Asking all one of the readers that drop by, nowadays: are there any simple problems with English usage that irk you? As frequent reader (note the construction *heh*) likely recalls, I have a few such bugaboos, like
- bafflingly and wildly inappropriately misused words (infer for imply; poignant for pointed; vested for invested, and worse. Much worse *sigh*)
- compound words either used wrongly or not used where called for (backseat ? back seat; log in ? login; backup ? back up; etc.)
- warped time sense (an inability to recognize and properly use perfect tenses, particularly past perfect and conditional past perfect tenses; stupid misuse of present tense for past events, etc. Also illiterate formations of past tenses for some common words, such as “broadcast.”)
- inability to properly use subjective vs objective pronouns. Also in the running for pronoun misuse: a pseudo hoity-toity misuse of the reflexive pronoun “myself” where “I” is correct (apparently under the impression that using “myself” IMPROPERLY somehow conveys a higher level of literacy. . . while unintentionally revealing subliteracy)
Yes, these are a few of my less favorite things. . . And yes, there are more. Stupid punctuation, laughable misspellings, syntax only a mother could love (and then most likely only from a babbling baby), grammar better associated with a brain-damaged Bonobo chimp, and on and on. . .
“Is she over her head?” written by a writer who did not engage his brain before failing to type “Is she in over her head?” Yeh, another one: mishearing and or misreproducing common expressions, rendering them as nonsense.
“standout” for “outstanding” really bugs me! e.g. “The standout performance of the concert was by ….”
Sentences that are long-winded and yet incomplete bother me. Especially in newspapers. When a reporter hijacks a news story to turn it into an opinion piece I seen a lot of those.
Typing with my thumbs again… seen => see
Yeh, “n” and “m” are common typos for me when attempting the space bar on a phone’s tiny lil virtual keyboard.