Correct Spelling and Grammar

ZiggyStar

norm wrote:

Bring Versus Take

my mom pointed it out to me once and now it drives me crazy!! :twisted:


http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/br ... -take.aspx

Huh? Who doesn't know that!!? :? I thought everyone knew that! My 7 year old niece knows that!

ZiggyStar

Indifference71 wrote:

Rhinocerous Surprise wrote:

Seeing "I would of", or "could of", or anything like that, actually makes me collapse into a shivering wreck of pure rage.

This one drives me absolutely fucking insane.

My friend is a teacher (grade 5) and she sent me an engagement party invite:

As you would of already heard, we got engaged

And she's teaching our youth!

catefrances

TravisTheSky wrote:

Why has the word they become singular?
"If a person does not vote, they can't complain."
"Someone gets behind the wheel. They have been drinking."
The correct pronoun is he. He can't complain. He has been drinking. Is "they" the politically correct term for an individual, because "he" is too masculine? I can say "He or she" in about a second. It's three easy syllables!

Let's not forget alot.

he/she is only the correct pronoun when the sex of the subject has been identified. when the subject is nonspecific then how can the pronoun, plural or singular, be??

in your example of "If a person does not vote, they can't complain." , the they pronoun is third person. im not talking about me not voting, im not talking about you not voting, im talking about an undetermined and nonspecific someone else. therefore the use of the pronoun they is acceptable.

_

Thank God I'm not the only one!!

All this stuff drives me absolutely nuts and, worse, it really worries me. How can grown adults not know correct grammar? I know college students planning to go to med school who talk like this - because they actually think it's correct! Even if they just don't care, I still think that's a problem. Plus, it's just painful to read and hear. I actually have to correct it in my mind when I read incorrect grammar.

For the record, I can understand typos, misspellings (I suck at spelling), and a few differences of opinion ("they" as plural, for instance, which I think is never correct) - and there are a few things that I somehow never learned in school (take vs. bring, for instance). But I think we've reached a new level of grammatical incompetence.

I went to a spa recently and the brochures were so filled with grammatical errors, formatting inconsistencies, etc. that I would have decided to not go there if it weren't for the fact that I had a gift certificate. It was so painful and I felt so bad for the owner, who actually did provide good services, that I offered to revise the brochures for free.

Here's another one that irks me: "Your call will be answered in the order it was received." Anyone else have a problem with this sentence?

catefrances

scb wrote:

...
For the record, I can understand typos, misspellings (I suck at spelling), and a few differences of opinion ("they" as plural, for instance, which I think is never correct) - and there are a few things that I somehow never learned in school (take vs. bring, for instance). But I think we've reached a new level of grammatical incompetence. ...

bob: where did those dogs go??

jenny: they ran around the corner


how is they as a plural never correct???

_

catefrances wrote:

scb wrote:

...
For the record, I can understand typos, misspellings (I suck at spelling), and a few differences of opinion ("they" as plural, for instance, which I think is never correct) - and there are a few things that I somehow never learned in school (take vs. bring, for instance). But I think we've reached a new level of grammatical incompetence. ...

bob: where did those dogs go??

jenny: they ran around the corner


how is they as a plural never correct???

Haha... SINGULAR... I meant "they" as SINGULAR is never correct (in my opinion). Figures I'd screw that up in a thread about people screwing up what they write. What can I say? It's really late here and I'm exhausted. :oops:

Fifthelement

scb wrote:

Haha... SINGULAR... I meant "they" as SINGULAR is never correct (in my opinion). Figures I'd screw that up in a thread about people screwing up what they write. What can I say? It's really late here and I'm exhausted. :oops:

I did that in a thread on the Porch as well. An amazingly kind person, with a great sense of humour, thoughtfully sent me a pm to let me know. After I stopped laughing, I quickly went and corrected it. :oops:

Every time I contribute to this thread, I'm thinking, "those in glass houses . . .." :?

dunkman

pearljgirl2010 wrote:

I know I'm not the only spelling and grammar dork out there....I mean, I know I don't always say or type things right myself, but this particular phrase prompted me to start a thread:

"I could care less"

Am I the only person that gets irritated when people say this?? it's "I COULDN'T care less!!"

think about it--it just makes sense....I know it HAS to drive other people crazy besides me, right???

it doth drive the dunkman insaneth

pearljgirl2010

dunkman wrote:

it doth drive the dunkman insaneth

AHHH!! I love it!

Who Princess

Well, it's one thing to be tired or in a hurry and misspell something, post the wrong word, or leave a word out. It's just a message board and people will either figure out what you meant or (lucky you) point out your error. But to actually have something in print with those kinds of mistakes just blows my mind. Our local snoozepaper seems to be full of errors every day. I guess they're not 100% the paper's fault; today I saw an obituary that had the sentence: "He had a rye wit." :?

Back to those pesky apostrophes. How often have you seen our new President's name written as O'Bama? With all the debates about his birthplace, I never heard any discussion about Ireland. :roll:

ZiggyStar

I've also noticed a lot of people spell et cetera as ect instead of etc. I think it's because some people pronounce it excetra....

Lizard

I always hear ""drive safe" when it should be "safely"--right? :oops:
it bothers me!

justam

pearljgirl2010 wrote:

I know I'm not the only spelling and grammar dork out there....I mean, I know I don't always say or type things right myself, but this particular phrase prompted me to start a thread:

"I could care less"

Am I the only person that gets irritated when people say this?? it's "I COULDN'T care less!!"

think about it--it just makes sense....I know it HAS to drive other people crazy besides me, right???

I admit that I'm kind of a snob when it comes to bad writing. It makes me cringe a little to see "your" when people mean "you're" or when they write "could of" when they mean "could have."

Since education to high school is free in the US, it just makes some people seem careless when they speak, spell, and write simple ideas poorly. :geek:

TravisTheSky

catefrances wrote:

he/she is only the correct pronoun when the sex of the subject has been identified. when the subject is nonspecific then how can the pronoun, plural or singular, be??

in your example of "If a person does not vote, they can't complain." , the they pronoun is third person. im not talking about me not voting, im not talking about you not voting, im talking about an undetermined and nonspecific someone else. therefore the use of the pronoun they is acceptable.

I must have been taught a different grammar lesson than you. If there are regional or generational variations, that could explain the problem. I learned that the singular pronoun "he" is used to refer to a person of unspecified gender. It is also used when the person is known to be male. "She" is only used when a person is known to be of female gender. "He" is the default word to be used for a hypothetical individual, and the undetermined and nonspecific someone from your quote. To you, it seems wrong to assign gender to this person. To me, it seems wrong to make him plural.

When I was a child, the huge majority of all books and printed materials used the word "he" almost constantly. In my teens, the phrase "he or she" was more acceptable. Then it became common for books to alternate between both "he" and "she." (For example, a child care book would use "he" for the subject of the first chapter, "she" for the second chapter.)

In the past couple of years, I've noticed "they" replacing "he or she" in pop culture. So far, I have not seen a professionally printed book use "they" as a singular... But it's probably just a matter of time.

catefrances

TravisTheSky wrote:

catefrances wrote:

he/she is only the correct pronoun when the sex of the subject has been identified. when the subject is nonspecific then how can the pronoun, plural or singular, be??

in your example of "If a person does not vote, they can't complain." , the they pronoun is third person. im not talking about me not voting, im not talking about you not voting, im talking about an undetermined and nonspecific someone else. therefore the use of the pronoun they is acceptable.

I must have been taught a different grammar lesson than you. If there are regional or generational variations, that could explain the problem. I learned that the singular pronoun "he" is used to refer to a person of unspecified gender. It is also used when the person is known to be male. "She" is only used when a person is known to be of female gender. "He" is the default word to be used for a hypothetical individual, and the undetermined and nonspecific someone from your quote. To you, it seems wrong to assign gender to this person. To me, it seems wrong to make him plural.

When I was a child, the huge majority of all books and printed materials used the word "he" almost constantly. In my teens, the phrase "he or she" was more acceptable. Then it became common for books to alternate between both "he" and "she." (For example, a child care book would use "he" for the subject of the first chapter, "she" for the second chapter.)

In the past couple of years, I've noticed "they" replacing "he or she" in pop culture. So far, I have not seen a professionally printed book use "they" as a singular... But it's probably just a matter of time.

its not about assigning wrong gender... its about the use of they as a third person plural pronoun in a situation where an indefinite article, in this instance a, is used to identify the membership of a group. the person in our example is non specific, we could be talking about any person who does not vote, not a particular person who has already been identified.

dunkman

why does this thread title have a capitalised C, S and G yet the 'and' is in lower case?

Dissidentman

dunkman wrote:

why does this thread title have a capitalised C, S and G yet the 'and' is in lower case?

As long as you don't dangle your participle, it's all good.

ZiggyStar

dunkman wrote:

why does this thread title have a capitalised C, S and G yet the 'and' is in lower case?

DeLukin

Dissidentman wrote:

As long as you don't dangle your participle, it's all good.

I hate it when my participle dangles.

HeavyHands

There's some real grammar love going on in here. May I offer a suggestion? When clarifying specific rules of grammar it would be helpful (for those of us who haven't been in an English classroom in over a decade, or those of us who don't pay attention in English class because we are too busy texting things like "2g2f... lulz") if we could give specific example sentences displaying the incorrect and correct usage of the rule.

Just a thought... anyone else?