Hey everyone!
I am sending this post out for two reasons. The first is that I am really annoyed by these errors that people make on a daily basis when using our language and it just seems to be more and more acceptable every day. The second reason is that I am taking part in a writing project being held over at ProBlogger.
Now I am not an English major but I think that some of the following can be easily avoided if people just take a little time to read what they have read written (Thanks Jagular for pointing that out). Here are my top 5 language related peeves:
1. Abusing apostrophes.
Have you seen this before? ‘Now on sale two apple’s for the price of one‘. Why are you selling the apple’s possessions? The apostrophe here is being used in the possessive sense. It implies that there is something that belongs to the apple and that is what is on sale. The correct way to make apple plural is to just add s to the end. No apostrophe needed. The best rule I have heard so far is when in doubt leave it out when it comes to the apostrophe.
2. Ex cetera.
People, people! The correct thing to say is et cetera. There is no X in there. Enough said.
3. Me and him got the pizza.
Oh I am rocking in a corner after reading this one. The correct thing to say is He and I got the pizza. If you are the subject of the sentence then you would need to use I to represent yourself. Therefore you can say I got the pizza. If the other person is the subject of the sentence then you would need to use He because that would be the only correct word to make the sentence make sense. Then you could say He got the pizza. Him got the pizza is wrong and so is Me got the pizza.
4. Its hot outside.
What? Its is the possessive form and should be used with a subject and an object. Therefore you can correctly say the dog licked its paw. It’s is a contraction of It is and can be used when describing something. Therefore you would be correct when you say it’s hot outside because you would be contracting it is hot outside.
5. Abuse of amount and number.
This one is simple but I really do not know how such a large number of people get it wrong. Number is used when you can count individual items like the number of people in the room wearing glasses. Amount is used for cases where you cannot distinguish individual units like the amount of water in the glass.
Those were my top 5 peeves for today. What bothers you about the way that people misuse language? Now I have tried to get all of the spelling and grammar in this post as correct as I can but I may have missed something that is one of YOUR pet peeves. If I did just let me know.
Feel free to make comments and suggestions.
The me and him got pizza is definitely a peeve of mine as well.
top peeves appreciate it..
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I could go on and on about my grammar and language peeves…#1 being the non-use and misuse of contractions. I find it interesting that people in different countries, where English is not their primary language, speak better English than many U.S. citizens.
That might be because they learn the correct way in class and then only know that way. I am sure that people who speak other languages may do the same thing in their native tongue.