Grammar Pet Peeves
 

This drives me crazy. The proper use of the possessive form of "it".

The possessive form of "it" is "its". No apostrophe.

EXAMPLE - "Gamma Phi Beta can be proud of its 134 year history."

"It's" is short for "it is".

EXAMPLE - "It's not how you start, it's how you finish."


Thank you. I feel much better now.

Do you have any other grammatical pet peeves?

they're....their.....there

your and you're

I admit that I ALWAYS have to think twice before I type its and it's.

where and wear

They're, there, and their

basically all homonyms that get confused

I mentioned somewhere else about the "dear meat" post I saw on another board. They meant "deer meat". the wrong homonym gives it a totally different meaning.

Work-related issue:

Correct: non-profit
Correct: not-for-profit

INCORRECT: non-for-profit

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Did you know that nonprofit is also correct? It took me a while to get used to it, but one of my agency's "union" type orgs doesn't hyphenate.

Weary being used in exchange for either wary or leery. In the past few years I've noticed, especially online, that the three are used interchangeably. Weary means something else entirely!!

lose & loose

allowed & aloud

Then and Than

pass and past.

Bernie Mac past away. INCORRECT
Bernie Mac passed away. CORRECT

Comma whoredom.

Read your sentence out loud. If you didn't pause there, take out the commas. Idiots.

ETA: Dammit I just made myself paranoid about whether that comma belongs there.

lol - (and it's "damn it":p) YES - there are far too many comma-crazed writers out there.

eta - although maybe you used "dammit" in a colloquial sense. If so, I apologize.

I also dislike the mailboxes that say "The Brown's". Again with the apostrophe! What is it The Brown owns? Do you perhaps mean The Browns, as in more than one Brown?

Yep - that's no problem. I used the hyphens for clarity among the words. Non-for-profit makes me want to do bad things.

Ditto on the then and than.

I cannot believe how many "college educated" people confuse the two.

I am soooo much smarter then them. ;)

This seems to be a relatively new one - as in I've only seen it the past 5 years or so.

A part and apart.

"I want to be A PART of a sorority."

"Our sorority will be torn APART if we terminate all the dumb clucks who don't use proper grammar."

Incorrectly using "I" when it should be "me" is probably #1 on my list.

Or the young whippersnappers who post in Recruitment with all lower case, run on sentences and no punctuation. arrrrgh.

Add "saw" and "seen" to the list (Apparently I know a lot of rednecks).

Also "roll" and "role".

That being said...ROLL TIDE! :p

All of the above! Also, alot instead of a lot. "Alot" is not a word. If the person meant "allot" but made a typo, then I won't scream quite as loudly!

Another one is "in regards to" when the person meant "in regard to."

I'm probably one of the few people who still puts a comma before conjunctions in a series. Sometimes the meaning is clear even without the last comma (sometimes not), but the last comma certainly makes reading the sentence easier--I don't have to decipher the meaning with the last comma in place.

EVERYTHING.

Seriously, if I listed them all, we'd be here all day.;)

Since my favorites have been used, I'm going to add "a lot" is supposed to be two words. It's not alot....which MSKKG just said...
Oh, and there's one I didn't know I was saying incorrectly until someone pointed it out. I was saying "for all intensive purposes" instead of the correct statement "for all intents and purposes."

Amazing that the Spelling squad comes out?:rolleyes:

Be, Bee, Bea.

To, too, two.

So, there are typos? Now, what is the problem as long as people understand the context of what is posted?:rolleyes:

Oh i post i without posting I ?:p

S & G
TPU

Oh the ironing.

Affect vs effect. I'm GA in a intro zoo class and their introductory papers were rife with this error.

My biggest one is "I seen"

OMG
YES!

I hate it when I see "puppie's for sale"

I've noticed lately people keep using quotes to emphasize things - for example, a sign will read "OUR PRICES ARE THE "LOWEST" IN TOWN!!" instead of "OUR PRICES ARE THE LOWEST IN TOWN!!" It looks so stupid, and I see it all the time. Drives me nuts.

I have so many, but I will say my biggest one on GC is the incorrect use of the apostrophe. For some reason people seem to think acronyms can only be made plural with an apostrophe s.

"There are 2 PNM's in my group." Instead of... "There are 2 PNMs in my group." or, "How many AOII's will be there?" Ugh.

We had to do peer editing in one of my English courses. I was the lucky student to be paired with Ms. Comma Happy. She inserted at least 40+ commas into my 3 page essay. I kid you not. I had to remove about that many from her paper. She even said to me as she handed it back, "It was really good except you needed a lot more commas." :eek:

Like they are salt or something.

I'm the worst about seeing what I expect to see or thinking that I typed one thing when I really typed another. (Recently I wrote "right" for "write"; it's not like I don't know the difference.) In real life, I take a lot more time to proofread.

So, I'm a lot more driven crazy by people who have to correct other people on dry erase boards or memos or agendas than I am by the errors themselves. It's one thing if you honestly think the person doesn't know better or you want to help correct a careless error, but you're just a jackass if you have to circle stuff in red on the white board or mark up the memo and put it back in the principal's box anonymously (and yes, I have colleagues who will do this.) They aren't interested in correcting the error to spare the person embarrassment or make it correct: they just want to circle it to call attention to it and feel superior. It takes what was a grammatical or proofreading issue and raises it to a character flaw.

Snort.

In general, I believe that an apostrophe does not a plural make.

Welllll I'm grammatically sensitive, so I get touchy about a lot of stuff (especially verbally). The one that bugs me a lot (that hasn't been mentioned yet) is anyways. It's supposed to be anyway! I was so proud when I broke one boyfriend of that habit. Go me!

Okay, so I know this is just a regional contraction, but I ABSOLUTELY hate when people misspell y'all! It's NOT ya'll. It is You and ALL contracted, thus y'all! Ha! Even GC's spell checker recognizes the difference. :D

Thought of another one! "On accident" in lieu of "by accident" completely drives me insane. I correct people in my head every time I hear it, and once it accidentally slipped out and I corrected someone verbally. I was so embarrassed! :o

That is one of my dad's pet peeves. He corrected me so many times as a kid that I NEVER make that mistake!!

And, "myself" when one means "me."

Would you get a grammar book for Michael and myself??

My brother used to say he did things "for an accident." Well, I'm SURE he did! LOLOL!