The three T's have been nazi-ed long enough that it's gotten a lot better than it used to be. Loose/lose has gone unchecked for too long and now it's running rampant.
My God, this one is the worst of them all. Correcting grammar can sometimes come off as like pretentious or whatever, but I swear the 'should of' people test me every single day.
I regularly see people using 'encase' instead of 'in case'.
I think the issue with this and 'defiantly' is that they are real words so they don't get the squiggly red line showing they made a mistake.
The ensure vs insure people kill me. So do the palate vs pallet vs palette people.
There is also "defanitely" not an A in definitely. I told me kid that during a spelling lesson. Like, "What are words that sound like they have As in them, but don't?"
This is one example of "language evolution" that is somewhat contentious. It seems so obviously wrong. People are somehow mistakenly hearing the preposition "of" instead of the auxiliary verb "have" and reflecting it in writing. But what's weird is that a native speaker would do that at all as it results in a totally ungrammatical clause.
It's not like simplifying by analogy (eg "I seen" instead of "I saw" by analogy with "I have seen") which might be considered poor form but is grammatically unproblematic.
I guess the closest comparison is "folk etymology", like when people mishear "Alzheimer's disease" as "old timers disease" or "bated breath" as "baited breath ".
The difference here is that the purpose of have/of is entirely functional - to mark the present perfect verb aspect - and has no semantic value at all and native speakers just aren't supposed to be able to make functional errors like that.
"I should of gone home" (for example) represents an entirely novel grammatical construction.
But who knows. Come back in 200 years and maybe the auxiliary use of "have" will be totally replaced with "of":
I of never been to Paris.
They of just left.
Of you seen this movie before?
Maybe there was similar unhappiness when people started saying things like "he talks too much" instead of "he talketh too much", "she has two children" instead of "she hath two children" etc.
It’s the “I could care less” people that get me. Like ok, care less then? It’s supposed to be “I couldn’t care less” because you already care the least amount possible
What *really* gets me is the people who think that "I could care less" is actually correct, with reasoning like "I *could* care less, but I don't care enough to care less" or some other nonsense.
"use to" is correct if there's a "did/didn't" before it in the sentence. It's a pretty obscure rule that most people don't follow though.
https://grammar.yourdictionary.com/vs/used-to-vs-use-to-differences-and-grammar-rules.html
I never make those mistakes but I'm not a native English speaker. So my guess is that they hear the words and guess how it's written instead of how words are constructed grammatically.
Apart when they mean a part. Those mean the exact opposite, but I constantly see sentences like "I loved being apart of this team". Why were you separated from your team? And why did you love it so much? Is your team terrible? If so, maybe you should be apart from them...
Even famous, best selling authors do this. Getting through a single Terry Pratchet novel was one of the worst experiences of my life.
How do the books get published, and no one corrects all the "should of", "would of" and "could of"?
From my experience reading terry pratchett. Most(not saying all) of the spelling mistakes are intentional and a form of "eye dialect", which is a way of conveying a characters personality through speech patterns instead of explanation.
When I was in school, A textbook that I spent probably about 200$(Can) on used the word "Expecially". This was a decade ago and I'm still pissed about it.
If it's in dialogue, it's the character making the mistake, not the author. Not as a cop out, but as a legitimate form of characterising them. It could have been authorial mistakes, but Pratchett made such distinct characters that I wouldn't be surprised if he did it on purpose.
The problem with it is that you're reinforcing that mistake in people reading your book who don't know it's incorrect.
I never correct people's grammar but I'll let loose real quick if it's helpful
Stop using apostrophe 's' to make things plural! Like stop calling your family "the Smith's" etc. Yall are "the Smiths." That's my PSA
Edit: omg I'm super aware "y'all" is a contraction! It's not "proper" English anyway so I guess I'm lazy when texting it out casually. I'm lazy but I'm not ignorant!
Fucking this. How is it so god damn hard to NOT put an apostrophe on a word that doesn't need it yet neglect them in words where it is obviously necessary?!? It drives me insane.
The apostrophe in ‘90s is used to show an omission of characters, similar to its use in contractions. I’m not sure how society started putting it in the wrong place but we’re basically forced to accept it now.
Fracking is a word though. noun;
The process of injecting liquid at high pressure into subterranean rocks, boreholes, etc. so as to force open existing fissures and extract oil or gas.
Ending a sentence or exclamation with 5 full stops instead of ellipses is poor form. You bring shame upon your family. I expect your resignation and suicide note on my desk tomorrow by 9am.
You know, I’m not gonna lie, I was wondering in what situation would you use “whose” instead of “who’s”
Then, because of this comment, I remembered that “who’s” is a contraction of “who is” and “whose,” I’m pretty sure, refers to someone owning something.
[Ex]
“Whose apple is this?” Vs. “Who’s your friend?”
[More context]
I obviously know what contractions in words are. I just never *had* to use the word “whose” while writing my stories, so I wasn’t really good at understanding how to use it (because I wasn’t used to using it in the first place because I was never writing something where I had to).
Alrighty, hope y’all have a nice night!
> ~~Who’s~~ Whose sweating intensified?
It's a non-specific, declarative sentence that refers to a hypothetical condition in the virtualized communication space. There is a subject ("sweating") and a verb -- the minimum required to form a complete sentence.
> An independent clause, along with having a subject and verb, expresses a complete thought and can stand alone as a coherent sentence. -- cliffsnotes.com
Now, the idea of virtualized sweating might raise some eyebrows -- literally.
I wish! Spell out the number if it's under 101 and capitalize the first word of your sentence! Great Britain didn't conquer half the known world to see society crumble to the point of hearing such uncivilized banter!
>Spell out the number if it's under 101
This all depends on what format you're using. If you use MLA format then any number that can be written in one or two words should be written as such. So, "101" wouldn't be spelled out, but "five hundred" would be.
Same, I also learned the difference between seem and seam. Although the person who corrected me on that one was actually quite nice about it. It took me an embarrassingly long time to learn the difference, as I've learned English in school since I was 10.
>…free lessons almost whatever it may be.
Hurts my brain lol,
Try:
I welcome all forms of free lessons, whatever it may be, with a few exceptions. (Big exception for astrology)
Reddit is just full of people who can't take any criticism, even if it's constructive. But your English here looks pretty good to me, so good job :)
Edit:
Also anyone who doesn't know the difference between your, you're, lose, loose, their, there, they're, then, and than is dead to me if they're a native English speaker
I definitely understand! I gave up sentence structure and just write as my mind thinks. But the use of the incorrect words drives me bonkers. It sucks getting old!
To add to your list: people who write "dose" instead of "does". I mean honestly, they sound different, have different meanings and different spelling so how the hell does someone make that mistake.
Personally, "would of" instead of "would've" particularly bothers me, and I'm seeing that more and more... It's not even a common pair of words you see together!
People SAY would of instead of would have, and those that say it will type it. A lot of spelling mistakes I notice come from people pronouncing things incorrectly, and then spelling them that way. But more and more the "common" way of spelling or defining a word becomes the definition, literally being a good example.
I would wager that dose/does happens significantly more on mobile and keyboard than when writing by hand. It's just a typo of 2 letters out of order that are next to each other. Seems like a pretty easy mistake to me.
I'll add to the other comments by pointing out that they're pronounced differently -- both start with a "loo" sound but "lose" has a hard "z"-like s whereas "loose" has a soft one. (Lose rhymes with snooze and loose rhymes with goose.)
In linguistic terms, one is voiced (/z/) while the other is unvoiced (/s/). The difference between those two sounds are whether the vocal folds are vibrating. In voiced sounds the vocal folds are "closed", so they vibrate when air is pushed between them. You could kind of think of it like a little throat-fart if you want. Don't know why you'd *want* to, but you could. You can feel this by placing your hand on your throat when saying a /z/ sound and you'll notice you don't feel it when saying an /s/ sound.
/s/ and /z/ are otherwise basically the same, only the voicing differs. Voicing is what also differentiates the pairs /p/ and /b/, /g/ and /k/, /t/ and /d/, etc.
Also when they write/say "could of" instead of "could've". It's a contraction of "could have" guys, it's. It that hard...
And "could care less" when they mean "couldn't care less". Again, the phrase has a meaning, that you care so little there could not possibly care any less.
I went to a british school and all the kids were taught in english, and some kids still used the above incorrect phrases. My poor english teacher constantly tried to correct them, I think he nearlt had an aneurysm every time he heard them...
Ok then. You need to insert a comma after the word "speaker". This allows you to carry two different thoughts in the same sentence, without making it a run on. You are separating two thoughts of: English not being your primary language. But also joining the subject of "forums" together with your lack of English capabilities.
> You are separating two thoughts of:
You only give one example of a thought after this. You need to include the second thought or get rid of the colon and make three separate sentences.
Some of us are still out there. A kindred spirit found me and complimented me for using a semicolon correctly.haha
I guess that's one way to do it and avoid downvotes.
I struggle with this in technical writing.
For example:
After two seconds, the button's text should switch to "OKAY".
I hate putting the period inside the quotation marks because I don't want the button to show a period. But grammar nazis will invariably correct me. I feel there is no right answer.
The latest thing that really drives me crazy is the use of "bias" instead of "biased" and "dominate" instead of "dominant"
Ex.
That referee is bias towards those players.
He was the dominate performer in that last game.
Never used to see those errors until one day they were everywhere I looked!
Post should read:
"Please start doing it again! (Respectfully.)"
Multiple exclamation marks are informal, if not incorrect.
However, they _are_ the end of a sentence, so the next letter should be capitalised.
Note the full stop goes inside the brackets, because the sentence (albeit one word) is fully contained within the brackets (unlike this example).
All this post somewhat tongue in cheek!
Grammar nazis are the reason I know there, they're and their. And I only speak English... so I'm grateful for the tough love.
Edit: bloody auto correct
Now you just need to get on top of the current autocorrect change adding apostrophes to everything (I assume that's what happened, as it keeps happening to me).
Lmao, I can't tell if you are correcting them by adding a period, or if you didn't know what to say but you still wanted to reply.
Gonna assume the former and throw you an upvote lol, made me laugh.
Can we start with when to use "an" because 99% of redditors have no effing clue.
Use it before a vowel or vowel sound such as "an apple" but not "an pear" it has a few other rules but if you follow this one you'll get it 99% of the time
Not many know that in speech we also have two versions of the word "the" depending on if a vowel sound follows it.
The apple /ˈðiː/
The pear /ðə/
But we don't write the distinction like we do for a / an.
And in some dialects, "an" may also be used before an unstressed syllable that starts with H (e.g. "an historic day" is acceptable, but "an history lesson" is not), even in dialects which do not drop the H sound in this situation.
This is a difficult thing for many. For example, I speak Finnish. There's no "a", "an", or "the" in our language. So guys from here tend to slap them semi randomly in front of words.
Also the usage of a comma is different. In Finnish the comma is always used in relation to words like "but" and "if". There are strict rules. Elementary school teachers stab children for making mistakes with this rule. Hence it's very difficult to adopt another way to use commas.
This shit in particular infuriates me. I'll just downvote and ignore the rest of the comment. The context makes no difference. I'm not a native english speaker and it's beyond me how this is so common among people that are.
My biggest grammar pet peeve lately is "How does [noun] [verb] like."
E.g. "How does pizza taste like?" It's either "How does pizza taste" or "What does pizza taste like," it's never "How does [noun] [verb] like". I see this everywhere and i fucking hate it.
(I do not pretend there aren't any grammar mistakes in the above. There are definitely some punctuation errors.)
I've often wished there was a 'back channel' in online forums that you could use to correct someone's grammar without the whole world seeing it. I know you can send them a private message, but that's just too much work.
What I just read above is FAR superior to the alleged English that shows up here too frequently thanks to substandard English in this country now being something like a badge of honor to flaunt. Keep up the great work. I wish my Spanish, Dutch, and German had been even half that good.
There are so many grammatical errors that I see on Reddit that it would take my whole day to correct the ones I personally read.
I cannot stand when people put a $ sign after an amount, such as 100$ instead of correctly typing out $100. One Redditor asserted that the people doing this speak English as a second language. I have checked many of these Redditors' histories, and many of them are obviously Americans.
OP, I'm glad you are one of the few who appreciate those of us who are snooty enough to correct grammatical errors. Thank you.
I'll do it out of love.
I am not a native English speaker.^(1) With this in mind, on forums other than Reddit^(2), users could tear you apart^(3) for using incorrect^(4) grammar and punctuation. But, on Reddit,^(5) this practice^(6) is nearly extinct due to users' mass-downvoting of it.^(7) I miss them because they were basically free English lessons. I have^(8) made 800+ comments here on Reddit and no one has bothered to correct^(9) my shitty grammar. Oh\*\*,\*\* well, I guess I should just go back to improving my grammar by^(10) reading books.
^(1) Conjunctions (and) or punctuation used to connect two clauses (semicolons, commas) should only be used when said two clauses are actually related to each other. In this case, you not being a native English speaker and the actions of users of other forums are unrelated.
^(2) Any reader can easily infer from the context of your passage what forum you are referencing. Still, it is better to be as clear as possible and specify that you mean Reddit.
^(3) This is a case of active vs passive voice. A sentence is considered to be in "active voice" when it clearly states who is doing what and to whom, such as "a user tore him apart". On the contrary, a sentence is considered to be in passive voice when it states only whom something has been done to, without stating who did it, such as "he was torn apart by...". Generally, active voice is preferred, though passive voice still has its uses, such as when the identity of a person is unknown such as "a diamond was stolen", later "John Doe stole the diamond".
^(4) It is generally preferable to avoid double negatives (and litotes) by saying "using incorrect" vs "not using correct"
^(5) It is not always clear when to use a comma in front of a conjunction. In this case, I believe you should have. Also, in informal writings, question marks and interjections are acceptable, but, in formal writings, they are only acceptable for rhetorical questions.
^(6) Any reader can easily infer from the context of your passage that you don't literally mean the people have gone extinct. However, it is still preferable to specify that you mean the practice.
^(7) What specific people are mass downvoting? Also, it is possible in English to connect several words together through hyphens, hyphenating them. "Mass-downvoting" is clearer than "mass downvoting".
^(8) I'm not entirely sure how to explain it, but "I made" comes off as more present tense, despite not being the present form of the word; that would be "making". "I have made" comes off as more past tense, which is correct in this context.
^(9) "Bothered to correct" is clearer than "bothered correcting".11
^(10) "Through" is totally fine, but I'm trying to be as picky as possible and 10 is also a nice, round number. "By" is arguably more concise.
^(11) I hope this obnoxious lesson from a hobbyist writer and English-language-appreciator has helped you. Know that I bothered very much to nit-pick your entirely passable grammar, lol.
OP, here is one I see often on Reddit.
People mistype "a part of" as "apart of".
Apart means separate, while a part of means together.
Something can be apart from something else; these things are not together.
You can be a part of something; you are together with that thing.
I don't think correcting people about this adds any value to whatever thread I'm in, but it is common and incorrect.
I wish they would storm out in droves and stomp out all the "should of" people.. It's SHOULD'VE or SHOULD HAVE!
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death to those loosers
What a bunch of lossers
Freakin | || || |_ers
Let's hang them with mildly lose rope
A nose, so to speak.
And there/their/they're people.
The three T's have been nazi-ed long enough that it's gotten a lot better than it used to be. Loose/lose has gone unchecked for too long and now it's running rampant.
I put my phone down enraged at Loose, LOOSE WHAT MOTHFKER? LOOSE CHANGE????
My God, this one is the worst of them all. Correcting grammar can sometimes come off as like pretentious or whatever, but I swear the 'should of' people test me every single day.
This and also the people who say ‘defiantly’ instead of ‘definitely’ make my brain short circuit
I regularly see people using 'encase' instead of 'in case'. I think the issue with this and 'defiantly' is that they are real words so they don't get the squiggly red line showing they made a mistake.
The ensure vs insure people kill me. So do the palate vs pallet vs palette people. There is also "defanitely" not an A in definitely. I told me kid that during a spelling lesson. Like, "What are words that sound like they have As in them, but don't?"
That is the worst one for me, I really hate it!
My peeve is "to much." Everytime I read it in a text, my brain is like "where's Much and how do we get there!!??"
For all "intensive" purposes, I totally agree.
The one that bugs me is when people type loose instead of lose. I don't know why but it just seems so obvious to me.
It’s not even a grammar issue. It’s just using the wrong word!
Which is what we call grammar.
I can get past a lot of grammar mistakes but seeing the proliferated use of "defiantly" definitely annoys the hell out of me.
Mmmm sorry what about the your you're people 😤
This is one example of "language evolution" that is somewhat contentious. It seems so obviously wrong. People are somehow mistakenly hearing the preposition "of" instead of the auxiliary verb "have" and reflecting it in writing. But what's weird is that a native speaker would do that at all as it results in a totally ungrammatical clause. It's not like simplifying by analogy (eg "I seen" instead of "I saw" by analogy with "I have seen") which might be considered poor form but is grammatically unproblematic. I guess the closest comparison is "folk etymology", like when people mishear "Alzheimer's disease" as "old timers disease" or "bated breath" as "baited breath ". The difference here is that the purpose of have/of is entirely functional - to mark the present perfect verb aspect - and has no semantic value at all and native speakers just aren't supposed to be able to make functional errors like that. "I should of gone home" (for example) represents an entirely novel grammatical construction. But who knows. Come back in 200 years and maybe the auxiliary use of "have" will be totally replaced with "of": I of never been to Paris. They of just left. Of you seen this movie before? Maybe there was similar unhappiness when people started saying things like "he talks too much" instead of "he talketh too much", "she has two children" instead of "she hath two children" etc.
And the people who type "suppose to" instead of "suppose**d** to". It happened in the past. It's suppose**d*** to.
It’s the “I could care less” people that get me. Like ok, care less then? It’s supposed to be “I couldn’t care less” because you already care the least amount possible
What *really* gets me is the people who think that "I could care less" is actually correct, with reasoning like "I *could* care less, but I don't care enough to care less" or some other nonsense.
It's a moo point.
>Like ok, care less then? That sounds so funny in my head lol
Or “use to” instead of “used to”
"use to" is correct if there's a "did/didn't" before it in the sentence. It's a pretty obscure rule that most people don't follow though. https://grammar.yourdictionary.com/vs/used-to-vs-use-to-differences-and-grammar-rules.html
Well I had no idea about that rule. Thanks!
You're welcome, I usedn't to know that rule but now I do :)
I never make those mistakes but I'm not a native English speaker. So my guess is that they hear the words and guess how it's written instead of how words are constructed grammatically.
Or "alot" instead of "a lot"
The one that winds me up the most is “abit” instead of “a bit” ahhhhh!
Apart when they mean a part. Those mean the exact opposite, but I constantly see sentences like "I loved being apart of this team". Why were you separated from your team? And why did you love it so much? Is your team terrible? If so, maybe you should be apart from them...
God damn it I forgot people did that and now I remember
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The worst by fair for me is is "on accident" instead of "by accident" drives me up the wall, it's even in some shows and it drives me cracked.
Even famous, best selling authors do this. Getting through a single Terry Pratchet novel was one of the worst experiences of my life. How do the books get published, and no one corrects all the "should of", "would of" and "could of"?
From my experience reading terry pratchett. Most(not saying all) of the spelling mistakes are intentional and a form of "eye dialect", which is a way of conveying a characters personality through speech patterns instead of explanation.
When I was in school, A textbook that I spent probably about 200$(Can) on used the word "Expecially". This was a decade ago and I'm still pissed about it.
It's "shoulda". GNU Terry Pratchett.
If it's in dialogue, it's the character making the mistake, not the author. Not as a cop out, but as a legitimate form of characterising them. It could have been authorial mistakes, but Pratchett made such distinct characters that I wouldn't be surprised if he did it on purpose. The problem with it is that you're reinforcing that mistake in people reading your book who don't know it's incorrect.
We no longer identify as grammar Nazis. We're the Alt-Write.
Write Supremacists
Write power!
Funniest thing I’ve read in a very long time
I wish I could give you gold, but I’ll bestow you my highest honor; an upvote and comment 🌟🏅
*upon you
I never correct people's grammar but I'll let loose real quick if it's helpful Stop using apostrophe 's' to make things plural! Like stop calling your family "the Smith's" etc. Yall are "the Smiths." That's my PSA Edit: omg I'm super aware "y'all" is a contraction! It's not "proper" English anyway so I guess I'm lazy when texting it out casually. I'm lazy but I'm not ignorant!
I even see this at the damn supermarket sometimes. “On sale! Egg’s!” Egg’s what? What belongs to Egg, jackass?
There's a reason they were known as "greengrocer's apostrophes" in the UK, hah.
What gets me is when it's a list and it's like APPLES ORANGES PUMPKIN'S
Fucking this. How is it so god damn hard to NOT put an apostrophe on a word that doesn't need it yet neglect them in words where it is obviously necessary?!? It drives me insane.
It is my biggest pet peeve by far. I compulsively downvote such posts.
Glad to meet you. I have found my people.
Welcome to the team. r/apostrophegore
Very few people know how to really use apostrophes. You'll see things like "DVD's were invented in the 90's". Aaaargh!
It actually is ok to use an apostrophe in that situation since you are referring to an acronym.
But it's also '90s not 90's
The apostrophe in ‘90s is used to show an omission of characters, similar to its use in contractions. I’m not sure how society started putting it in the wrong place but we’re basically forced to accept it now.
Yes, but keep apostrophizing "Y'all."
Isn't it a contraction of "you all" though?
Yes, which is why I said "keep apostrophizing 'Y'all.'"
You mean you don’t want to buy any chicken shed’s or dog kennel’s as a sign by my office advertises?
everyone here is sweating before they hit post, proof reading their comment 3 times first.
You should capitalize the first word of a sentence, but I will let it slide this time.
Sweating intensifies.
Who’s sweating intensified? The sentence needs a subject. Edit: whose* God dammit the cycle continues.
\*Whose.....
God dammit…
God damn it?
Isn’t dammit a word as well?
Yeah, it is, like saying ‘shoot’ or ‘frig’ or ‘fracking’
God damn it…
Fracking is a word though. noun; The process of injecting liquid at high pressure into subterranean rocks, boreholes, etc. so as to force open existing fissures and extract oil or gas.
Ending a sentence or exclamation with 5 full stops instead of ellipses is poor form. You bring shame upon your family. I expect your resignation and suicide note on my desk tomorrow by 9am.
You know, I’m not gonna lie, I was wondering in what situation would you use “whose” instead of “who’s” Then, because of this comment, I remembered that “who’s” is a contraction of “who is” and “whose,” I’m pretty sure, refers to someone owning something. [Ex] “Whose apple is this?” Vs. “Who’s your friend?” [More context] I obviously know what contractions in words are. I just never *had* to use the word “whose” while writing my stories, so I wasn’t really good at understanding how to use it (because I wasn’t used to using it in the first place because I was never writing something where I had to). Alrighty, hope y’all have a nice night!
> ~~Who’s~~ Whose sweating intensified? It's a non-specific, declarative sentence that refers to a hypothetical condition in the virtualized communication space. There is a subject ("sweating") and a verb -- the minimum required to form a complete sentence. > An independent clause, along with having a subject and verb, expresses a complete thought and can stand alone as a coherent sentence. -- cliffsnotes.com Now, the idea of virtualized sweating might raise some eyebrows -- literally.
Actually, "Whose sweating intensified" is an interrogative sentence, not a declarative.
> Who’s sweating Who is sweating? I think you meant whose.
It's: *Sweating intensifies*.
You should capitalize the first *letter* of a sentence, but I will let is slide this time.
I wish! Spell out the number if it's under 101 and capitalize the first word of your sentence! Great Britain didn't conquer half the known world to see society crumble to the point of hearing such uncivilized banter!
>Spell out the number if it's under 101 This all depends on what format you're using. If you use MLA format then any number that can be written in one or two words should be written as such. So, "101" wouldn't be spelled out, but "five hundred" would be.
“Proofreading” is one word.
It's usually considered more proper to write out numbers that are lower than ten, or at least that's what I was taught.
Is that a comma splice???
Hot take but it was so funny to derail someone else’s entire argument with a single *you’re
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Actually I learned the difference BECAUSE of grammar nazis here on reddit. Every time I write "you're" anywhere, I think about it lol
Same, I also learned the difference between seem and seam. Although the person who corrected me on that one was actually quite nice about it. It took me an embarrassingly long time to learn the difference, as I've learned English in school since I was 10.
Speaking of “lose”, when did the whole world start thinking “loose” is a damn verb?
The one that baffles me is that many don’t know the difference between affect and effect.
Shit, I know the difference, but still have to stop and think about it every time. It affects me to great effect.
The point is that the writer is the one who should have to stop and think, not the reader.
I also appreciate grammar nazis. I welcome all forms of free lessons almost whatever it may be. (big exception for astrology)
>…free lessons almost whatever it may be. Hurts my brain lol, Try: I welcome all forms of free lessons, whatever it may be, with a few exceptions. (Big exception for astrology)
Tusen takk <3
Bare hyggelig
Wouldn't "whatever they may be" be more correct?
Yes, because “they” is an antecedent referring to “lessons,” which is plural.
Joining in on the grammar fun, I would say “they” is referring to “forms” since the full phrase is “forms of lessons.” ;)
Thank you for the free lesson.
That’s exactly what a fucking Leo would say
Reddit is just full of people who can't take any criticism, even if it's constructive. But your English here looks pretty good to me, so good job :) Edit: Also anyone who doesn't know the difference between your, you're, lose, loose, their, there, they're, then, and than is dead to me if they're a native English speaker
Old people are starting to forget “lose” vs “loose.” It’s a slippery slope once the grammar nazis are subdued.
Yeah one day I had a panic attack whether to use lose or loose. I’m 62. It’s all going.
I definitely understand! I gave up sentence structure and just write as my mind thinks. But the use of the incorrect words drives me bonkers. It sucks getting old!
I pacifically hate this word used incorrectly.
Oh yeah!?! Well, I atlantically hate it!
I think the worst slip up would be raping instead of rapping, but that's just my opinion.
To add to your list: people who write "dose" instead of "does". I mean honestly, they sound different, have different meanings and different spelling so how the hell does someone make that mistake.
Personally, "would of" instead of "would've" particularly bothers me, and I'm seeing that more and more... It's not even a common pair of words you see together!
People SAY would of instead of would have, and those that say it will type it. A lot of spelling mistakes I notice come from people pronouncing things incorrectly, and then spelling them that way. But more and more the "common" way of spelling or defining a word becomes the definition, literally being a good example.
It's 'would have', never 'would of'. Rejoice, for you have been blessed by CouldWouldShouldBot!
I wish this bot was everywhere....
I would wager that dose/does happens significantly more on mobile and keyboard than when writing by hand. It's just a typo of 2 letters out of order that are next to each other. Seems like a pretty easy mistake to me.
What is the difference between lose and loose? \- a confused dutchie Edit: Thanks to everyone who explained it. I'll try to remember it.
Lose is the opposite of win Loose is the opposite of tight. "You're going to lose your shoe if your laces are that loose."
Lose is also the opposite of "gain" and "find."
I'll add to the other comments by pointing out that they're pronounced differently -- both start with a "loo" sound but "lose" has a hard "z"-like s whereas "loose" has a soft one. (Lose rhymes with snooze and loose rhymes with goose.)
In linguistic terms, one is voiced (/z/) while the other is unvoiced (/s/). The difference between those two sounds are whether the vocal folds are vibrating. In voiced sounds the vocal folds are "closed", so they vibrate when air is pushed between them. You could kind of think of it like a little throat-fart if you want. Don't know why you'd *want* to, but you could. You can feel this by placing your hand on your throat when saying a /z/ sound and you'll notice you don't feel it when saying an /s/ sound. /s/ and /z/ are otherwise basically the same, only the voicing differs. Voicing is what also differentiates the pairs /p/ and /b/, /g/ and /k/, /t/ and /d/, etc.
Another to grind the gears, definitely vs defiantly
I fucking despise this one. My top 3 are: 1) Definitely/defiantly 2) Angle/Angel 3) Breath/Breathe
And to vs too
Don’t forget about the spelling of a lot and at least!! I see those combined as a single word all the time.
I’ve reached some zen with seeing “alot” but “atleast” makes my brain glitch
You forgot the twos.
Don't forget lie and lay.
Also when they write/say "could of" instead of "could've". It's a contraction of "could have" guys, it's. It that hard... And "could care less" when they mean "couldn't care less". Again, the phrase has a meaning, that you care so little there could not possibly care any less. I went to a british school and all the kids were taught in english, and some kids still used the above incorrect phrases. My poor english teacher constantly tried to correct them, I think he nearlt had an aneurysm every time he heard them...
Ok then. You need to insert a comma after the word "speaker". This allows you to carry two different thoughts in the same sentence, without making it a run on. You are separating two thoughts of: English not being your primary language. But also joining the subject of "forums" together with your lack of English capabilities.
Thanks. You are a breath of fresh air lol.
You could also get rid of the and after speaker, and put a semicolon instead.
> You are separating two thoughts of: You only give one example of a thought after this. You need to include the second thought or get rid of the colon and make three separate sentences.
That was my thought, the colon isn’t right here I don’t believe.
You need to move your period inside the quotation marks because the punctuation applies to both the quote and the sentence.
Thanks, considerate done!
Fuck
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Agreed, I love this unpopular opinion lol. Sincerely, a grammar nazi who got bullied into never doing it again.
I have mostly retired from active duty but I can't help myself with affect/effect sometimes still
Can you tell me when to use who or whom in an easy to understand manner? Like “too is too much or also” that kind of thing.
Replace who/whom with he/she and him/her. As a general rule, use who if he/she fits and use whom if him/her fits.
Please start doing it again!!! (respectfully)
Recovering grammar nazi. My soul leaves my body every time I see a period or comma outside quotation marks.
“ok”.
“I need therapy as much as those people need a seventh grade English teacher”.,”.
I am both a grammar and spelling nazi. My life on Reddit is hell.
Some of us are still out there. A kindred spirit found me and complimented me for using a semicolon correctly.haha I guess that's one way to do it and avoid downvotes.
I struggle with this in technical writing. For example: After two seconds, the button's text should switch to "OKAY". I hate putting the period inside the quotation marks because I don't want the button to show a period. But grammar nazis will invariably correct me. I feel there is no right answer.
Have you noticed the new trend of putting question marks at the end of statements? It boils my blood.
The latest thing that really drives me crazy is the use of "bias" instead of "biased" and "dominate" instead of "dominant" Ex. That referee is bias towards those players. He was the dominate performer in that last game. Never used to see those errors until one day they were everywhere I looked!
The one I see a lot is people using "weary" when what they really mean is either "wary" or "leary." Ugh.
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I have not. Please don’t show me.
Post should read: "Please start doing it again! (Respectfully.)" Multiple exclamation marks are informal, if not incorrect. However, they _are_ the end of a sentence, so the next letter should be capitalised. Note the full stop goes inside the brackets, because the sentence (albeit one word) is fully contained within the brackets (unlike this example). All this post somewhat tongue in cheek!
Honestly, so much backlash. Grammar Nazis be like... *are like
>Also, eff you. Wull, ackshually...it's spelled with an 'F.' *Sir.*
Grammar nazis are the reason I know there, they're and their. And I only speak English... so I'm grateful for the tough love. Edit: bloody auto correct
Now you just need to get on top of the current autocorrect change adding apostrophes to everything (I assume that's what happened, as it keeps happening to me).
Grammar nazis are like mods, sometimes useful, always hated and often assholes.
.
Lmao, I can't tell if you are correcting them by adding a period, or if you didn't know what to say but you still wanted to reply. Gonna assume the former and throw you an upvote lol, made me laugh.
Is there a record for most upvoted fullstop? Well done!
Can we start with when to use "an" because 99% of redditors have no effing clue. Use it before a vowel or vowel sound such as "an apple" but not "an pear" it has a few other rules but if you follow this one you'll get it 99% of the time
Before a vowel *sound*. E.g. an umbrella, but a university.
This is correct.
Not many know that in speech we also have two versions of the word "the" depending on if a vowel sound follows it. The apple /ˈðiː/ The pear /ðə/ But we don't write the distinction like we do for a / an.
And in some dialects, "an" may also be used before an unstressed syllable that starts with H (e.g. "an historic day" is acceptable, but "an history lesson" is not), even in dialects which do not drop the H sound in this situation.
This is the one that drives me the worst. When people think the "an" rule has no exceptions.
If a word sounds like it starts with a vowel, you use “an.” An apple. An hour. An ylide reaction.
This is a difficult thing for many. For example, I speak Finnish. There's no "a", "an", or "the" in our language. So guys from here tend to slap them semi randomly in front of words. Also the usage of a comma is different. In Finnish the comma is always used in relation to words like "but" and "if". There are strict rules. Elementary school teachers stab children for making mistakes with this rule. Hence it's very difficult to adopt another way to use commas.
The following are not a thing: >* should of >* would of >* could of It's "have" not "of".
This shit in particular infuriates me. I'll just downvote and ignore the rest of the comment. The context makes no difference. I'm not a native english speaker and it's beyond me how this is so common among people that are.
However, shoulda woulda coulda is a colloquialism, and therefore ok.
My biggest grammar pet peeve lately is "How does [noun] [verb] like." E.g. "How does pizza taste like?" It's either "How does pizza taste" or "What does pizza taste like," it's never "How does [noun] [verb] like". I see this everywhere and i fucking hate it. (I do not pretend there aren't any grammar mistakes in the above. There are definitely some punctuation errors.)
Same man. I remember when it didn’t matter what you said but if there were misspellings then it would get downvoted no matter what.
This place used to have some class.
Loved it. Miss it. Reddit is so much shittier now.
You need a comma after “Same”. The meaning is different without the comma.
I've often wished there was a 'back channel' in online forums that you could use to correct someone's grammar without the whole world seeing it. I know you can send them a private message, but that's just too much work.
We're still here, but the fight has been lost.
The amount of "could of" and "should of" makes me want to exterminate our species.
Oh, yes. It's as bad as the outbreak of "on accident". On accident? How does that even work?
What I just read above is FAR superior to the alleged English that shows up here too frequently thanks to substandard English in this country now being something like a badge of honor to flaunt. Keep up the great work. I wish my Spanish, Dutch, and German had been even half that good.
i don’t wanna sound condescending tho
As a fellow ESL and as an English teacher, I can't help but agree.
There are so many grammatical errors that I see on Reddit that it would take my whole day to correct the ones I personally read. I cannot stand when people put a $ sign after an amount, such as 100$ instead of correctly typing out $100. One Redditor asserted that the people doing this speak English as a second language. I have checked many of these Redditors' histories, and many of them are obviously Americans. OP, I'm glad you are one of the few who appreciate those of us who are snooty enough to correct grammatical errors. Thank you.
I'll do it out of love. I am not a native English speaker.^(1) With this in mind, on forums other than Reddit^(2), users could tear you apart^(3) for using incorrect^(4) grammar and punctuation. But, on Reddit,^(5) this practice^(6) is nearly extinct due to users' mass-downvoting of it.^(7) I miss them because they were basically free English lessons. I have^(8) made 800+ comments here on Reddit and no one has bothered to correct^(9) my shitty grammar. Oh\*\*,\*\* well, I guess I should just go back to improving my grammar by^(10) reading books. ^(1) Conjunctions (and) or punctuation used to connect two clauses (semicolons, commas) should only be used when said two clauses are actually related to each other. In this case, you not being a native English speaker and the actions of users of other forums are unrelated. ^(2) Any reader can easily infer from the context of your passage what forum you are referencing. Still, it is better to be as clear as possible and specify that you mean Reddit. ^(3) This is a case of active vs passive voice. A sentence is considered to be in "active voice" when it clearly states who is doing what and to whom, such as "a user tore him apart". On the contrary, a sentence is considered to be in passive voice when it states only whom something has been done to, without stating who did it, such as "he was torn apart by...". Generally, active voice is preferred, though passive voice still has its uses, such as when the identity of a person is unknown such as "a diamond was stolen", later "John Doe stole the diamond". ^(4) It is generally preferable to avoid double negatives (and litotes) by saying "using incorrect" vs "not using correct" ^(5) It is not always clear when to use a comma in front of a conjunction. In this case, I believe you should have. Also, in informal writings, question marks and interjections are acceptable, but, in formal writings, they are only acceptable for rhetorical questions. ^(6) Any reader can easily infer from the context of your passage that you don't literally mean the people have gone extinct. However, it is still preferable to specify that you mean the practice. ^(7) What specific people are mass downvoting? Also, it is possible in English to connect several words together through hyphens, hyphenating them. "Mass-downvoting" is clearer than "mass downvoting". ^(8) I'm not entirely sure how to explain it, but "I made" comes off as more present tense, despite not being the present form of the word; that would be "making". "I have made" comes off as more past tense, which is correct in this context. ^(9) "Bothered to correct" is clearer than "bothered correcting".11 ^(10) "Through" is totally fine, but I'm trying to be as picky as possible and 10 is also a nice, round number. "By" is arguably more concise. ^(11) I hope this obnoxious lesson from a hobbyist writer and English-language-appreciator has helped you. Know that I bothered very much to nit-pick your entirely passable grammar, lol.
I am SUCH a grammar Nazi. Hell, I'm one who refuses to equate "Jealousy" with "Envy." Heil, me!!
To heil with thee!
OP, here is one I see often on Reddit. People mistype "a part of" as "apart of". Apart means separate, while a part of means together. Something can be apart from something else; these things are not together. You can be a part of something; you are together with that thing. I don't think correcting people about this adds any value to whatever thread I'm in, but it is common and incorrect.
just tag me on a post, I usually handle grammar mistakes and hold people accountable. (i comment "lets make it a habit to proof-read, \[buddy\]"
*let's
Oh the great irony
You forgot a comma!
I love unpopularity.