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grammar pet peeves (thing)

See all of grammar pet peeves, there are 7 more in this node.
(thing) by wharfinger Mon Apr 03 2000 at 16:36:24
  • "Payed" vs paid

  • "Lead" as the past tense of "to lead", as in "yesterday, i lead them astray". This should of course be "led", though not as in Zeppelin.

  • Your and you're: Correct usage is "you're peeing on your shoes". "You're" is a contraction of "you are"; "your" is just a common or garden variety possessive pronoun, and as above, no possessive pronoun uses an apostrophe. The apostrophe represents something which has been removed, in this case the 'a' in "are", much like the missing 'i' from "is" in "it's".

  • Drifting off into spelling, "definately" for "definitely" always drives me into a paroxysm of loathing.

  • Another capital "supposedly" crime is "supposingly".

  • "They" is not singular. Trust me on this one.

  • "Weird" is weird in that an 'e' precedes an 'i' without a leading 'c'.

  • "People that..." is goofy unless you're deliberately trying to write like a pothead for comic effect; we prefer "people who". People are people, not things. (dannye's peeve, but also mine)

  • "-ant" used for "-ent", which I suppose is spelling more than grammar. Either way, take care with "sentence", "existence", "tendency", and a few others. "Dependent" vs "dependant": 'A' for adjective, 'e' for noun. (dannye's peeve, but also mine)

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I have asked my library to ban a book bad grammar is the halitosis of the internet A boy named Ben Quotation marks used to denote emphasis
Itchy runs afoul of an Irishman juxtaposition That's not ironic; that's just bloody stupid gender-neutral pronoun
English is a living language paroxysm homophone Where to go for help with punctuation
Eats, Shoots and Leaves Correcting BBC newsreaders on their grammar descriptive grammar Verbing weirds language
innit LED take a whiz That which does not kill me, makes me stronger
pet peeve GTKY affect vs. effect subjunctive

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