Grammar Pet Peeve

[Schultz]

as a kid who was drug thru the dirt of ( thru through? see? )

Most don't know the history of "thru" and "tho," etc.
https://www.history.com/news/theodore-r ... ontroversy

[RollyShed]

"as a kid who was dragged through the dirt", not drugged, unless he was drugged and then dragged.

Other words, though USA use simplified spelling, they don't make sense if pronounced correctly. "colour" is pronounced with the "our" (or we do).

'...“check” in place of “cheque.”....' (note the quote mark in the wrong place after the stop, second cheque) so he "checked the cheque" or he "checked the check"? Two different things but the requirement to make their spelling the same.

Someone was mentioning words with the same spelling but different meanings and here is a case of requiring it in USA.

[antikythera]

I know I make grammatical errors quite often, I think in Welsh and then type in the English equivalent. With LibreOffice I use the inbuilt spelling and grammar tools for important documents.

On the internet, I could start using grammarly but consider that lazier still than not attempting to correct mistakes myself.

You can have drug in the context of dragged. eg. something the cat drug in.

[GS3]

Things that are logically wrong in any language:

1. "Like me" instead of "like I". It should be: "someone like I (am)". The "am" can be omitted, but "I" is the subject, not the object.

2. Double negatives intended to mean a single negative: "I never have no money" means I always have money, not that I never have (any) money.

This second error is very frequent in the Dutch dialect (Brabants) that's being spoken where I live: "nooit geen", and the very worst of them all (which is so badly wrong that it becomes sort of cute): "dè witte oit noit nie".

Pardon him. Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.”

― George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra

Double negatives are not "logically wrong in any language" any more than calling "cheese" "fromage" is wrong. Language, grammar, vocabulary are all matters of convention. If the speakers of a language all agree that double negatives reinforce each other then that is the way they will interpret it.

Don't make the mistake of thinking the rules of your language are laws of nature. They are not. They are just a matter of convention.

Even mathematical notation is a matter of convention and that is why you get those questions where different people/programs/calculators give different results to the same question. Because they are using different conventions.

https://www.insider.com/viral-math-prob ... net-2019-7

Math problem: 8 ÷ 2(2 + 2) = ?
Some people got 16 as the answer, and some people got 1.
The confusion has to do with the difference between modern and historic interpretations of the order of operations.
The correct answer today is 16. An answer of 1 would have been correct 100 years ago.

the order of operations, L-R or R-L, is a matter of convention.
8 / (2 * 4) =1
(8 /2) * 4 = 16

[MrEen]

https://www.insider.com/viral-math-prob ... net-2019-7

Math problem: 8 ÷ 2(2 + 2) = ?
Some people got 16 as the answer, and some people got 1.
The confusion has to do with the difference between modern and historic interpretations of the order of operations.
The correct answer today is 16. An answer of 1 would have been correct 100 years ago.

the order of operations, L-R or R-L, is a matter of convention.
8 / (2 * 4) =1
(8 /2) * 4 = 16

Really? It wasn't that long ago I learned it should be 1. But that was in Canada, so who knows. 1 is probably metric for 16.

EDIT: Wow! I'm wrong, that not what I learned!

[farkas]

In 1956? That was a horrible year for Hungary....

Yes. The fall of that year started out with hope but the situation turned very dark quickly.

Nagyon köszönöm a becenevem fordítását. Az "ablak mentes" egy osztály elegánsabb, mint amilyen az én korlátozott "ablak nelkül" lenne.

Szivessen.

Your grammar is fine, but English is clearly not your first language. I would be pulling my hair out if you were a native speaker and you got straight A's in your high school English classes. By the way I am not an English teacher; I just wanted the editing practice.

My best grade ever was a B+

Someone was mentioning words with the same spelling but different meanings and here is a case of requiring it in USA.

Check out the link
http://www.magickeys.com/books/riddles/words.html
It gives some examples of heteronyms, homographs, homophones, and homonyms. They are pain in the head for someone learning English.

[farkas]

While reading
https://www.history.com/news/theodore-r ... ontroversy
I came across this paragraph,
"In a September 1906 speech, Twain argued that the reforms would also help new immigrants assimilate. Traditional spelling, he maintained, “keeps them back and damages their citizenship for years until they learn to spell the language, if they ever do learn.”"

From personal experience, correct spelling was one of the hardest things to master. Learned to spell by reading a lot and rote learning. Is there a set of rules for spelling, like the rules of grammar?

[Portreve]

When I was working with students at the local college, here are the most common grammar mistakes I found coming from students. The first one on the list is pretty much unique to the ESL crowd.

The student would try to use their own native language's grammar rules in an English sentence.

• The student would write things in passive instead of active form.
Example: The baseball was caught by me. Should be: I caught the baseball.

• Failure to comprehend the proper use of commas (and, to a lesser extent, semicolons and full colons).

• Trying to make a sentence out of a dependent clause.
Example: Because John had to go to work that day. This sentence contains a cause, but it does not contain an effect.

[farkas]

When I was working with students at the local college, here are the most common grammar mistakes I found coming from the ESL crowd:

The student would try to use their own native language's grammar rules in an English sentence.

The student would write things in passive instead of active form.
Example: The baseball was caught by me. Should be: I caught the baseball.

Failure to comprehend the proper use of commas (and, to a lesser extent, semicolons and full colons).

Again from personal experience. If you are in your mid teens or older the syntax of your native language is already ingrained. It is a habit. We all know how hard it is to change a habit. Sometimes, I still have problems with the proper usage punctuation marks.

[RollyShed]

Have you noticed the writers (here too) who use "then" instead of "than"?
Example -
"I always heard windows is more user friendly then linux." and this should have been "I have always heard that Windows was more user friendly than Linux."

However, and I am always quoting it, "Never proof your own work." OK, OK, that's my excuse for mistakes.....

[farkas]

Another inconsistency in spelling is the way the plural of a noun is determined. In most cases you add an 's" or "es" to the end of the word. However there are exceptions. Like the word 'fish', which is both singular and plural. It is a group of irregular plural nouns. Sometimes 'fishes' is used. In mobster movies they have the line "He is sleeping with the fishes".
Too many exceptions to the rules
https://www.learnersdictionary.com/qa/I ... ural-nouns.
Just for fun lets throw in a collective nouns, some make sense, school of fish and a gaggle of geese. But a murder of crows and host of sparrows do not. If the sparrows were hosting the crows would they be having a murder party to mourn someone who is about sleep with the fishes?
Some collective nouns are amusing but they can be very confusing if you don't know the etymology of it.
Just more pain in the head for someone with ESL.
I'm also curious about how many responders to this post, or maybe in the LM forums, have English as their second language. By observing avatars in LM forums, who display their location, it appears that LM forums are global. That is just in the English part of it. Fortunately LM forums has a Languages subforum for non English speakers.

[GS3]

Have you noticed the writers (here too) who use "then" instead of "than"?

That happens to me a lot and I usually catch it when I proof read but it is not a matter of making a mistake in spelling; I believe there is more than that at work, I believe it is related to how my (our) brain is wired. Many spelling mistakes are only typos that can be explained by keys being next to each other on the keyboard, like i, o, u. But I believe a and e are a special case because I often interchange them when I know perfectly well what letter goes where.

I think maybe, somehow, my mind puts these two letters in a category, "wide vowel" and somehow, when I am typing fast, sometimes they get exchanged. What word it is or what language does not matter, they sometimes get hit one for the other.

I usually proof read what I type and I usually catch these typos. They are just typos, not bad spelling.

[RollyShed]

it appears that LM forums are global. That is just in the English part of it. Fortunately LM forums has a Languages subforum for non English speakers.

Though the worst writing appears to be by those who's language is English.

From Teddy Roosevelt’s Bold (But Doomed) Battle, and pointing out these words are one way or the other isn't necessarily correct either. The spelling that is not supposed to be used is used because it means something else. Here are two such words.

draft - to draw,
draught - a quantity of drink

clue - as in a crossword puzzle
clew - either the lower corner of a square sail or the after lower corner of a fore-and-aft sail.

[GS3]

use their own native language's grammar rules in an English sentence.

Ask a Chinese person "Wow, it is so late! Didn't you have lunch yet?" and a yes or no response is absolutely confusing for a foreigner.

- Yes (I had lunch)
- Yes (you are correct, I didn't have lunch yet)
- No (I did not have lunch yet)
- No (what you ask is not so, I did have lunch)

The solution is to tell them to not answer with a yes or a no, tell them to make a complete phrase.

Yes! We Have No Bananas

To reiterate, language is completely a convention.

[Moem]

Though the worst writing appears to be by those who's language is English.

'Whose'.

[Portreve]

Though the worst writing appears to be by those who's language is English.

'Whose'.

Hoose.

[GS3]

Really? It wasn't that long ago I learned it should be 1. But that was in Canada, so who knows. 1 is probably metric for 16.

EDIT: Wow! I'm wrong, that not what I learned!

To tell the truth... I can't even remember what I was taught. And I studied engineering! I think we just used parenthesis to avoid any ambiguity or confusion.

Another solution is to paste the formula into Excel and see what it says. And anyone who disagrees can go argue with Bill Gates.

[RollyShed]

Though the worst writing appears to be by those who's language is English.

'Whose'.

Thank you Moem. You have proved my previous statement "Never proof your own work."

I could say, "It was put there to see if anyone was awake.", but I must be honest and admit that, though I looked at it a couple of times, I didn't bother thinking.

[GS3]

Apostrophes are not difficult to master. If is is two words combined then there is an apostrophe, if it is a single word which cannot be divided then no apostrophe. "who's" means "who is", "it's" means "it is".

[dorsetUK]

Really? It wasn't that long ago I learned it should be 1. But that was in Canada, so who knows. 1 is probably metric for 16.

EDIT: Wow! I'm wrong, that not what I learned!

To tell the truth... I can't even remember what I was taught. And I studied engineering! I think we just used parenthesis to avoid any ambiguity or confusion.

Another solution is to paste the formula into Excel and see what it says. And anyone who disagrees can go argue with Bill Gates.

For simpler Maths, BODMAS, is a helpful acronym. Although being pedantic, it's not actually an acronym as we need to ignore the 'O'.

B = Brackets. Do what's in them first.
D = Division. Then do any of them.
M = Multiplication. Do them.
A = Addition. Their turn.
S = Subtraction. Last but not least.

Apostrophes are not difficult to master.

Just a thought - Whose' language.