Okay, time for a little levity. No sticky situations, anxious anecdotes or dicey dilemmas from the commercial writing world. Just some good old-fashioned griping – about grammar. Got the idea for this post a few weeks back when I managed to run afoul of a friend’s pet peeve by writing, “I’ll try and do _____.” Ouch.
Well. He wrote back, deservedly taking me to task, explaining in exquisite detail:
“I must say — with all due respect — I HATE when writers and others say ‘try and’ (as you’ve done here) rather than the more accurate and appropriate, ‘try to.’ ‘Try and’ suggests TWO different acts: trying something, and then something else (e.g., ‘Try and be a better person.’ So you’re saying, ‘try’ (whatever) AND ‘be a better person,’ too. Whereas ‘try to be a better person’ says precisely what you’re meaning: try to be better.”
Just getting warmed up, he continued, “Almost as bad as when 99.9% of people say ‘could’ care less, when they really mean, and should be saying ‘couldn’t’ care less.”
Voila! Blog fodder. My pet peeves? Beyond the ubiquitous “you’re/your,” “it’s/its” and “compliment/complement”? Well, I’ll let you guys tell yours, and perhaps delve a little deeper while we’re at, and maybe we’ll teach each other something new in the process.
I’ll leave you with this…
Knock-knock.
Who’s there?
To.
To who?
To whom.
What’s one of your grammatical pet peeves (one at a time, please, so we can encourage more contributions from more of you…)?
If you’re an English purist, what are your “grammatical grudges”: those things that have been accepted into the vernacular, but IYHO, should never have been?
What are some obscure/esoteric points of grammar that so many people get consistently wrong, but you know better? 😉
Any fascinating grammatical/linguistic trivia you care to share (word origins, evolution of expressions, etc.)?
Funny, Katherine! I didn’t even notice that, but see, Mark? It’s just what I was talking about. It’s how people “talk as they think.” Just a natural thing to do when one is writing conversationally…
PB
Sorry Guys, that was a little joke. I’m embarrassed about how weak it was now…
Oh, sure it was a joke…;) Seriously, I believe you, AND still think it makes for conversational writing…
PB
Off the subject, how many of you are old enough to have been vaccinated against smallpox?
You’re driving behind a delivery van and look at the sign on the back that asks, “How am I driving?”
How do I know how you’re driving? Maybe you have the wheel gripped between your teeth and are using your hands to work the accelerator and brake. Maybe you’re nearly blind and have your 5 year old son sitting on your lap telling you what’s ahead. Scary question. Best not to give it too much thought until you’re far away from that van.
My grammatical pet peeve is people who don’t appreciate the difference between grammar and usage claiming to be horrified, dismayed and disturbed by imagined violations that in fact do not break any actual rule and are perfectly good English.
I’ll cite just one source, today – Erik Wensberg’s revised edition of Wilson Follett’s “Modern American Usage” – because it is so readable, but there are plenty of other usage guides (Fowler, Garner, American Heritage to name a few) that agree with the following:
“A prejudice lingers from a bygone time that sentences should not begin with *and.* The supposed rule is without foundation in grammar, logic, or art.”
“The superstition that deplores the use of the *split infinitive* dates from the nineteenth century. But the practice — putting words, most often an adverb, between *to* and the verb — has gone on since the thirteenth. . . .Of the split construction, Bernard Shaw wrote: ‘Every good literary craftsman splits his infinitives when the sense demands it.’ ”
The sense of what Capt. Kirk had to say about the Starship Enterprise’s five-year mission demanded that he tell us it was “to boldly go where no man has gone before.” No other sequence of those words would achieve what Garner describes as the essential characteristic of good writing: a pleasant combination of sound and sense.
Damn the infinitives. Full split ahead.
Bravo, Ken! 😉
Starting sentences with ‘and’ I can live with. Yes, yes, I know they’re not strictly correct, but at least they usually refer back to the previous sentence or paragraph.
What seems to have taken hold now is starting opening sentences of conversations or blog posts with ‘so’. (“So I was reading the NY website the other day and I spotted an interesting article…” / “So what we did was to take two cells and combine them…”). It doesn’t link to anything that comes before, as nothing comes before. Very weird.
I don’t use it myself, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.
It seems to be a recent thing, but it’s spreading like wildfire. Already it’s jumped the pond from US to the UK. I even heard some Libyan rebels using it on the BBC the other day.
Thanks Kevin!
AND (sorry, couldn’t resist…), I think starting a sentence with “So” is just another version of starting with “And…” 😉 Just like “and”, “so” is a conversation device, and, in the right hands, it can make your writing more conversational, because, in fact, it’s exactly how people talk.
It’s almost as if there’s some unspoken rule operating that says how we write and how we speak are two very different things and should never be linked. Or put another way, how we write has to be a totally different “mode.” And certainly, 1) how SOME people speak is no model to emulate when we write! And 2) some writing demands a more formal and buttoned-up tone, far less loose than it’s spoken counterpart.
But, when it doesn’t, and assuming normal and adequately articulate conversation, complete with all its informalities, I don’t see any reason why the written can’t mirror the spoken. Especially when it’s writing whose goal is to connect with people and get them to take action on something.
PB
As a teacher, one of my grammatical pet peeves is the incorrect use of “I vs me”. For example, “Carey and me have gone to the pumpkin patch twice this year.” To me, it is such an easy fix! Simply take away the accompanying noun, “Carey”, and ask yourself if “me have gone” sounds correct. Of course, it isn’t always this easy to identify which pronoun to use but I do think this strategy works more often than not.
The unintended consequence of correcting ‘Carey and me’ to ‘Carey and I’ is that some people assume it’s right in all situations. So you then hear ‘My brother took Carey and I to see the pumpkin patch twice this year’.
The same solution still works, though. Remove Carey and the problem is immediately apparent (‘My brother took I to see the…’).
Poor old Carey. He’s got a lot to answer for.
Here’s one:
“That’s besides the point.”
Arrrgh! No. I’ve actually seen this misuse in a national TV commercial. Even high-profile writers sometimes fail to get it right.
Correct use is of course “Beside the point.”
Just the other day, my grandma asked me, “Did you do good on your exam?” I replied, ” Yes, I did well on my exam.” It bothers me when people mix up the words “good” and “well.” Another pet peeve of mine is hearing people say “I seen _______.” It doesn’t make any sense!
Another one I hear, but do not see in print is something like this:
“If you could move that chair over there…”
Usually the person who says this wants you to move the chair, but I keep waiting for a phrase to complete the sentence like:
“then we can have more room for guests at the party” or
“that would be great” or
“then it will start to rain”
At least something to complete the thought and not leave me hanging.
I think the previous comments have summed up my “grammatical grudges” so to speak, but I do have to add one thing. I hate hate HATE when I hear frustrated pronounced FUStrated, It just sounds stupid and lazy to me, or as if the person is trying to sound cute. My ex-husband’s step mom always pronounced it that way, and I am almost certain that she did it to be cutsie. She sounded like an imbecile.
I also have a slight peeve when it comes to casually using emoticons at inappropriate times. I worked with one particular man who would routinely add smiley faces and other emoticons to official memos and communications. It just seems unprofessional. AND (ha ha) to even the score for the younger crowd, the worst offenders with the emoticons seem to be older folks. The co-worker I mentioned before was my BOSS at the time, and I often cringe when I see my mother do it. I won’t use them at all, they annoy me to no end!
I apologize if I made any of the offending mistakes here, I’m home in bed dealing with a bout of the flu and not exactly on my A-game.
Thanks Frances,
Good stuff! And isn’t that always the case? They always think they’re being funny or hip, when, in fact, they come off looking silly. Thanks for weighing in, and here’s to getting well soon…
PB
FUStrated isn’t a common affectation here on the Texas Gulf Coast. While I sympathize with Frances’s viewpoint, I have to say that with a lot of people (yours truly all too often included), frustration and FUSSING (in the sense of nonstop infantile griping) are Siamese twins!
“Comprised of.” The word “comprise” means “to encompass” or “to consist of”; it is not a synonym for “compose.”
RIGHT: The zoo’s collection comprises 414 specimens.
WRONG: The zoo’s collection is comprised of 414 specimens.
There could be another whole article written on words that are misused for more common words because of superficial resemblance. “Enormity” means “great evil,” not “enormous size”; “noisome” means “repulsive or dangerous,” not “noisy.” See also The Elements of Style, Chapter 5. (https://bartleby.com/141/strunk3.html)
Thanks Katherine!
Incorrect use of “comprised” is probably one of the most common grammatical transgressions, even among grammar-savvy folks. I know it was only a few years ago that I discovered I’d been doing it wrong for so long, but given that it’s done wrong far more than it’s done right, it’s become acceptable. And that’s no doubt hair-tearingly fustra..er…. frustrating to those in the know… 😉
And loved your reference to “enormity.” Another one I just discovered just a few years back (my Mom, a word aficionado, pointed that one out), and also used incorrectly probably 99% of the time…
PB
I also loved the enormity reference. Another one that has changed meaning (or perhaps more accurately, became “accepted” with a new meaning) is the word notoriety. It means being known for some unfavorable act or quality. It now has become synonymous with fame.
These days, “famous” and “unsavory” are pretty much unofficial synonyms themselves, right? I can’t remember the last time there was a major political election where half the voters didn’t feel they were choosing the lesser of two evils.
Before you award any word “now acceptable due to repeated use” status, though, consider that “language doesn’t turn on a dime. For sanity to prevail, there must be a period of time between shifts in rules of usage and punctuation and other elements of writing in which we respond to “Everybody else does it” the way a parent would react to that type of justification uttered by a willful teenager: ‘Well, if everybody else went and jumped off a cliff, would you?’” (From “The Right and Wrong of Writing,” https://dailywritingtips.com/the-right-and-wrong-of-writing/.) After all, at least as many people as not seem to think that “it’s” is a possessive.
Speaking of “universally accepted as the least of all available evils” labels, I’d put “they” as a singular neuter pronoun, and “aren’t I?,” in that category.
Hi all,
I’m new to posting on Peter’s blog. Hi!
A couple of my grammatical pet peeves are misplacing “only” in a sentence and incorrectly using apostrophes with acronyms to make them plural. Ugh!
My biggest grammatical pet peeve is definitely the use of “towards.” Officially, towards is UK and toward is US. You’ve got to remember which side of the pond you’re writing for!
Also major for me is whether punctuation is inside the quotes or out — again it’s a matter of US vs. UK. Occasionally I can understand the mix up if it’s for clarity’s sake (which it sometimes seems to be in scientific work, for example).
A third would be the misuse of which and that.
PS. Has anyone else here read Woe Is I? by Patricia T. O’Conner? It’s by far my favorite grammar book and the one I always recommend to new writers and my editing clients.
Thanks Melissa,
And I’ve learned a few more things! Didn’t realize towards/toward was a UK/US thing. Interesting – as is the quotes thing, though I think I might have heard about that one at one point.
Speaking of UK vs. US, did you guys know that “billion” means something different in UK vs. US? While a billion in the US is a 1000 millions, a billion in the UK is 100 millions. No kidding. Just Google “‘Billion’ in UK vs. US” and see what comes up.
And Melissa, I LOVE Woe Is I. It’s what Strunk and White’s Elements of Style wished it was…;) It should be on every writer’s bookshelf. You’ll learn your grammar and chuckle all the way through…
PB
I didn’t know about the billion thing—fascinating!
And I’m right with you on Woe Is I. After mentioning it here I googled her and found out she has a blog (score!) and several other books that have come out since (double score!) that I know have to buy….
now*
A billion is 100 million in the UK? Well that’s news to me, and to everybody else on this side of the pond 🙂
In fact, a billion here is exactly the same as a billion in the US. It *used* to mean a million million, but that changed about 30 years ago, when we fell in line with US usage.
Our pint is different to yours though. It’s bigger – but maybe we can chat about that over a drink sometime…
🙂
Never mind. Well, I feel a little silly… 😉 Right you are, Kevin (like you needed me to tell you that…). Found this further reference, which explains what you said. Hmm, you mean you can’t believe everything you read on the Internet?
PB (a.k.a Gullible Gus…)
An advertisement in this month’s issue of a national magazine touting the virtues of PEX plastic tubing states “Use PEX tubing over copper pipes.” My literal brain conjures up an image of a copper water pipe inside a plastic tube. I believe that the writer would have been better served by saying “Use PEX tubing instead of copper pipes.” Alternatively he/she could have said “Choose PEX tubing over copper pipe.
And so it goes.
I don’t claim to be expert in English grammar and I know submitting a comment here sets me up for a “gotcha” if I get these sentences wrong. Nonetheless, I’ll risk it to express my irritation with the current craze that uses “of” in lieu of “have” following a modal verb, e.g., could OF, would OF, might OF, etc. Such usage has become epidemic, apparently as a by-product of texting (which may be the biggest threat to good grammar and spelling.)