Pedants' Revolt

[cheethamgirl]

No, this is nothing to do with the Peasant's Revolt or Watt Tyler, but is Pedants' Revolt (arguably perhaps with Which Tyler!), in which I'd like to invite you to record your pet hates with regard to common abuses of the English language.  Let me know the things which irritate you.  Here are a few of mine, though I'm sure I'll think of lots more later:-
 
People (who should know better) who say:
 
'Sat', instead of 'sitting', when the intransitive, not transitive verb is intended, eg 'I was sat on the bus' - begs the question 'who sat you there?', and see page 14, 3rd para, half way down column 3, of this week's Radio times, for another example, Hugh Laurie who is 'sat at the piano'.
 
'Less' instead of 'fewer' - eg tv add: 'more soap powder for less pennies' - less goes with single or collective nouns, fewer goes with plural ones.
 
Misuse of object & subject 'me' and 'I':  eg 'James and me went out' (me went?), 'he gave it to James and I' (he gave it to I?).
 
'Disoriented' instead of 'disorientated'.
 
'Laura Norder' - that woman troublemaker who regularly gets a mention on the news.
 
'Very unique' or 'quite unique' - unique needs no qualifying.  Something is either unique or it isn't.

[celeste]

Good thread
 
them things instead of those things
 
dropped aitches
 
sentences starting with And or But
 
more in due course

[cheethamgirl]

Oh yes, and when did 'railway station' cease to exist, in favour of the awful American phrase 'train station'?  You hear this everywhere nowadays.  I suppose the younger generations will wonder what 'rly' means on ordinance survey maps.

[cheethamgirl]

'off of', as in 'get off of there'
 
'My one' and 'your one' instead of 'mine'
 
South of Watford, everyone seems to say 'noo' instead of 'new' and also 'I heard it on the nooze'
 
I love those home makeover shows etc, but why, I wonder, do the presenters refer to 'washbasins' as 'sinks'? Even the allegedly posh Kirstie Allsop refers to bathroom sinks, and she calls wardrobes 'cupboards'.  She's a fraud!

[celeste]

out the door instead of out of the door

[Cupcake]

Nucular power instead of nuclear - even certain newsreaders do it.
 
The vile American "aloominum" instead of "aluminium"
 
The abuse of apostrophes.  They indicate missing letters or ownership of a thing, never plurals.  And his, hers and its don't ever include one unless you mean "it's" to be short for "it is"!
 
Must of, instead of must have.
 
I'm sure there are more...... 
 
 
 
 

[cheethamgirl]

Yes indeed, Cupcake - the dreaded 'greengrocer's apostrophe' such as I see every week at our local market.  One of the greengrocers there sells 'potatoe's' whilst another sells 'potato's'. 

Similarly, 'should of', instead of 'should have'.
 
 
 

[SwissGill]

This is interesting. On another forum there was a similar thread but it was directed at forum members and I tend to overlook such mistakes because for me the content of the posting is more important. Not everyone has had the same education. Some of the teachers passed on some awful bloomers.
 
What I hate is when someone wants to "up" the grammar with remarks such as "between you and I". However they wouldn't say when asked who is knocking at the door "It is I" whereupon they would be grammatically correct. I learned to follow the sentence through at school so that it would become "It is I who is knocking at the door" instead of the "it's me", which thank God is allowed.
 
I must admit that with the advent of emails ( I don't "do" SMS") my English has deteriorated, especially and not understandably, I tend to write their instead of there and similar mistakes which I cannot explain.
 
After years of reading German (the best way to acquire a language, apart from speaking it) I am now avidly reading English or American English to keep myself up to date. I have been teaching English here in Switzerland for a few years after rejecting such. Earlier I would not have been a good teacher.
 
I can remember my boss saying "Fräulein Owen, for God's sake - I'm not writing a best seller!!" My husband got frustrated, too, when I kept correcting him 
 
One thing German Swiss have difficulty with and one thing I will definitely not allow is:
 
"Was you at home yesterday?"
 

[cheethamgirl]

Hi Swiss Gill,


Since you speak German, you might have heard the following odd exception to the normally strict German grammar.  Our 6th form German teacher once explained to us the difficulty with the phrase 'he says he is older than I' when expressed in German.  [I think that's the correct English version, since the 'am' is understood.]  To be correct, the German version should be: 'er sagt das er alter als ich ist' (sorry I don't know how to do umlauts on here!), thus putting the verb at the end and separating it from its subject.  However, 'ich ist' ('I is') sounds very strange in German, so they normally say 'er sagt das er alter als ich bin' - not grammatically correct but sounds better.   Mind you, I've never been in a situation where I've heard a German say this ...


Another pet hate of mine (in English), and now I'm being really fuddy duddy, as this had definitely crept firmly into the language, is people saying 'different to' when in fact it should be 'different from'.  It is rare to hear the latter these days yet it was something drummed into me at school.


I think I must be a pedant of the first order, as I was once working as a temporary secretary and I got my marching orders for correcting a sales rep's grammar.  He'd dictated 'I shall write to Mr X, suggesting that he comes and sees us' and I typed it up as '..suggesting that he come and see us'.  The rep complained that I had left off the 's's and I explained I had applied the subjunctive.  He turned bright red, called me a smart alec and sacked me! 


I agree with you though that we all tend to cut corners when we type on these forums (fora?) and I would never presume to correct anyone's posts, as I make lots of typos and silly errors myself.  I'm just enjoying airing the things that irritate me, especially in official communications.

[celeste]

I agree with your opinion on correcting posts, it seems worse than making a spelling mistake
 
the spelling of these words always stuck in my mind - separately, definitely, deceive, receipt and many others but it's late now

[cheethamgirl]

Less of an annoyance, but definitely worthy of mention as an oddity, is the way police, prison officials and security guards invariably describe incidents in the past continuous tense.  Watching the programme on Strangeways Prison last night reminded me of the many conversations I've had with police or the security incident reports I have read over the years, which go like this:  'he's come down the road, he's lobbed a brick through the window, then he's had it away on his toes', instead of the simpler 'he came along, broke the window and ran off'. In last night's programme a warder was explaining the circumstances of an assault: 'two of us have gone into the cell; he's immediately kicked off.  He's put up a struggle and he's bitten me on the hand'.  This odd style is used in their written reports too.


The funniest thing I ever heard a policeman say though was many years ago on Crimewatch, where a nervous detective, asking for help in solving a murder case, said: 'in my experience, it us usually the last person to have seen the deceased alive who turns out to be the murderer'.  No [censored], Sherlock!!      

[Cupcake]

I wouldn't correct an individual in a public manner - that's a horrible thing to do.  There are very few people I'd correct in private either - it's really rude unless you know someone well.  A lot of people lack confidence and/or keyboard skills, so within a chat forum there has to be acceptance and inclusion by focusing on WHAT people say, not HOW they type it.   
 
But it's very nice to have a quiet little corner for a bit of a general rant.....  I remembered last night how much I hate people saying "water feature" - can we all please say pond, pool, puddle or fountain, as applicable?  I'd also like to be offered chips, not fries, when dining in England.
 
Oh, yes - can somebody please tell official bodies that when writing a letter, one sentence does not a paragraph make?  It requires at least two......
 
 

[cheethamgirl]

Agreed Cupcake.  Isn't it bad though when folks who ought to be in full command of the language (eg the BBC trained news readers etc) make the worst blunders?  I enjoy watching those programmes like 'Escape To The Country ' so it spoils the enjoyment when the presenters highlight the fact that a property has a 'garridge'. 
 
 
 

[Cupcake]

Ah, you've reminded me about subtitles now.  Out of sync, scenes behind the action, mistakes of all kinds - I can see that a live event is tricky, typing as you hear it, but what's the excuse when it's the nightly news?  The reader is using a teleprompter, so every item has been typed out and loaded up beforehand.  Every movie or TV programme has a written script..... how on earth can the subtitles be such bilge at times?
 
And if just one more reality TV person tells me they've been on an emotional rollercoaster, or the week's been a journey I will not be responsible for my actions.......   

[PeteGl]

Youngsters saying "like" every other word!!