Someone stop me!!

Bettylou79

Gah!  My SIL misspelled a word on her FB status today.  She spelled "potato" with an e on the end. I hate typos on FB!!!  I commented and said it doesn't have an e on the end.  She was a Creative Writing major in college.  She commented back and said that actually it can, it's like center and centre.  Umm no!!!  My other SIL commented and said that Dan Quayle would agree with her!  So to be a snot/call her on her shiz, I found a bunch of websites and posted them to her page.  Gah!  Stop me!  This is stupid!  Then, later one of her BFF's comments and says that when she was in school it did have an e on the end.  WTF!!  I want to post another site that says something about that being the correct spelling in the 19th Century! 

I think I'm just tired of my SIL!  Did I mention I get to see her this weekend?  

jennlin

lol i find this hilarious. i also hate spelling errors...especially from my english-major friends.....(she spelled adieu "adoo").

CatBus

In my experience, among people I know with baccalaureate degrees, English majors are the worst offenders when it comes to misspellings and misused punctuation. Us social science majors (psychology, sociology, political science, etc.) seem to do much better. I haven't quite figured out why this is, except that maybe precision and accuracy are vital to success in the social sciences, whereas creativity is valued more in English programs. (But that's a total guess.)

As someone who's been watching professional/technical writing and editing job postings, I want to laugh and cry at the fact that nearly every ad asks for English majors. English majors get all the grammatical glory.

jennlin

LegalBritt:

I have to admit, I'm a terrible speller. I honestly think it's because the public schools don't focus on spelling or grammer much. During my first semester of law school I had a professor who used to be a journalist for the Washington Post and he was extremely strict about grammer and spelling and used to squeeze in a 20 minute grammer lesson once a week. A comma in the wrong place can completely change the legal meaning of a sentence! I was so afriad of him that I went out and bought Eats, Shoots and Leaves. I learned more about grammer, and just proofing in general, than in 4 years of undergrad or 12 years in grade school.

1) grammar

2) for punctuation, my favorite example is  "let's eat, grandma!!!!" versus "let's eat grandma!!!!"

i'm not the best at punctuation either (semi colon? colon? hyphen?). i also can't do apostrophe s.  spelling bugs me though haha...we all have our battles. i also don't capitalize. whatevz. i will when i write an official report, but not for interwebz.

KST_

I think everyone has certain words that routinely give them fits.  I hate the word potato, I don't understand why it has an e when it becomes plural. When the whole Dan Quayle "fiasco" happened, my dad told me that he was taught an "e" on the end in school, as well.. <shrug> I have an impossible time with "maintenance" and "pineapple" (I always want to double the "n") and Caribbean (want to double the "r" instead). Of course, then I have issues that I often spell words the British way because I read too many Brit authors as a kid...and I went from champion speller to problem child as my French language skills increased..too many cognates with one letter difference between the two languages. Sigh.

My pet peeve though is "Congratulations." It has a T people!! And short is "Congrats" NOT "Congrads"!! Several people on this board get that wrong and I'm always biting my tongue..

kinmir30

jennlin:

LegalBritt:

I have to admit, I'm a terrible speller. I honestly think it's because the public schools don't focus on spelling or grammer much. During my first semester of law school I had a professor who used to be a journalist for the Washington Post and he was extremely strict about grammer and spelling and used to squeeze in a 20 minute grammer lesson once a week. A comma in the wrong place can completely change the legal meaning of a sentence! I was so afriad of him that I went out and bought Eats, Shoots and Leaves. I learned more about grammer, and just proofing in general, than in 4 years of undergrad or 12 years in grade school.

1) grammar

2) for punctuation, my favorite example is  "let's eat, grandma!!!!" versus "let's eat grandma!!!!"

i'm not the best at punctuation either (semi colon? colon? hyphen?). i also can't do apostrophe s.  spelling bugs me though haha...we all have our battles. i also don't capitalize. whatevz. i will when i write an official report, but not for interwebz.

 

There's a funny one about capitalization....although not a pet peeve of mine. 

"I was helping my Uncle Jack off a horse." vs. "I was helping my Uncle jack off a horse"

 

MiniSteph

KST_:

I think everyone has certain words that routinely give them fits.  I hate the word potato, I don't understand why it has an e when it becomes plural. When the whole Dan Quayle "fiasco" happened, my dad told me that he was taught an "e" on the end in school, as well.. <shrug> I have an impossible time with "maintenance" and "pineapple" (I always want to double the "n") and Caribbean (want to double the "r" instead). Of course, then I have issues that I often spell words the British way because I read too many Brit authors as a kid...and I went from champion speller to problem child as my French language skills increased..too many cognates with one letter difference between the two languages. Sigh.

My pet peeve though is "Congratulations." It has a T people!! And short is "Congrats" NOT "Congrads"!! Several people on this board get that wrong and I'm always biting my tongue..

Exactly!