My Pet Peeves:

People who don't know the difference between 'its' and it's.'

People who use the word, "healthy," when they mean "healthful." (Example: "I ate a healthy meal today." What? You mean the MEAL was healthy?? Or were YOU healthy because you ate a healthful meal??)

There is no such word as 'snuck.' The proper grammar is 'sneaked.' I know it sounds weird, but it's true.

People who say, "preventative," when they mean "preventive."

LOL, nicolen, I've spoken to you directly in threads using your name and you didn't reply to me. I assumed it was because you didn't see my post. I hope so, anyway. Guess the invisible thing happens to all of us. :)

I'll stop now. ;)

Rae

Oh, dear, Raebear. I don't remember seeing your responses before now. :o I'm so sorry.

I'll be a better munchkin from now on and pay more attention, I promise! :D

btw what are trolls???? sorry maybe i'm not as internet savy...but that's a new term.

And btw..i'm soooo guilty of typos...i swear its my adhd.

I WISH I would have known about that website last week! I have a very dear friend that kept sending me junk (chain letters even!!! :mad: ) even after I asked her not to do so, several times. I think she may have gotten the message after my last email to her though. :o

I was nodding my head to most of the posts about grammar and word usage, until Raebear's post. Raebear, you surprised me with your post. I like that.

I have used "snuck" all my life. While I believe preventive is a better word, I didn't think preventative is incorrect. Also, I thought that healthful is a better word when describing nutritious food, I thought that healthy was used enough to become part of our lexicon. So, I went to dictionary.com to do some checking.

Here's a note in the entry for snuck:

—Usage note First recorded in writing toward the end of the 19th century in the United States, snuck has become in recent decades a standard variant past tense and past participle of the verb sneak: Bored by the lecture, he snuck out the side door. Snuck occurs frequently in fiction and in journalistic writing as well as on radio and television: In the darkness the sloop had snuck around the headland, out of firing range. It is not so common in highly formal or belletristic writing, where sneaked is more likely to occur. Snuck is the only spoken past tense and past participle for many younger and middle-aged persons of all educational levels in the U. S. and Canada. Snuck has occasionally been considered nonstandard, but it is so widely used by professional writers and educated speakers that it can no longer be so regarded.


Preventative is listed.

Here is a usage note about healthy:

Usage Note: The distinction in meaning between healthy ("possessing good health") and healthful ("conducive to good health") was ascribed to the two terms only as late as the 1880s. This distinction, though tenaciously supported by some critics, is belied by citational evidence—healthy has been used to mean "healthful" since the 16th century. Use of healthy in this sense is to be found in the works of many distinguished writers, with this example from John Locke being typical: "Gardening . . . and working in wood, are fit and healthy recreations for a man of study or business." Therefore, both healthy and healthful are correct in these contexts: a healthy climate, a healthful climate; a healthful diet, a healthy diet.

Such a cutie SOULBLISS ;)

My pet peeve would have to be cursing. Abbreviated or not it is still cursing and not necessary. I am not talking about hitting your thumb with a hammer and words comeing out of your mouth that you generally wouldn't say. I am talking about the cursing that goes on, all over the web, in posts.

Battle, I get VERY annoyed with dictionary.com. While a helpful tool, they seem to add words and terms simply because they are used frequently, even if incorrect. I first discovered this when I found their entry for "dethaw." This is another peeve of mine, when people use this term. Just think about it--"de" mean to undo something, and we know what "thaw" means, so, by definition, "dethaw" really means you're going to FREEZE something. You can THAW or you can DEFROST meat, but DETHAW has no place in a correct English dictionary. And yet, there it is. I have a hard time accepting things as being correct simply because a lot of people use it incorrectly--if we keep doing so, then "u" and "y" and "idk" and "lol" will soon be entering our language as grammatically correct :dizzy: But that's just another peeve of mine--nothing against anyone personally (just mentioned Battle since she brought up Dictionary.com) :^:

That said...
AMEN! I used to work on a writing/editing project for "Preventive Services" for Medicare. We ALWAYS spelled it "preventive," and yet there were people on our team who, even when READING it on the page, would ALWAYS say "preventative." Drove me INSANE!!

I find this debate of semantics very interesting.

My husband seems to love debating word usage like this. Whenever we get into an argument, I will go to my best friend and ask her. My bf is an extremely intelligent woman who is also an English teacher. I have found, though, that she is amazingly liberal in her grammar. She thinks language is here for us to communicate, so if people are communicating clearly and getting their points across, then that is ok with her.

Now, lest you think she lets her students go around using "u" in their papers, she does not. But her personal beliefs are that if something is coming into popular usage, it tends to be accepted and added into the language, which is what has happened with many words in the past.

So if I want to know if the comma I'm using is correct, she can tell me, and she would tell her students. But her private, secret life is that she usually doesn't care. I think part of it is that she really is not a legalistic person, she cares about intent, not about following rules for the sake of following rules.

I'm not sure how I feel about it. I just tend to speak and write as well as I can.
-------
On another controversial word, I had a high school English teacher that really emphasized: Drapes are hung. A person is hanged. I always use hanged for a person being killed in that manner, but few do.

Jillybean....

Dethaw is one of the most annoyingly incorrect "words" I have ever heard. Any time someone around me uses this, I feel it necessary to make them feel like an idiot.

Speaking of incorrect words...(FYI, this is not internet related, but still a peeve of mine.)

My favorite movie is The Wizard of Oz. But I get incredibly mad when the witch screams, "I'm melting, melting! What a world, what a world..." I want to slap her and say, "No, lady. You are sublimating. Get it straight if you're going to whine about it." And then the wizard actually responds to the lion, tin man, scarecrow, and Dorothy, upon hearing of the witch's death: "Oh, you liquidated her, eh?" To which they reply, "Y-y-yes sir." Really? Because what I saw was gas. No liquid. Solid to gas equals sublimation. Not melting. You're all dumb and need to ask the wizard for a brain. Forget hearts and courage and home.

My online pet peeve is:

When you make a joke or are sarcastic in a post and someone feels the need to respond seriously. I know that it is usually difficult to tell when someone is joking/sarcastic but I think if I use a winking face, smiley, or quotations, it should be fairly obvious.

I recently posted and I said something like "I thought 1+1=2 ;)" in relation to calorie counting or whatever, and the next person felt the need to explain the laws of mathematics. :mad:


*Just a quick note about language usage: Remember that everything is constantly evolving--language is too. There are hundreds of words that are no longer is use from centuries ago. Additionally, there are hundreds of words that are used now that weren't around hundreds of years ago. You may think it's ridiculous that 'lol' is used so much but in 50 years it may be an "actual" word. The more something is said and written, the more likely it will become a "true" word.

This is getting to be very fascinating. I have always thought I was picky about grammar, but some of you are showing me up!

I used to hate the word "hopefully" used to mean "I hope that" but I just gave up and gave in and said, "so be it."

As for using a lower case "i" - I can remember back in the 60's, reading poetry where it was used intentionally, perhaps to indicate humility or insignificance, and it must have imprinted upon me during a formative time so that it does not bother me in casual writing, and I have done it.

Regarding junk mail, oh! I loathe those that instruct the recipient to send to x number of other people. I never understood this -- is there some online contest going on, that if your email gets forwarded a lot, you win a blender or something? I don't get it.

Also I detest recieving mail depicting hunk/beefcake photos of guys. It's embarrassing and I am not turned on or amused.

jo

I'm sure you all love it when people "conversate" instead of "converse." It's amazing how often you hear people say this, even on tv! I think a lot of people simply slept through their English classes in school. Notice I used a lot as two words, not one. ALOT -- that's probably my biggest peeve. No one would think of writing "alittle of something," but they sure do love to write alot.

Also, it's a bit interesting to see all of the posting on this thread that have typos, spelling, and usage errors in them. It goes to show people can be pretty quick to point out flaws in others while not seeing those flaws in themselves. I'm sure I'm guilty of this too! Interesting thread!

By the way:

Why is it that people eat food
but farm animals eat feed?

Here's another one, but you rarely see it written--it's more of a spoken thing that irritates the heck out of me.

irregardless

That is NOT a word! The correct work is regardless. If you absolutely have to put an "ir" in there, you can use irrespective.

Thank you. I had to get that off my chest!