My Biggest Pet Peeve: Spelling & Grammar Errors
I use the Internet daily…it’s a part of life for my job, my hobbies, and just to dink around on for a bit. Can’t go a day without visiting the Drudge Report, Digg, The Daily News, News-Leader.com (of course now that I’m working for them), Oregon Media Insiders and Jude 2.
I also can’t, unfortunately, go a day without seeing a bunch of common spelling errors across the Internet, and for some reason they really get on my nerves. For example, if someone is talking about how someone was involved in a car accident and how it messed them up, they’ll type something like this:
“Joe got in a wreck and it effected his hearing pretty bad.”
Or how about swapping it’s and its:
“Its a real fun time playing football. Our team celebrated it’s 20th year today, in fact.”
And finally, one of my favorites, misspelling definitely:
“I definatly agree that President Bush is the worst president of the 21st century so far.”
STUFF LIKE THIS MAKES ME MAD! Go back to the third grade, do not pass go and definitely do not collect $200.
Anyone else out there annoyed by horrible spelling and grammar usage? If so, give me some rather humorous examples.
8 Comments, Comment or Ping
Daniel Browning
The first rule of grammar critique is that the critic will make a grammar error. Who will be the first to find Chris’?
Sometimes effect will be misused in a way that can still be grammatically correct, and the unintended meaning is very funny; e.g., “the legislator’s actions will effect many children.”
One that makes me laugh most often is the mis-use of literally as an intensifier, such as in “I was so angry, I literally exploded”. Every time it’s misused I literally dwell on the outlandish depiction.
Another mistake that stands out is the use of quotation marks as an intensifier (notice a trend?). For example, ‘I would “really” love it if people took a little care in their writing.’ What’s funny is that it has the exact opposite affect that the writer intended.
May 7th, 2008
Brad Haller
YES! And when you’re in journalism, it makes your cringe on a daily basis!! How many times must we shout into our TV sets, or scream when we see a poorly written news release/poster/ad. What do we do Chris!?!?
-B
May 7th, 2008
Dave
It drives me bloody nuts too ! Mind you, I do try to see the funny side of bad grammar. The use of double negatives can be amusing, so that if someone says “I don’t want none”, you can give them some !! My partner and I have a great time driving on motorways and looking for misused apostrophes on lorries - we saw one van advertising “Iron and Steel’s” - Steel’s what ??
(Regardless of the spelling, I definitely agree that G Bush is the worst US President ever !! How can you Americans put up with the man ?)
Another example is “He did real good” - to whom ? I could rant on and on but I won’t !!
May 7th, 2008
Sybil
The misuse of your for you’re, now that literally makes me “explode”!
Sorry Dan, I just had to!
May 7th, 2008
chuckmo
Don’t you know that the Internet’s foundation consists entirely of spelling and grammatical errors? Without them, the Internet would become sentient.
May 7th, 2008
Paully
I kant stand gramer erorrs.
May 7th, 2008
Jason B.
Forget al this speling stuph. It iz to hard four me too do.
-Jas
May 11th, 2008
Mireya
Yeah, they make my head asplode.
May 13th, 2008
Reply to “My Biggest Pet Peeve: Spelling & Grammar Errors”