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

This really is a tricky area, isn't it? A lot of the posts that have been made seem, to me, to fail to appreciate two key points:

(a) Usage and pronunciation vary from country to country and region to region. Many of the complaints are about usage which is common in the USA, but Americans have just as much right to see their usage as “correct" as someone speaking “Queen's English". As has already been pointed out, some American usage is closer to Elizabethan English and the equivalent modern British English is the one that has changed (eg, gotten). I worked in the USA for a while and eventually had to accept that if I was writing for an American audience my colleagues were right to insist, for instance, that it is U.S.A., not USA. These things are all relative.

Perhaps it would be argued that just because a particular usage is acceptable for Americans does not mean that it is acceptable to adopt the same usage in Britain. However, given the widespread influence of American culture in Britain, it is inevitable that American usage will become acceptable here.

(b) Usage and pronunciation do change over time. Many words that now have a completely accepted meaning started life centuries ago meaning something completely different. Many of the posts are about words that may have originally had one narrow meaning, but have long since become widely accepted as meaning something else (such as decimate).

As an example, I had been intending to raise the same point as another post, which is my annoyance at what I perceived as the misuse by BBC reporters of the word refute. They were using it to mean deny, whereas I had always understood it to mean disprove. There's a big difference in the two meanings. However, after looking it up, I see that both meanings are listed in some dictionaries. I think this is highly regrettable, because this means that the word refute is ambiguous and although the meaning will often be clear from the context, it could sometimes be misunderstood. Nevertheless, if both meanings are in a dictionary, who am I to insist that only one of them is acceptable?

However, these things are all subjective, because I really struggle to accept that the word literally can be used to refer to something that is figurative or metaphorical. Whether I like it or not, the word is commonly used as an intensifier added to a figurative or metaphorical description, and there will probably come a time when only a few rare pedants will remember that it used to mean "not figurative". Perhaps what sticks in the craw about this misuse is that the word is being misused to mean the exact opposite of what it does mean.

Last night's Masterchef reminded me of another one - 'amateurs' and 'ammeters'. Grr...

Raksha wrote: »

Febuary - it's FebRuary!!!

Oh, I hate this one too!!!!

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

I think the problem with "should of" comes via "should've".

No, the problem comes from people being lazy!

ShaneUK wrote: »

One of my hates is "stationary" and "stationery". The silly thing is, it is easy to get it right.

Stationary - a as in the arrival of a train
Stationery - e as in envelopes

What bugged me more though was on a recent trip to ASDA, they had a stationary aisle - so I am guessing that the stock wasn't going to move very far!! (Ironically, it was spelt incorrectly in two places, and even after making someone aware, only one of the two (the one sticking out of the shelf) was amended. The huge one over the aisle - to this day - is still incorrect 3 months on.

Others - advise / advice (I admit though - I do struggle on this one myself!)
to / too / two
their / they're / there

Yes, all of the above annoy me too. I feel right at home in this thread. :rotfl:

cse wrote: »

Last night's Masterchef reminded me of another one - 'amateurs' and 'ammeters'. Grr...

...or even worse, in my humble opinion: amat-chers

My pet hate is the confusion of me and I. Several well known radio and television sports presenters say " phone John and I with your comments". Arrrrrggggghhhh. It should be phone John and me. People also say " me and my wife went shopping. It should be. My wife and I went shopping. Subjects and objects of a sentence