Ask Lemmy

When people formulate questions as statements, because it throws me out of my reading flow ha ing to correct my inner voice.

None. Prescriptivism isn't how the world actually works.

I do wonder what the second "is" in "the thing is, is that" means. Presumably, there's a logical answer for the speakers.

I understand it's controversial, but people who don't put the final comma in a list before "and" which then groups the final two items as one erroneously.

Also, when people put a space before a comma. I'm not sure why they do that, but it's cemented in some people's brains who speak fluent English from childhood onward.

A wall of text with no punctuation.

When people pretend they cannot understand a sentence becuse of a grammatical error.

If you honestly can't parse out what a person is trying to say because they left out a comma or misspelled a word or God forbid used the wrong "their" perhaps you need to work on reading skills.

You do something ON purpose or BY accident, you don't do anything ON accident!

'Who' Vs 'whom'.

Answer the question with 'he' Vs 'him' and match the 'm's is an easy rule of thumb.

He went to the park: who went to the park?

You called him: Whom did you call?

I understand why it's falling out of usage, as the strong SVO eliminates the need for accusatives, I wouldn't be surprised if 'him' and 'her' go away next. Knowing and using 'whom' sure helped me with the '-n' affix when learning Esperanto though, also fuck '-n' signed: English speakers. Replace the word with whom, him or her and if it's clumsy you don't need the -n.

Now, if I could just wrap my head around 'si' Vs 'li', 'ŝi' and 'ri'. Or, a solid rule of thumb, that would be so nice. I promise I'm not a toddler, I just talk like one.

🎵Whom ya gonna call? Ghostbusters!!!🎵

I'm sorry

I get hung up on i.e. vs e.g. I'm not sure this counts as grammar though... I also understand the meaning is not very known so many people confuse the two but I wish it was overall well understood so that the message is very clear.

E.g. is used when enumerating examples, it doesn't have to include all possibilities. Like saying "for example..."

I.e. is to demonstrate exactly what we are talking about. It's like saying "by that I mean this".

This cafe

I mean I try not to be a dick about spelling and grammar and stuff these days, but come on!

Abberant apostrophes (and missing ones).

Sentences that miss out words for no reason: e.g. "A couple things" vs. "A couple of things".

Confusing envy and jealousy.

The above is a personal list; I don't get judgemental about others' grammar but I do cringe internally.

Resistance to shifting grammar annoys me.

Educated linguists know really well that language changes over time. It is natural and expected. There are also living valid variations of grammar outside standardized "book" grammar.

People who are zero educated just go with whatever.

People who are half educated juuuust enough to be smartasses but not enough to be smart will say shit like "I don't know, can you?" in response to "Can I go to the bathroom". Or pretend an emphasized negation - aka double negative - can be interpreted as a positive.

Mine is petty, but is due to having an internal voice when I read. When commonly used words are misspelled, like using loose instead of lose, I 'hear' it pronounced as spelled and it drives me nuts. Homophones like their and there don't annoy me nearly as much.

I also mispronounce words learned from reading that don't follow normal phonetic patterns that I'm used to, like melee, so I do understand why people mix up loose and lose. It is still painful to read.

I actually came across one of mine in this thread where someone was talking about an unrelated one of theirs: The plural of a word that ends with "st" is "sts", not also "st". If you write it like that because that's how you say it, it's because you're also saying it wrong.

Some of mine in no particular order:

• Comma splices.
• Using apostrophes to make abbreviations plural. It's UFOs, not UFO's. This goes for decades, too. It's 1920s, not 1920's.
• Putting punctuation in the wrong place when parentheticals are involved (like this.) (Or like this).
• Same for quotations. Programmers in particular seem averse to putting punctuation on the inside where it usually belongs.
• Mixing up insure, ensure, and assure.
• Using 'that' where 'who' is more appropriate. For example, "People that don't use their blinkers are annoying."

Pronouncing familiar as fermiliar.

"What" and "which" being used interchangeably.

People who use "can" to mean either "can" OR "can't" and expect you to work out what they mean from context.

I absolutely detest the practice of saying the "the proper nouns of the world," i.e the Tom Brady's of the world. Or the Empire State buildings of the world. First off, it's a proper noun. The implication of a proper noun is there is only one specific instance. Second, that's diminishing to the proper noun used by lowering that status to the mean. Last, it's usually used in a sports context to unnecessarily group up a bunch of players even though we already know the context of why they're being grouped up for comparison. It's just fucking dumb. It really grinds my gears.

Whilst