These simple grammar and design mistakes bother us. What annoys you?

In reply to jharry3 :

I'm with you on decimated!

I’ll give you one that irks me to no end: Needless to say.

If it’s needless to say, why are you saying it? 

Help me with this one. In a lot of aircraft books, I see plural machine gun referred to correctly as machine guns, but plural cannon referred to as...cannon.

"The Spitfire MKIIb had 4 .303 machine guns and 2 20mm cannon." Any guess as to why some authors do/did this?

TJL (Forum Supporter) said:

I Don't Know Why Some People Capitalize The First Letter In Ever Word Of A Sentence. It Takes A Good Amount Of Extra Work And It Looks Silly. 

After years of wondering this very thing, I have at least a partial explanation - some software automatically translates ALL CAPS POSTING into Title Case Posts.

But that aside, there are still people Who randomly Capitalize stray words throughout their Posts.  A few years ago, there was a certain poster here of a certain age who did that.

I swear I'm going to hunt down and smack the next person that "needs to sale" something or has to "put it up for sell". How can you mess that up?

Appleseed said:

"An historic..."  This does not follow the rules. 

A dog.

An apple.

That's British usage.  They use "an" in front of H-words like "hospital".

pres589 (djronnebaum) said:

Also the Oxford Comma; hot, or not?  I say hot.

Sorry that our pubs don't use it! We're in the camp of erring on the side of fewer commas. Have been, I believe, since before I started here. But I'm not opposed to the Oxford comma.

In reply to Steve_Jones :

"Needs to sale" is truly painful to read.

Ooh, I am going to like this thread more than the Rally Videos thread!

"Decimated" interests me, in that loanwords do not always bring their original meaning with them to their new language.  Japanese is really fun for this because they seem to borrow the word, but then play fast and loose with the meaning, to where a speaker of the word's original language may not recognize it.

"Decimated" means something different in English than it does in Latin.  If I am speaking English, it means "completely destroyed".  If I am speaking Latin, then call some priests because some supernatural unpleasantness is about to go down 

I agree that "incredible" SHOULD mean "not credible" instead of what it does seem to mean, but language is created by people who, by and large, ignore the rules anyway.  If I said "Subaru drops the BRZ", does that mean they released a new model, or does it mean they stopped production?  Think carefully, and remember that there are no right answers 

My pet grammar peeve is the Greengrocer's Apostrophe.

There is no word in English that is made plural by adding 'S to it.  None. 

I don't care if it ends in a vowel or not.  It's fine of you don't always remember whether it should be a plain S (yoyos) or ES (potatoes).

But it is never 'S.

Honestly I can't think of any grammatical errors that really bother me. Words are all made up anyway.

Now math or scientific errors bother the hell out of me.

triumph7 said:

When did hanged replace hung?  There are a few similar to that.

Ooh, this is another pet peeve of mine. When talking about the method of execution, it's always been "hanged."

pres589 (djronnebaum) said:

Can we *please* start an argument about one space behind a period or two?  I'm solidly in the two spaces camp myself, not that it matters, of course.  

Also the Oxford Comma; hot, or not?  I say hot.

I can start AND end this argument pretty quick. No major style guide recommends two spaces. The final holdout was 2019 and it was like the American Pediatric Association or something like that. Or maybe Psychological Association. something with a P. Anyway, the majors (AP, Chicago, etc.), moved away from it loooong ago. Basically the age of word processors killed the double space.

Duke said:

My pet grammar peeve is the Greengrocer's Apostrophe.

There is no word in English that is made plural by adding 's to it.  None. 

I don't care if it ends in a vowel or not.  It's fine of you don't always remember whether it should be a plain s (yoyos) or es (potatoes).

But it is never 's.

 

This, and its/it's.

I have softened on this since getting a smartphone, such as the one I am using now, and finding that the keyboard software will helpfully insert an apostrophe in a plural word.  And, it does not believe in the existence of "its".  It always takes three tries to type it.

Conversely, it will remove the apostrophe from something that is intended to be possessive.  The camshaft's lobe.  The spring's rate.

I am willing to accept that apostrophical faults are due to technology.

Sarah Young said:

pres589 (djronnebaum) said:

Also the Oxford Comma; hot, or not?  I say hot.

Sorry that our pubs don't use it! We're in the camp of erring on the side of fewer commas. Have been, I believe, since before I started here. But I'm not opposed to the Oxford comma.

Yeah our main rules have always been "what makes the reading experience the most clear and enjoyable, while also adhering to actual rules."

So we don't really incorporate Oxford commas as a matter of course, but they will occasionally show up if one does meaningful work toward increasing the clarity of a sentence. Typically, though, a sentence needing an Oxford comma could be restructured to be even more clear and easy to digest by just reworking it so you don't need the Oxford at all.

David S. Wallens said:

I’ll give you one that irks me to no end: Needless to say.

If it’s needless to say, why are you saying it? 

Gotta hit that word count, baby

JG Pasterjak said:

pres589 (djronnebaum) said:

Can we *please* start an argument about one space behind a period or two?  I'm solidly in the two spaces camp myself, not that it matters, of course. 

I can start AND end this argument pretty quick. No major style guide recommends two spaces.  Basically the age of word processors killed the double space.

Don't care.  I literally could not care less (see what I did there?).

It's more readable with a single-space break between words, a double-space break between sentences, and a line break between paragraphs.  It's a consistent, tiered system.

JG Pasterjak said:

Typically, though, a sentence needing an Oxford comma could be restructured to be even more clear and easy to digest by just reworking it so you don't need the Oxford at all.

I respectfully disagree.  If you're listing things, which is typically the reason for needing an Oxford comma, convoluting the sentence just to avoid the extra comma seems silly to me.

It's like Winston Churchill saying "Up with this, I will not put," just to avoid ending the sentence with a preposition.

JG Pasterjak said:

 Typically, though, a sentence needing an Oxford comma could be restructured to be even more clear and easy to digest by just reworking it so you don't need the Oxford at all.

Or as I like to say it, "that sentence needs to be taken out back and shot." 

I don't know if it appears much in written grammar, but this bugs the berk out of me:

"Do you want to come with?"

With what?  With you?  With a big grin?  With a case of beer?

Finish your damn sentence.

Appleseed said:

Help me with this one. In a lot of aircraft books, I see plural machine gun referred to correctly as machine guns, but plural cannon referred to as...cannon.

"The Spitfire MKIIb had 4 .303 machine guns and 2 20mm cannon." Any guess as to why some authors do/did this?

I have seen references to "cannon" being the correct plural, or at least the accepted one, from the time of wooden sailing ships, so perhaps it is a relic of that.

As far as I know, only the USAF has bothered to make aircraft with proper broadsides, and not just little plinking defensive weapons.

Irregardless

dethaw

Some of my favorites have been mentioned. 

I absolutely detest the "needs fixed" phraseology.  It needs TO BE fixed.  It could need fixing, of course. 

I'm guilty of this one myself, but foreign phrases should be italicized.  For example, when you're enjoying someone else's troubles, you're experiencing Schadenfreude.

The word is "you".  Not just a letter.  Same for the word "are".

When speaking, something about hearing the word "vehicle" pronounced as "vee-HICK-uhl" makes me insane.

Oxford commas should be required by law.

Two spaces after a period.  No discussion.

It's hard to read something where the author uses the same word to start sentences or paragraphs.

They're/their/there, its/it's, and their friends should be used properly.  Autocorrect seems to change those on me without my consent sometimes, so I have to go back and change "it's" to "its" when appropriate.

Oh.  And "data" is plural.

jharry3 said:

Decimated (which means reduce by 10%), instead of devastated, for when something is completely destroyed.

Incredible (which means not trust worthy) instead of extraordinary.

Missing Oxford comma.

And, in the age of spell check, there is no excuse for misspelled words.  

 

Spell check came with its moronic friend autocorrect though, which likes to make sentences unintelligible, and also insert the wrong spelling of the word you want to use. 

Although I also stand behind my longstanding opinion that Americans as a whole are getting dumber and dumber and just force the language because they think it sounds right. 

Color instead of colour

Neighbor instead of neighbour

Favorite instead of favourite

Bunch of damned colonials ,too lazy to spell complete words.