What's your grammar pet peeve?
The "they're"/"their"/"there" thing doesn't really bother me because I'm a big one for doing that as a typo - not because I don't know my grammar. Another one is "here"/"hear". There's a bunch of those. My problem with those is when I'm typing from my head and typing quickly something's going on in that process that means my hands are doing what I'm "hearing" in my own head. They aren't doing the thinking when that happens. I don't have that variety of typo all that often, but with "zillions" of words of typing over the years, it shows up far more often than it should. AND, spelling/grammar checkers don't always pick those up because they aren't as glaring as some typos. Whenever I've discovered this particular variety of typo is some old thing I've written I try to ease my "horror" at the discovery by hoping that anyone who read the thing noticed that my use of those words was correct everywhere else in the thing. My Boston accent doesn't help.
Maybe my personal and biggest peeves are when people don't know when they should say (for example), "Fred went to the store with Bill and I." (!!!!). That one drives me crazy. The grammar rule about what's objective isn't all that hard to learn/remember (remove "Bill", and ask how it sounds). I suspect that a good part of the time people are worried less about the grammar rule than they are about whether saying, "me" (as in "with Bill and me") just sounds too - I don't know - inelegant? un-fancy? .
Another one of my big ones is (again, with Fred, my standard hypothetical person), "Fred and myself went to the store," or "Fred wrote a memo to myself." (!!!!!). The "myself" thing, I think, is kind of well established to be the incorrect-but-pretentious attempt to come across a little more "elegant", "fancy" (or whatever) than using "me" would.
Oh... here's one that's been showing up on television recently. I think, maybe, the people who do it are just trying to make sure they don't sound too "lofty" (if that's the right word), but: "Me and Fred went to the store." (!!!!). (I guess that one is kind of the reverse of the first two I mentioned that involve people trying to sound loftier than correct grammar would (in their mind). This one might sometimes be someone's fear of sounding too educated/mature to the audience s/he hopes to reach.)
OR, maybe I just give too much credit to people for having learned some basic grammar skills when maybe they just never really did. (????)
Using your for you're. Also using to & too for two. Come on now. These are simple grammar words. Everyone should know the difference & contextual use among such homonyms. This is totally inexcusable.
Oh yes, there are people out there who say he/she don't. Also using past tense in the present tense. To conclude, using between to describe events which occur between three or more people. Between is to be used describing events that happen to two people while among should be used to describe events that happen to three or more people.
These things get me in a Hunnic rage! What kind of ignorance is that. It is he/she doesn't. This is totally beyond me. This substantiates that parents & teachers are failing miserably in educating children as to proper grammar rules.
My grammar pet peeve is really a most awful prejudgement against Canadians eh! I do not like to end my spoken or written sentences in eh. I do blame, in a most incorrectly manner Canada eh! We all know how Canada recieved its name. There were 3 Canadian founding fathers or mothers if you so desire; the first spoke "C" eh! The second spoke, "N" eh! The last one spoke "D" eh! The logical result was the world's most extraordinary misunderstanding. That being the second largest country in the entire world, Canada! Thus the damage was done eh! The country's real name is Cnd!
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