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Grammar | Pad Patter 9.9

So many of my peeves have been mentioned here! I used to cringe every time we went by a billboard that said "It's never to late to buy a Ford." How many people missed that one? But the sad part is that most people won't even notice!
 
LeeAndra said:
You will learn everything you need to know about me & grammar when I tell you the following anecdote:

I live very close to a nationally-known university that is the biggest employer in the county. I have applied for several jobs there over the years, and made it all the way to "runner-up" once, but never gotten a job there. I've also experienced a lot of unexplained delays, jobs being closed because they hired internally after advertising it, and/or been told by a recruiter to expect a response and never received one.

After one week when I received three rejections for three separate jobs, I had had enough and wrote their HR team about the glaring grammatical error in their rejection letter. I was very polite but also very insistent that it should be changed.

I received a fourth rejection letter a few weeks later... with the error fixed. :giggle
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Sorry it was a rejection letter, but good for you for correcting them!! That's awesome!

michelepixels said:
I'm pretty good with grammar, punctuation, and spelling but don't usually get bothered by others' mistakes. More likely I will joke about it, as in, "Ugh! Apostrophe abuse!" If I had peeves about punctuation, putting an apostrophe in a plural would probably be one. As for grammar, no examples pop into my head. I'd think longer about it, but I'm trying to get around to scrapping and several things have distracted me from it this weekend. :D
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I totally agree with apostrophe abuse!

Tree City said:
I am a proofreader. I have many grammar/usage pet peeves. Jan, you must have heard of the book Eats, Shoots and Leaves?

When I'm writing/reading online, I try to understand that my, umm, formal language isn't the norm. Texting is hard, though, because people want to be fast: texters not only want to respond using as little time as possible, but they also want short responses (i.e., quickly read responses). I guess I'm saying that I try to think of my audience.

But no matter the medium, if I'm not getting paid, then I try not to go too nuts. ;) There are exceptions. The film title "Two Weeks Notice" still bugs me It should be "Two Weeks' Notice." How was that missed by the 1000s of people involved in making the film?! Not a single person working at the studio knew what "genitive" or "inanimate possessive" means?
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That reminds me, there was something not too long ago that I saw in either a book or movie and it was glaring. I said the same thing...how did that get missed by all those people. Now, I can't remember what it was lol.

amien1 said:
My mom was a grammar nazi when we were kids (and still today!) so I've seen it all! ;) My BIGGEST grammar peeve is Seen/Saw. I don't' know if it's a country bumpkin thing (where I grew up) but people ALWAYS say it wrong & it drives me nuts.

Side note- When my hubby was writing his thesis for his MBA- I proof read that stupid thing a zillion times. I put a sticky note on his laptop that said "They're/Their/There" and "Too/Two/To" because it was wrong ALL over his paper. Drove me crazy to read that thing! ;)
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I think seen/saw is the biggest mistake that my students make, and a lot of adults in this area. It drives me nuts!!

carrie1977 said:
YES! I was a paraprofessional years ago and the teacher that I worked closely with used supposably all the time. Grrrrr! And, she was their language teacher!
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:eyeroll Oh my gosh!
That reminds me that we had a paraprofessional a couple of years ago who used to say "liberry" instead of "library". I had to bite my tongue every single time and would say it all the time correctly so that maybe she'd catch on lol. It didn't work.

Tree City said:
Okay, I do judge people even if I'm not getting paid: I pay close attention to my children's school correspondence. A mistake or two over the year isn't a big deal, but I'd be nervous if every single weekly email confused any of the issues mentioned so far in this thread!
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We used to have a principal with horrible grammar. Faculty meetings were painful! I do not know how he got through grad school!

LoveItScrapIt said:
BUT MY BIGGEST PET PEEVE is this younger generation and their total lack of spelling...even sometimes misspelling words on purpose, or this shortened text talk. Like how hard is it to actually type OK instead of just K. It's ONE friggin' letter people. ROFL!
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LoveItScrapIt said:
Omgeeee don't get me started .... our oldest (24) and her text messages are like trying to decipher some hidden code or something. Not only that, but she uses NO PUNCTUATION....it's a big run on sentence of misspelled words and text talk
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I despise text talk! But I am very proud to say that all 3 of my children text in complete sentences! I don't know if they do it with everyone, but at least they do with me :)

Cherylndesigns said:
"we was" instead of "we were" and using "I" and "me" incorrectly
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This is another one that I correct with my students all the time!
 
patsyt said:
So many of my peeves have been mentioned here! I used to cringe every time we went by a billboard that said "It's never to late to buy a Ford." How many people missed that one? But the sad part is that most people won't even notice!
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Gahhh on a billboard?! Yikes! I wonder how many people have noticed.
 
One that drives me bonkers is people who use "Me and" as the subject of a sentence. Me and her went to the mall. Me and X are going out. AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH! Would you say Me went to the mall? Or Me going out? I've seen well-known authors use this in books.

Also, using loose instead of lose or pacifically instead of specifically.
 
bonnenuit said:
One that drives me bonkers is people who use "Me and" as the subject of a sentence. Me and her went to the mall. Me and X are going out. AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH! Would you say Me went to the mall? Or Me going out? I've seen well-known authors use this in books.

Also, using loose instead of lose or pacifically instead of specifically.
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Yes! Both of those drive me bonkers as well!
 
Kinnygarden...

This made me chuckle.
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Oh gosh! I am nodding along with all of these!!! My hubby used to always say "seen" when he should have said "saw" and I just couldn't. I immediately turned into my mother and corrected him every single time and even explained why it was wrong... within a couple of years he quit saying it! Yahoo! He used to say "you can't mold me" and then would realize when he said it correctly and would chuckle and say... "I guess you can." :giggle. FYI his Mom says "seen" ALL. THE. TIME! I know where he got it from, but I don't correct her. I'd love to hear him correct her sometime. Lol!

My youngest still stays "me and Josh...." and I correct him every single time. I wonder how many years it'll take before he will just say it correctly? He's already heard me correct him for 12 years!
 
There, their, and they're!
Me and him/her - ugh!
I'm sure there are more, but I've had a migraine for 3 days and can't think straight.

Plus, my daughter is a high school English Teacher. I'm in the middle of scrapping a trip she took her students on the British Isles - Ireland, Wales, and England. I use a lot of copy and paste information from Wikipedia for journaling and she corrects everything! I get her point, but she can be really annoying at times.

I use an app called Grammerly on my laptop. It corrects most things correctly and even gives me a monthly update on how many mistakes I've made.
 
I am a horrible grammar police person. All of the typical their/there/they're, affect/effect, your/you're, etc. But my biggest one is something so public, it makes me cringe. The signs people put outside their houses that say "The Smith's." No. No no no no no. It's "The Smiths'!" or "The Smiths." Not "The Walker's" - "The Walkers'" or "The Walkers"!
 
bonnenuit said:
One that drives me bonkers is people who use "Me and" as the subject of a sentence. Me and her went to the mall. Me and X are going out. AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH! Would you say Me went to the mall? Or Me going out? I've seen well-known authors use this in books.
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The one that makes me shudder is ...They came to see John and I. NO, no no.... They came to see John and me. I think the word me is being lost to the use of I in all situations. Or are we just becoming an "I" world?
 
Everytime I see these types if posts and conversations, I cringe. I make mistakes all the time, especially on social media. I just don't take it that seriously and I know that is wrong. There are so many other things in life I worry over, grammar inaccuracies is not on my radar list. Unless I am writing a dissertation (it's been a while, and I felt lucky for my 3.9 for my BSN)

To everyone that rolls their eyes at my posts for all the mistakes I make all the time, I am so sorry! Haha ♡
 
There is this one I got today from my friends at the Gastroenterology Associates. (that's bad enough right there/their/they're) "We would like to inform you that...". Was it hs or freshman year of college when I was taught if you want to inform,tell/congratulate etc someone, just do it. Congratulations Maureen, you are due for this procedure! Or make it weaker with the passive tone, Your follow up colonoscopy is due. Either way, I'm not thrilled but even worse is reading that they would LIKE to inform me. Sadists.
 
Karen said:
Oh gosh! I am nodding along with all of these!!! My hubby used to always say "seen" when he should have said "saw" and I just couldn't. I immediately turned into my mother and corrected him every single time and even explained why it was wrong... within a couple of years he quit saying it! Yahoo! He used to say "you can't mold me" and then would realize when he said it correctly and would chuckle and say... "I guess you can." :giggle. FYI his Mom says "seen" ALL. THE. TIME! I know where he got it from, but I don't correct her. I'd love to hear him correct her sometime. Lol!

My youngest still stays "me and Josh...." and I correct him every single time. I wonder how many years it'll take before he will just say it correctly? He's already heard me correct him for 12 years!
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My hubby used to be really bad about "seen", too!! I broke him of that after a few years lol It drives me crazy!

djp332 said:
There, their, and they're!
Me and him/her - ugh!
I'm sure there are more, but I've had a migraine for 3 days and can't think straight.

Plus, my daughter is a high school English Teacher. I'm in the middle of scrapping a trip she took her students on the British Isles - Ireland, Wales, and England. I use a lot of copy and paste information from Wikipedia for journaling and she corrects everything! I get her point, but she can be really annoying at times.

I use an app called Grammerly on my laptop. It corrects most things correctly and even gives me a monthly update on how many mistakes I've made.
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Yikes, I hope you are feeling better!!!

LynnZant said:
Prepositions at the end of a sentence. And, this is not grammar but spelling. . .
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I don't know how no one catches these things!!

cookingmylife said:
The one that makes me shudder is ...They came to see John and I. NO, no no.... They came to see John and me. I think the word me is being lost to the use of I in all situations. Or are we just becoming an "I" world?
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Yes, I'm with you on that one! Another that I correct my students on all the time!

Danyale said:
Everytime I see these types if posts and conversations, I cringe. I make mistakes all the time, especially on social media. I just don't take it that seriously and I know that is wrong. There are so many other things in life I worry over, grammar inaccuracies is not on my radar list. Unless I am writing a dissertation (it's been a while, and I felt lucky for my 3.9 for my BSN)

To everyone that rolls their eyes at my posts for all the mistakes I make all the time, I am so sorry! Haha ♡
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I totally suck at being grammatically correct all the time on social media. I just try my best to stay away from the really glaring ones like their/there/they're, seen/saw, too/to/two, etc. I can't ever remember a time that I've seen something you've written that made me eye roll LOL. The one I've been seeing online a lot lately is "Does anyone have a *something* they want to sale?" or "I have a *something* for sell" :banghead

cookingmylife said:
There is this one I got today from my friends at the Gastroenterology Associates. (that's bad enough right there/their/they're) "We would like to inform you that...". Was it hs or freshman year of college when I was taught if you want to inform,tell/congratulate etc someone, just do it. Congratulations Maureen, you are due for this procedure! Or make it weaker with the passive tone, Your follow up colonoscopy is due. Either way, I'm not thrilled but even worse is reading that they would LIKE to inform me. Sadists.
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Sadists, indeed!! That's just weird!
 
Prolly instead of probably. THERE IS NO SUCH WORD AS PROLLY!

“On accident.” I go ballistic with this one. I home-schooled my children for five years. At least two of my three kids got the assignment of writing (by hand in cursive) “BY accident” 100 times. I’ve moved on to the next generation, and am now correcting my grandchildren on that one. We had our oldest granddaughter in the car with us on a trip across America. I kept having to correct her, explaining how ignorant and uneducated people sound when they say “on accident” and “me and her” etc. She still says them incorrectly. My son (her dad) has been correcting his wife and three kids for nearly 25 years, and they refuse to learn (or apply what they know). So many people say “me and him” that I’m almost ready to cave and start saying it that way myself (no! I refuse to capitulate). The cousin to “me and Dave,” “Sandy and I,” is almost as pervasive and just as obnoxious.

All that said, I wonder how many errors I made in my rant!
 
Firstly spelling (not grammar I know) I am an appalling speller (careless and I don't really care as long as my meaning gets across) but also because we spell everything differently here. It took me ages to work out why @LynnZant had pointed out judgement as being incorrect, that is the way I spell it (help me out other Australians, we do spell it that way or have I been wrong all along?) To me color doesn't look right - it has to be colour...

I can't see the point of possessive apostrophes but can't stand people getting it wrong... just use it to replace a letter or don't use it at all, that is the only use that makes sense. We came across a menu board outside a cafe and all the items listed had an apostrophe tagged on the end - Fish and chips', Hamburger', etc. It was like they panicked, put apostrophes after any word that ended with "s" and then thought we should add them to everything, so weird.
 
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