hurt from typing them. Make it stop, Mummy.

14:24 / 26.03.03

I don't think 1990's should actually have an apostrophe at all. Why not 1990s?

Apostrophes in abbreviations are to indicate that a letter or two have been omitted.

14:24 / 26.03.03

Qalyn: it's "apostrophe."

And I always write "1990s," no apostrophe.

14:26 / 26.03.03

Jack - "Yeh" bugs me as well, but it's a fairly well-established regional usage in the North of England, popularised, I think, by the Northern Soul scene. Still grates, though.

Oh, hang on, I'm thinking of "Okeh" for okay, which is what gets my nipper.

Come to think of it, I don't like OK for okay either.

14:32 / 26.03.03

"Okeh" cames from the spurious idea that the word comes from the Choctaw Indian language. President Wilson subscribed to the Choctaw theory, and always spelled the word thus. (There's also a record label called Okeh, which specializes in country blues recordings.)

And I have no problem with "yeh" when it's used in dialogue—that's an accurate dialectical rendering. (So is "yah," if the dialogue in question is the screenplay to Fargo.) But for general usage, it grates: how, how, how could Paul Weller spell it "Yeh" in the title when he's clearly singing "Yeah"?

14:43 / 26.03.03

Sorry, Jack, that was sloppy typing. As Whisky said, sometimes typing fast interferes with spelling correctly, and I type pretty fast. Yes, I'm aware that it looks very stupid in a thread about correct spelling, but if I'd looked twice I'd have caught it. Persistent sloppiness, not persistent ignorance.

Surely "yeah" is slang and "yeh" or "yah" are just as appropriate. You're just spelling "yes" as you want it said.

Aside from the Choctaw thing, it's connected to Martin Van Buren's nickname, Old Kinderhook, which would make "OK" more correct than "okay."

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:44 / 26.03.03

Because he's a fucking idiot. Next!

Meanwhile - is the plural of "apostrophe" "apostrophes" or "apostrophai"? Inquiring minds want to know...

14:51 / 26.03.03

And I have no problem with "yeh" when it's used in dialogue—that's an accurate dialectical rendering.

Surely you mean dialectal?

Sorry.

Prescriptivism usually makes me mad. Misspellings on signs and whatnot either don't bother me or just make me laugh. I'm wondering now, though, that since the misplaced apostrophe is so, so common on signs where I grew up, if I didn't just develop an immunity to the irritation.

14:53 / 26.03.03

You're dead on about Van Buren, Qalyn—but the full story of "OK" is even more complex than that...

According to Bill Bryson's invaluable The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way, Van Buren hit the national political scene at about the same time that US college campuses were experiencing a craze for humorous intentional misspellings and abbreviations derived therefrom: a bad situation was "KY" (know yuse = no use), while something good was "OK" (oll-korrect = all correct).

There were a bunch of these little tags, but only "OK" has survived, because it was co-opted/identified with the Van Buren campaign and the "OK Clubs" of Van Buren supporters that sprang up across the country.

So, unlikely as it seems, "OK" was sort of the "All your base are belong to us" of its time.

14:53 / 26.03.03

Yes, Lolita, I mean dialectal.

And don't call me Shirley.

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