Grammar and Nitpicking II

[jaydenrioblue]

After reading entries on different communities, I have decided I have had enough of the blatant disregard of the most simple grammatical conventions. My English grammar education has been negligible; I'll be the first to admit that I don't know everything and that I do make mistakes. However, I have managed to pick up a few things.

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Comments

[adrian_the_dork]

WIN

[adrian_the_dork]

oh, and I cant fucking stand the their/there/they're mix up. ditto with your/you're. But you did cover all that already. anywho.

[jaydenrioblue]

Haha, thank you! :D

I'll do their/there/they're next time, along with should/shall. :)

[magic_treehouse]

I can't really say to much here as, even though I have an English degree, if I'm writing fast I can easily make one of these mistakes. And I still can't get my head around affect/effect, even though I get them right when I write!

The worst though is people who mis-use the word 'literally'. I had an email recently that said that my colleague's hands were 'literally on fire'. i checked. They weren't.

You've got to be careful not to be too restrictive of language and its rules though. If you stop it from evolving then it dies, just like Latin.

[jaydenrioblue]

This isn't so much for typos, because we all know those happen! It's for people that just make the same mistake over and over and don't know it. I don't know what the English education system is like where you're from, but I've NEVER learnt English grammar. It just hasn't come up in the curriculum. No exaggeration, most people my age that I know have never been taught apostrophes!

Ah! I'll add that to the list!

I definitely agree. I think that expanding vocabulary, new words and all that are important, and I'm not going to be the person who gets snitchy over the difference between "who" and "whom", or "of", "from" and "to" in phrases such as "different to", "separate from" or whatever. I'm not so big on punctuation - commas, hyphens, whatever, because I think that language should, for the most part, show a personal style in communication, speech patterns, etc. I just think there are some basic rules that most people have never had explained to them! Point 8: Redundancy is more a pet peeve than anything else.

[magic_treehouse]

I don't remember being taught grammar either but I must have been at some point. Maybe when I was 11? By the time you get to 15/16 you're analysing prose and poetry and teachers assume that you already know how to write. My academic writing style developed right up to when I completed my Masters at the age of 25!

The one thing that I'm amazing that a lot of people have never cottoned on to is that language and an understanding of it is linked to intelligence. Writing standard English makes you look clever even if you're not! this applies more to spoken English actually. So why do so many people shond like douches?! Ha.

[jaydenrioblue]

It's definitely linked to how intelligent you seem, definitely! You're so right - it would actually be a good investment for people for their future to learn to speak and write decent English! But alas, I'm afraid in many circles it's either not cool or not available!

And on a different note, I love the icon!

[thebigdisaster]

Sometimes I fall prey to the whole "lolspeak" phenomenon, but not usually. I usually just use it in comments. You're hitting all my pet peeves! I love this post!!