'The word pedants' top 10 | It's specific, not Pacific...' blog discussion.

kneelbeforezod

crimson_snowflake wrote: »

"Could/should of"
All the people I work with, even very senior and well-educated people, pronounce et cetera as "ek-cetera".
It got to a point where I had to go and check in the dictionary that I wasn't the one getting it wrong! :eek:

That reminded me - the number of people I come across who pronounce * as an "asterix" not an "asterisk"

"Asterix" is a French cartoon character...

Mynxmox

architec wrote: »

Martin
' when sat in front of a very well...'

It should be 'when sitting' and another example is 'I was sat at my desk.... in stead of 'I was sitting at my desk'. She was stood at the door.... In all these examples the speaker is implying that the action was applied to them in stead of them executing the action. My absolute pet hate indeed!

kneelbeforezod

sassysar wrote: »

"I won her at badmington"

Badminton :wall:

kneelbeforezod

I'm surprised no-one's mentioned the following yet.

One annoying phrase now commonly used (even on this web site, I'm afraid Martin! ) is "for free". Even that paragon of the English language the BBC are now using it.

A transaction indicates something being given in return for something else.

As far as I know, people don't have 'free' as a currency, they can't trade in it or store it anywhere.

If anyone says this to me I tend to reply "I'll check how much free I have, then I'll come back to you"

That is all

libertino

Lollypop1234 wrote: »

One that has recently stunned me was the amount of people in our office who call a drawer a draw.

Amount of people? Did you weigh them?

I can't believe 'number' and 'amount' hasn't been brought up yet. It's such an easy one to understand too. Once you know the rule you would never get it wrong.

BrooksideTim

montsie wrote: »

"To" instead of "too" as in... "me too",grammer instead of grammar and definately instead of definitely.
Ooooo it makes me feel all itchy.

Oh yes, 'definately'! I am guilty of ranting on other forums about that spelling.

There is definitely only one way of spell 'definitely' and it is definitely not 'definately'. Look for the 'finite' in the correct spelling.

It must be one of the commonest spelling mistakes on forums and drives me to ranting.

JimmyTheWig

firstinflight wrote: »

Sorry, but I, and many people I work with regularly "give 110%", in that we work beyond our capacity, we put in effort that is disproportionate and unsustainable, and we get no thanks for doing so.

Sort of depends what you are giving 110% of.
You can give 110% of what you used to give.
You can give 110% of what your job description asks of you.
You can give 110% of what a colleague gives.
But you can't give 110% of what you can give.

[Unless, that is, you can give nothing. In which case you can give 110%!]

Barter

Mynxmox wrote: »

architec wrote: »

... in stead of them executing the action. My absolute pet hate indeed!

...and one of my pet hates is the use of "them doing something" instead (not usually in stead, although it makes sense) of their doing ...

JimmyTheWig

damncat wrote: »

In adverts, an impossible percentage of people agreed the product was superior; 79% of people....and at the bottom it says (in tiny letters) 106 people surveyed.

If 84 of those 106 people agreed, then I'd say it was 79%. It's perfectly reasonable to round to a whole percentage point.
As long as the number surveyed was 100 or more you can have any whole number percentage agreeing.

Neil_of_Stevenage

Whatever happened to the word "did"? Football commentators seem to be the worst culprits:-

"Like what he done......"

"Went" is another example:-

"He done and gone scored........"

It's no wonder our kids speak like they do.