Question Grammatical pet peeves

I read a presentation at work today, and if I'd have graded it, I'd have given it an F-. It made me think of my pet peeves. So here's one.

Making a plural of something using an apostrophe. Example: things vs. thing's
The first one is correct, but so many people don't know that or get lazy.

Drug instead of dragged.

American spelling, and absolutely the worst thing ever, US style dates!

The only thing worse then US style dates is stupid programs that localise them inconsistently, leaving you staring at a date and trying to work out what it's supposed to be. There is nothing worse then staring at an email or a spreadsheet and wondering 'so, is that July the 5th or the 7th of May?'

Phoenix Spiritus wrote: American spelling, and absolutely the worst thing ever, US style dates!

The only thing worse then US style dates is stupid programs that localise them inconsistently, leaving you staring at a date and trying to work out what it's supposed to be. There is nothing worse then staring at an email or a spreadsheet and wondering 'so, is that July the 5th or the 7th of May?'

Colour - Color
Armour - Armor
Centre - Center

This plus a few others gives me headaches. Also gives my computer's spellchecker fits.

~Archangel~ wrote:

Phoenix Spiritus wrote: American spelling, and absolutely the worst thing ever, US style dates!

The only thing worse then US style dates is stupid programs that localise them inconsistently, leaving you staring at a date and trying to work out what it's supposed to be. There is nothing worse then staring at an email or a spreadsheet and wondering 'so, is that July the 5th or the 7th of May?'

Colour - Color
Armour - Armor
Centre - Center

This plus a few others gives me headaches. Also gives my computer's spellchecker fits.

The MM-DD-YYYY date system is not easily sortable in a program unless you rearrange things to YYYY-MM-DD, so it makes no sense. But a DD-MM-YYYY system isn't sortable either, so it's just as faulty.

I have made sure to give Astrodragon plenty of grief about his obsessive-compulsive love of the letter "u" - which it seems the Commonwealth nations have a surplus of and feel the need to sprinkle them liberally through their words. That and the spelling of words ending in "er" vs. "re". Centre. Theatre, etc. Makes no sense phonetically.

I suppose we could have a topic about the differences between UK English and US English if we wanted.

Oh, no need for that, Elrod, we can keep it general. "The United States of America vs. the rest of the entire world in every standard ever" seems about right. Small things like:

Different date standards
Different spelling standards
Different every measurement under the sun ahem 'standards'

I mean, the only thing you guys seem to agree with the rest of the world on is how to measure time, and even then you have your own time zones!

(I kid, I really do. I kid. It's only funny because it's so true )

We like to think outside the box.

Phoenix Spiritus wrote: Oh, no need for that, Elrod, we can keep it general. "The United States of America vs. the rest of the entire world in every standard ever" seems about right. Small things like:

Different date standards
Different spelling standards
Different every measurement under the sun ahem 'standards'

I mean, the only thing you guys seem to agree with the rest of the world on is how to measure time, and even then you have your own time zones!

(I kid, I really do. I kid. It's only funny because it's so true )

How many Stone do you weigh?

On the topic of measurements view image.

Interesting fact about Canada, we have our own English that is different than both US and UK, something which everyone else seems to ignore.

Also the place where the US is different is daylight savings time, not time zones. They not only kept the useless system around, they changed when it happens and dragged us into it.

As for my pet peeves, the basics: there, they're, and their, your, and you're, not using the Oxford comma, etc.

An odd one is people who use 'es' at the end of words to create plurals where you should use an apostrophe. Ex: the plural of Samus would be Samus' not Samuses.

Not going to get into the British/American English debate. But I agree that US measurements are stupid. Just the other day, I learned that there are actually several different kinds of feet in use. International feet are 0.3048 m long, while US Survey Feet are 1200/3937 m long, or 0.304800609601 m.

The Oxford Comma is optional. There are situations where it makes things less ambiguous, but there are also times when it makes things more ambiguous. The rest of the time, it's a matter of preference.

Jarjaross wrote: Interesting fact about Canada, we have our own English that is different than both US and UK, something which everyone else seems to ignore.

Not ignore. Well, OK, the American's ignore it, but let's face it, if they were actually interested in how the rest of the world used the English language, there wouldn't be an American version of it.

So that leaves the rest of the English speaking world who interacts with Canada, and, poor Canada, that's basically the Brits, the Australian's and the New Zealanders, and, well, comedy.

All of the populations of those countries are going to make individual calculations on exactly how much extra nice to them Canadians would be if they welcome them into the brotherhood of American blighted English speakers, verse the humour of watching the Cunuk get politely upset at being called an American.

So it's humour vs. politeness, and the ones doing the choosing are Brits, Australians and New Zealanders.

Bit predictable really.

elrodw wrote:
I have made sure to give Astrodragon plenty of grief about his obsessive-compulsive love of the letter "u" - which it seems the Commonwealth nations have a surplus of and feel the need to sprinkle them liberally through their words. That and the spelling of words ending in "er" vs. "re". Centre. Theatre, etc. Makes no sense phonetically.

I suppose we could have a topic about the differences between UK English and US English if we wanted.

Not my fault American's are cheap and don't want to spend money on a proper supply of u's

Astrodragon wrote:

elrodw wrote:
I have made sure to give Astrodragon plenty of grief about his obsessive-compulsive love of the letter "u" - which it seems the Commonwealth nations have a surplus of and feel the need to sprinkle them liberally through their words. That and the spelling of words ending in "er" vs. "re". Centre. Theatre, etc. Makes no sense phonetically.

I suppose we could have a topic about the differences between UK English and US English if we wanted.

Not my fault American's are cheap and don't want to spend money on a proper supply of u's

But u's are cheap, they are o's that had the top torn apart and bent funny.

If you want a nightmare of accent and grammar try this out. Be warned.

Lor' T'underin' Jaysus b'y!

You know, I think it only took a minute or so for them to start making sense. Of course they where starting to talk about beer by then, so ...

Astrodragon wrote:

elrodw wrote:
I have made sure to give Astrodragon plenty of grief about his obsessive-compulsive love of the letter "u" - which it seems the Commonwealth nations have a surplus of and feel the need to sprinkle them liberally through their words. That and the spelling of words ending in "er" vs. "re". Centre. Theatre, etc. Makes no sense phonetically.

I suppose we could have a topic about the differences between UK English and US English if we wanted.

Not my fault American's are cheap and don't want to spend money on a proper supply of u's

Bah, u's are just overweight v's.

As for accents, everyone else talks funny, I don't have an accent...

I think I heard it best when put this way. The US and the UK, two countries separated by a common language.

My worst pet peeve is commas placed in the wrong part of a sentence... and that's because I do it all the time.

*Walks off muttering curses*

Jarjaross wrote: An odd one is people who use 'es' at the end of words to create plurals where you should use an apostrophe. Ex: the plural of Samus would be Samus' not Samuses.

Um, when you said plural did you actually mean possessive? Because Samuses is the plural of Samus (i.e., more than one Samus), with Samus' or Samus's as the singular possessive depending on style and Samuses' as the plural possessive.

The only cases I can remember where an apostrophe is used to create a non-possessive plural are when talking about letters, numbers, and symbols, and not everybody agrees on those.


Anyway:

Yeah you'll not that I wrote that at like midnight. When I'm tired my brain gets its wires crossed.

At least we're not trying to deal with valley elves. " Like oh my goddess! " ( Spoken in a So Cal accent. )

elrodw wrote: I have made sure to give Astrodragon plenty of grief about his obsessive-compulsive love of the letter "u" - which it seems the Commonwealth nations have a surplus of and feel the need to sprinkle them liberally through their words. That and the spelling of words ending in "er" vs. "re". Centre. Theatre, etc. Makes no sense phonetically.

The letter "u" is actually aspirated when spoken with the appropriate accent.

As regards making sense phonetically: http://www.ojohaven.com/fun/spelling.html

I take issue with their use of X to replace TH and Y to replace SH. It would make more sense to have Y replace TH due to its historic substitution for the letter Þ (Thorn) by printers who lacked complete typefaces for the Middle English language. Better yet would be to make things easier for future historians by reviving Þ instead of further muddling the use of Y. I don't know if there are any keyboards on the market with a Þ key, but we could simply remap our Y keys to Þ via software until the keyboard industry catches up.

Well, on the plus side, having Thorn as a letter would make it easier to write :Þ

My biggest grammatical pet peeve, is when I spend a lot of time writing a story, but people are more interested in typos or grammatical errors than in the story, plot, or characters.

Morpheus wrote: My biggest grammatical pet peeve, is when I spend a lot of time writing a story, but people are more interested in typos or grammatical errors than in the story, plot, or characters.

I can totally understand that.

On the other hand if the error causes me to break my train of enjoyment and go 'huh? what?' it is a bit jarring, however I try to ignore and carry on. Oddly the flow of the story is what sustains my interest more than 'proper grammar'.

And look at this way by not commenting on the story, plot and characters it means hey had NO problem with those areas.

The silence you hear? The vast majority applauding. Take a bow. Heck take several.

With regard to the difference between American and British spelling, that is part of the aftermath of a little disagreement between our countries in the late 1770's. Since we were no longer subject to British authority, there were those who felt that we should change the spelling so that it made more sense instead of bowing to British rules. (And by extension, French, Latin, and Greek rules.) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Webster You should also note that the British spelling wasn't really standardized until Samuel Johnson in the mid 1700's. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionary

With regard to the several definitions of foot, ounce, pound (The old joke about which is heavier, a pound of feathers or a pound of gold www.mygemologist.com/learn/jewelry-metal...asuring-gold-weight/ ), things involved in commerce and surveying become very important. If the property was measured in US Survey Feet in 1750, you want to make sure that you use the same definition of feet when redrawing property lines. (The US Survey foot is what was used in surveying in the United States and many deeds are based on this unit.) If you think there are three types of feet, look at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_(unit) .

If any of you think you have it rough, consider the issue of reference standards. In this case, you have to list the device that was used to calibrate your device, and the device that was used to calibrate that device, etc. until you come to the device that was measured against an international standard block. (A few metal blocks in a vault in France.) By the way, because of this meticulous recording, they were able to trace some errors in the measurement of Mt. Everest to the fact that the mountain had so much mass that it actually pulled the plumb bob to the side.

A really big pet peeve of mine is people who insist that the original source of quotes must be used, even when it is almost impossible to trace. If I say that Oscar Wilde said "as long as they don't do it in the streets and scare the horses", somebody will claim that the phrase was previously used by Henry VIIII. (They actually did complain about the quote.) If I mention Henry VIII, someone will say that I should say Oscar Wilde unless I can positively prove the provenance leading to Henry VIII and somebody else will probably reference a Greek philosopher from over a millennium ago. Another peeve is people who complain about facts in the forums without checking the original sources. (Are there five, six, or seven major railroad terminals in Paris. Somebody claimed that there were only five and saying six was an error. There are actually seven, but one is an auto-train station.)

My problem with typographical and punctuation errors is that they can sometimes be jarring and disruptive to the reader. This was lampshaded in one of the recent stories where a character (who was still learning English as a second language) said that he was "pleasured to meet you".