Should of, could of but in the end just couldn't

wigglebeena

OTOH let us admit to our own ****-ups with the beautiful language. I once used the word 'epitome' with, erm, three syllables. And that was in a university tutorial...

beedeedee

I hate it when people say "Haytch" for the letter H - instead of "aitch".......my old professor used to say it as well and it drove me mad as I never liked to correct him!

vyle

I think I've found a nice spot in this forum to curl up and sleep warmly at night. I agree with every single post that I've read in this thread. I'm glad that proper use of English has not been forgotten by some people.

At work, I'm often called in to proof read my colleagues' emails when they send them to customers to catch any (and often that's many) glaring spelling and grammatical errors.

I'm really paranoid that I'll have made a stupid mistake in this post now...

wigglebeena

Speaking of common usage, when did the good old hyphen get replaced with the 'em-dash'? (If you don't know what I'm on about, check any American blog by an aspiring writer, they're always on about it.) My own English lessons in schoolly days were a bit wanting (I don't think my teacher had got to CSE level herself), so no doubt someone's going to come along and point out that that has always been the correct format...

MarzipanFish

thistledome wrote: »

Has anybody else noticed how often people write, "lose" nowadays when they mean "loose"?

If you mean the other way round then yes!
I was probably guilty of it when i was at school though.

I noticed that word sometimes makes hyphens longer but i didn't know why.

noapron

With me it's apostrophes - and I just can't bring myself to use text shortforms when I text. I am the dreadful woman who used to send her then boyfriend's loveletters back - corrected! then I realised he was dyslexic .... quite surprised he didn't throw me off a cliff ... .

MissGolightly

beedeedee wrote: »

I hate it when people say "Haytch" for the letter H - instead of "aitch".......my old professor used to say it as well and it drove me mad as I never liked to correct him!

I have always been taught to say haytch. Where I live (NI) Protestants say aitch, Catholics say haitch. Ridiculous I know, but it is a habit of a lifetime, and I feel that I am making up for all the dropped h's by those English with their ouse's and otel's!!

shopaholic2

This "of" instead of "have" buge me so much, we had parents evening recently, and my 13 yr old daughter was horrified when I discussed this with her English teacher, I told him it was a massive bug bear of mine, "in the 1970's they would of had....."
"Mary woke to find that her cat had run away, she should of checked the neighbours house"
AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

I said to him "how can you give her such high grades for her work when she is doing this???"
Apparently they are not allowed to point things like this out, so how the hell do our children learn then?
Anyway, suffice to say, My daughter wouldn't speak to me for days, .

faithcecilia

I used to invariably spell future wrong, until an English teacher at school told me that the way I spelt it was French for fart - never made the same mistake since!

Aitch annoys me too, as does debt when people mean debt.

That said, I am guilty of spelling definitely wrong, spelling has never been my forte:o

pinkduvetdiva

I can't bear it when shops sell apple's, grape's or especially tomato's instead of tomatoes!
Get's on my nerve's....... :mad: