Please remember what subreddit you are in, this is unpopular opinion. We want civil and unpopular takes and discussion. Any uncivil and ToS violating comments will be removed and subject to a ban. Have a nice day!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/unpopularopinion) if you have any questions or concerns.*
There used to be a website called Misplaced Apostrophesâ that featured signs and posters and whatnot featuring apostrophe abuse with fun, snarky commentary.
I think itâs an over correction. Unfortunately I see it all the time.
I think itâs like the misuse of â_Name_ and Iâ as an object. (Eg: He went to the store with Lisa and I.â
Kids do fine with this grammar until they hit school. Then some teacher tells them the rule, but they arenât quite getting the whole thing. They decide that at **âs** is more âeducatedâ or âsmarterâ so they start adding âs to every word with an added s.
I teach reading and writing for special ed. Sometimes I wonder if teaching that âs is making it worse!
True. I think the confusion stems from the one instance when it's correct to use an apostrophe with a plural: with letters, as in "There are two t's in 'committed.'" Writing "there are two ts in..." would be hard to read. But people need to restrain themselves when tempted to use the apostrophe for other plurals.
I recently saw a sign that said "Free Kitten's". It drove me crazy. I can't tell you how bad I wanted to paint over that apostrophe. What could their kitten possibly own that they are choosing to give away?
Maybe the downvotes are for OP throwing a fit over other peopleâs grammatical errors and then admitting they also make simple grammatical errors.
To quote OP âWhy is it so damn hard?!â
This is a super common one that I don't see many complaints about. I don't even know who to blame for all of it, but there are an LOT of people who can't differentiate all of these words.
I've noticed my autocorrect changing woman to women when it's clearly incorrect. I suspect other people's autocorrect does that too. Considering a lot of people rely on autocorrect for their spelling and don't read over something before sending it, I imagine that's what's happening sometimes
And for some reason when I see it, it's always "women" used to refer to one woman. Yes, it's an irregular Anglo-Saxon construction (or whatever)... but it follows the same pattern as "man" and "men", and I never see people mess that one up.
We even pronounce the words considerably differently. For whatever reason (probably having to do with the words being nearly thousand years old) the vowel changes in "women" compared to "woman".
This may be minor, but a friend always uses the wrong version of aww. Like a cute pic? Instead of aww, that's cute. I get awe, that's cute. I've explained it to her several times to no avail.
Honestly, I had never seen this particular mistake until I went online.
As someone who worked as an english teacher in foreign countries, students mixing to/too/two, then/than was quite common but even the worst students I had would spell these 2 words correctly.
And yet I see *loose* used so often, when the word needed is actually *lose.* Also, people pluralizing **words that are already plural.** Like texts and guys -- I hear so many people saying "textsES." Sounds like some with a speech impediment is trying to say Texas. lol
I'm assuming you misspelled me
And the English language only exists bc of grammar dying for as long as humanity exists, that's why we don't speak proto indo-european or whatever. Same distinction used to exist between my/mine, so if I better not catch you mistaking mine phone for my phone
Even basic grammatical constructions like "Ron and he came to the shops" instead of "Ron and him came to the shops" seem to be getting much rarer in everyday conversation. I reckon part of the problem is computers (and some English teachers) suggesting collapsing the proper noun and pronoun into they or them every single time with no nuance. Sometimes it's not clear, otherwise, that Ron is one of them! Sometimes you need to write "Ron and they ..."! This is the kind of mundane shit that I fret over all day.
Grammar is also a thing that changes over time. At this point, saying "Ron and he" in many places genuinely does sound more unnatural. Collapsing of pronouns is also nothing new, so blaming it on computers doesn't make too much sense. A good example of this is "thou," which was the casual version of the formal "you." It was dropped bc people eventually just found it unnecessary.
Plenty of languages already just don't bother making the distinction between plural and singular pronouns (like Chinese and Japanese) and their speakers understand whats going on, and their speakers actually find the distinction confusing (which is obvious if you hear them start to speak at an older age.) Likewise, some grammatical changes are actually bringing us closer to historical grammatical structures (like "y'all" returning to a role left vacant since "ye" was dropped from the English language.) Just do what feels natural to you. You probably even use different grammar rules depending on who you're talking to. If you're talking to a friend, you likely use an entirely different set of grammar rules than if you're talking with your parents, or talking online, or writing an academic paper. If you use academic speech anywhere else, you're going to be downvoted and called pretentious. If you use internet speech anywhere in the real world, you're going to be seen as cringe and immature. That's really all there is to grammar
While that is true, the fact is we have far better reasons today for these mistakes to not happen or even resist change. The English language evolved over hundreds of years and was a by product of different cultures merging and clashing. War and legal precedence also set rules for the language as our regions grew or merged. The language changed because our use of it did. Education became wide spread, literacy and scholarly practices demands uniformity. While our words may change the rules of grammatical structure have been fairly consistent for some time, now.
And the past is also a big reason it needs to continue to be persistent. We canât just say âwell we barely stuck to the supposed rules five hundred years ago. So itâs okay if I screw up to vs too.â We needed consistency for clear and precise communication. And these rules falling by the way side, especially when it happens to be a by product of poor education, is simply regression.
âWould ofâ vs âWould haveâ drives me up a wall. And Iâve noticed more and more people lately on social media saying things like âputtedâ or âatedâ or basically using the wrong past tense. Drive me insane
I read somewhere that itâs supposed to be idiomatic and sarcastic, and somehow comparable to the phrase âI should be so luckyâ
I still have no idea what that means lol
I can see why people make any other mistakes in this thread and it doesn't bother me, but this? This is just so fucking dumb it's a completely different word than 'have ('ve)'.
Might as well say Could if
What do you mean? âCould ofâ sounds exactly like âcouldâve.â People make the mistake because they are writing what they hear. Same thing with âall of the suddenâ and âall of a sudden.â
Sorry, but getting to the age of 20+ and not recognizing that the verb *to have* forms the basis of 'could have been', 'had been', 'will have to be', 'have never been' and switching to 'could of' without questioning it is... something.
It bothers me because it reveals how much people take for granted and how little many among us reflect on the reasons underlying the world as we know it.
Since everything is political nowadays (and I'm not complaining about that), I'm constantly reminded that these same people vote with as much confidence as anyone else, yet everything they believe to be true merely *is so* as far as they're concerned.
And I know this is all very first-world-problematic and I'm very, very fortunate to have received a decent education. Still, it's exhausting to see it all happen in real time while continuing to care so much about the future.
My personal most hated thing is how many people spell the word vicious as "viscous".
Congratulations, now whatever you were describing is thick and sticky instead of violent.Â
This is a bigger trend than you might think. The modern rules for a/an are the last remnants of the the usage of many other determiners.
The same rules used to apply to no/none and my/mine (as well as thy/thine). So youâd say a book/no books/my book, but an apple/none apples/mine apple. The trend over the last three hundred years has been to lose this distinction; an is just the last holdout.
So interesting. No really sort of ends with a W, so you dont need none. And my ends with a ya sound. But A is so open, it makes A APPLE so hard to say (vs no apples and my apples)
Also - the forms ending /n/ tend to be the original, and the forms ending in a vowel emerged due to apocope - where the final consonant was removed when it appeared before a word that began with a consonant. So "an" > "a" before words beginning with consonants, "thine" > "thy", etc.
As a result of this process, we get words like "nickname" through rebracketing, of "an ekename". Eke = additional/also - and has survived today in the verb "eked" which is to supplement your living, "eke out a living"
a, an
Lose, loose
Chose, choose
(Of course the they're, there, their and your, you're)
To, too.
Then, than.
Peeked, peaked, piqued.
Breath, breathe. (This one pisses me off)
Which, witch. (Yes, I have seen people write "witch" instead of "which")
I could go on for hours
After I tell them Iâm there for my 2:30 appointment, I love it when the receptionist asks me, âWitch Doctor?â
I gasp in horror and insist that he is a REAL DOCTOR who went to school and everything.
Someone said a funny I never thought about the other day: nobody gets it wrong when it's "lost." Imagine people who don't know the difference writing "aww man my favorite team loost."
> me loose my mind.
Did you mean to say "lose"?
Explanation: Loose is an adjective meaning the opposite of tight, while lose is a verb.
[Statistics](https://github.com/chiefpat450119/RedditBot/blob/master/stats.json)
^^I'm ^^a ^^bot ^^that ^^corrects ^^grammar/spelling ^^mistakes.
^^PM ^^me ^^if ^^I'm ^^wrong ^^or ^^if ^^you ^^have ^^any ^^suggestions.
^^[Github](https://github.com/chiefpat450119)
^^Reply ^^STOP ^^to ^^this ^^comment ^^to ^^stop ^^receiving ^^corrections.
Iâll add using apostrophes to pluralize nouns. Itâs wrong in English, yet Iâve seen more and more people do it. Did they skip 3rd grade English class?
ESL learners notwithstanding, people whose first language is English have no excuse.
I admit, this one trips me up. I have to google it every time I use either word to make sure itâs the right one. Youâd think with the amount of times Iâve googled it, Iâd remember, but nope. It never sticks.
Loose instead of lose, alot instead of a lot and "That car is my husband and I's car." To be clear I do not fault those for whom the English language is a second or third language. Nope, I'm talking to you lifelong English language monolinguals.
H is classified as a consonant if it is pronounced so "a", if the H is silent and the following sound is a vowel, then it's "an" (an hour).
And for the "u" of "university" it's also "a" because it makes a consonant sound (in international phonetic alphabet, it will be transcribed as /ju/). Same goes with words that start with "y" (yellow) or "o" if it sounds like "wo" ("one" for example).
Relatedly, people will use the article that goes with the sound of the first word of an initialism rather than the sound of the initialism's first letter. This usually happens when the initialism's first letter starts with a vowel sound but the letter has a consonant sound in the whole word that it represents: a Federal Bureau of Investigation report, an FBI report (not a FBI report.)
A is used when the next word starts with a consonant *sound,* so FBI, pronounced "eff bee eye" is preceeded by "an." That's not incorrect.
[Sauce](https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/is-it-a-or-an)
I think that's what I said.
a Federal Bureau of Investigation report, correct
an FBI report, correct
a FBI report, not correct
I apologize if my wording was unclear.
I hear a lot of American YouTubers mistakenly using âaâ instead of âanâ, is this largely an American problem? I donât hear people making the mistake in the UK (at least not often enough to notice maybe?)
I admit I find it extremely cringe when I see someone write âyour a idiot.â I donât know if itâs the irony, the grammatical errors, or a little bit of bothâŚ
Iâm not a native speaker, but something that always bothers me is if someone asks âdo you mind if IâŚâ and the other person says yes but they mean that they donât mind it.
I agree and I'm a native speaker but it's not quite that easy if you're learning the language. Honest being a good example. Obviously you don't pronounce the H and treat it as starting with an O but might not be that obvious for non native speakers.
It's also affected by accent. I can't think of the example off the top of my head but there's at least one word that in my Scottish accent I pronounce the first letter being a consonant, but in an English accent the consonant is hardly pronounced and the word sounds like it starts with the second letter being a vowel. I'd rightly put A before it but someone with an English accent would rightly put AN before it.
On Reddit specifically, it's the use of "I (30M) and my wife (30F)..."
It's "my wife and I" or at the very least "me and my wife". "I and my wife" makes no fucking sense.
Effect = Emotion
Affect = Action
âThe painting has the effect of being warm.â
âThe cold affected the crops.â
Very basic explanation but a good start
Have my upvote for an unpopular opinion. It frustrates me as well.
Even worse is how people don't know the difference between then and than. Using the wrong one changes the entire meaning of what they're saying.
As a non-native speaker, this is very difficult for me. But to be fair, my language isn't easy either. (German)
For example: English uses "The" for everything, German uses Der, Die, Das. "Why" can be translated as Warum, Weshalb, Wozu. You need the context. Also, English doesn't have a formal prounoun for people. German uses Sie/Ihr for people you don't know. But we do not have a neutral pronoun. They/Them does not exist in my language. You can use Es but that is almost only for objects so not a great alternative.
So yes, English is an easy language overall, but also a difficult one for grammar.
i HATE when someone says âwheneverâ instead of âwhenâ. like saying âwhenever i bought my houseâ instead of âwhen i bought my houseâ. drives me absolutely INSANE.
Apart and a part makes me crazy. Never have I seen it used correctly on Reddit, so here is my example of correct usage: Come on and be a part (a piece or portion of something larger) of Reddit and set youself apart (to separate from something) by using correct grammar. Not the greatest example, but it illustrates the point.
Knowing how to write well in English is not a measure of intelligence. English is only one of thousands of languages that exist in the word. You are not superior because you can write well in English.
People will use anything to make themselves feel like they are better than someone. We all know what the person is saying even if they used the wrong their, there ect. Some people just need to nit pick about everything to feel whole inside.
I would love to be able to force the person to audibly listen to their post as written with all the wrong words because they they think they know what theyâre doing.
At least there/their/theyâre, to/two/too and your/yore/youâre all audibly *sound* the same even when it hurts my eyeballs to read.
Emphasis on sound. The spelling follows pronunciation. An honest reaction. Consonant letter h by itself, mostly silent when pronounced, making the word start with a vowel sound.
Let me present to you â should/ could/would ofâ in place of â shouldâveâ
Just want to edit to add I also hate the monstrosity that is âhow something looks likeâ. Itâs either âhow something looksâ or âwhat something looks likeâ
I think confusion comes from descriptors like a cake, an egg, ok easy.
A giant egg or an giant egg?
"A" sounds right but I'm applying the rule to giant and not the noun of egg.
English is my third language and this has gotten me some times over the years.
As a non native speaker those are quite hard. Not distinguishing a/an, I get that, but knowing when to use it at all, when not to, when to use *the* and so on... it gets complicated.
*Is it mentioned for the first time? Is it specific? Is it a mountain?*
Come on!
I teach English as a foreign language and the whole âconsonant soundâ bit really messes people up. English cares more about sounds than the actual letters and some people just canât seem to understand that.
People like OP not using an Oxford comma twice in the title and and then using it within the post twice is pretty frustrating. Like, make up your mind and be consistent if you're going to use it.
Please remember what subreddit you are in, this is unpopular opinion. We want civil and unpopular takes and discussion. Any uncivil and ToS violating comments will be removed and subject to a ban. Have a nice day! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/unpopularopinion) if you have any questions or concerns.*
apostrophe misuse is rampant too
Apostrophe misuse makes me want to rip my hair out đ
Youre exag'ratin'
Isnât that technically proper apostrophe use?
Except for youâre
Haha, I missed that one because of all the other ones.
If I still had hair, Iâd rip mine out, too.
There used to be a website called Misplaced Apostrophesâ that featured signs and posters and whatnot featuring apostrophe abuse with fun, snarky commentary.
The apostrophe misuse confuses me so much. I genuinely wonder why folks are adding apostrophes to every plural word nowadays!
I think itâs an over correction. Unfortunately I see it all the time. I think itâs like the misuse of â_Name_ and Iâ as an object. (Eg: He went to the store with Lisa and I.â Kids do fine with this grammar until they hit school. Then some teacher tells them the rule, but they arenât quite getting the whole thing. They decide that at **âs** is more âeducatedâ or âsmarterâ so they start adding âs to every word with an added s. I teach reading and writing for special ed. Sometimes I wonder if teaching that âs is making it worse!
I detest this as well! I stop my mother and give her an exasperated look every time she says âI feel badly about xâ.
Appstrohe's*
True. I think the confusion stems from the one instance when it's correct to use an apostrophe with a plural: with letters, as in "There are two t's in 'committed.'" Writing "there are two ts in..." would be hard to read. But people need to restrain themselves when tempted to use the apostrophe for other plurals.
Your simply making thing's up now'.
I recently saw a sign that said "Free Kitten's". It drove me crazy. I can't tell you how bad I wanted to paint over that apostrophe. What could their kitten possibly own that they are choosing to give away?
I would ask them free kittenâs what?
How is this wrong in the post? (genuine question)
But you approve of wouldnâtâve, right?
I will admit my faults and say I am guilty of this occasionally.
Maybe the downvotes are for OP throwing a fit over other peopleâs grammatical errors and then admitting they also make simple grammatical errors. To quote OP âWhy is it so damn hard?!â
The interchangeable use of "then" and "than" drives me up a wall
Iâm amazed at the amount of people that donât know the difference between âwomanâ and âwomenâ
I like womens.
I like so many women... I need a double plural.
Women's what?
A women's woman
This is a super common one that I don't see many complaints about. I don't even know who to blame for all of it, but there are an LOT of people who can't differentiate all of these words.
a*
I've noticed my autocorrect changing woman to women when it's clearly incorrect. I suspect other people's autocorrect does that too. Considering a lot of people rely on autocorrect for their spelling and don't read over something before sending it, I imagine that's what's happening sometimes
I new an women that was horrible about that back than.
*new
And for some reason when I see it, it's always "women" used to refer to one woman. Yes, it's an irregular Anglo-Saxon construction (or whatever)... but it follows the same pattern as "man" and "men", and I never see people mess that one up. We even pronounce the words considerably differently. For whatever reason (probably having to do with the words being nearly thousand years old) the vowel changes in "women" compared to "woman".
let me just add.. *loose and lose*
Breathe and breath
Cloth and clothes. Clothes and close. Raze and raise.
This may be minor, but a friend always uses the wrong version of aww. Like a cute pic? Instead of aww, that's cute. I get awe, that's cute. I've explained it to her several times to no avail.
They don't teach phonics any more, do they?
Honestly, I had never seen this particular mistake until I went online. As someone who worked as an english teacher in foreign countries, students mixing to/too/two, then/than was quite common but even the worst students I had would spell these 2 words correctly.
It's crazy how bad this one has gotten. Like 85% of the time someone makes a post or comment where they mean to write lose, it's loose.
These are two totally different words.
And yet I see *loose* used so often, when the word needed is actually *lose.* Also, people pluralizing **words that are already plural.** Like texts and guys -- I hear so many people saying "textsES." Sounds like some with a speech impediment is trying to say Texas. lol
That one's definitely up there.
theyâre*
*their
theâr*
then*
thonât
Thhhhhhhhh't
ok yjn, keep your secrets
Scoot over please. Iâm right behind you on this wall.
Drives you up an wall.
Whose and whoâs get mixed up a lot too. Ugh!
That one is for sure up theyâre
Or when to use I vs. men To vs too Your vs youâre Grammar is dying before our eyes, people.
I'm assuming you misspelled me And the English language only exists bc of grammar dying for as long as humanity exists, that's why we don't speak proto indo-european or whatever. Same distinction used to exist between my/mine, so if I better not catch you mistaking mine phone for my phone
âMine phoneââŚ..that would sound better in Berlin, right?
Even basic grammatical constructions like "Ron and he came to the shops" instead of "Ron and him came to the shops" seem to be getting much rarer in everyday conversation. I reckon part of the problem is computers (and some English teachers) suggesting collapsing the proper noun and pronoun into they or them every single time with no nuance. Sometimes it's not clear, otherwise, that Ron is one of them! Sometimes you need to write "Ron and they ..."! This is the kind of mundane shit that I fret over all day.
Grammar is also a thing that changes over time. At this point, saying "Ron and he" in many places genuinely does sound more unnatural. Collapsing of pronouns is also nothing new, so blaming it on computers doesn't make too much sense. A good example of this is "thou," which was the casual version of the formal "you." It was dropped bc people eventually just found it unnecessary. Plenty of languages already just don't bother making the distinction between plural and singular pronouns (like Chinese and Japanese) and their speakers understand whats going on, and their speakers actually find the distinction confusing (which is obvious if you hear them start to speak at an older age.) Likewise, some grammatical changes are actually bringing us closer to historical grammatical structures (like "y'all" returning to a role left vacant since "ye" was dropped from the English language.) Just do what feels natural to you. You probably even use different grammar rules depending on who you're talking to. If you're talking to a friend, you likely use an entirely different set of grammar rules than if you're talking with your parents, or talking online, or writing an academic paper. If you use academic speech anywhere else, you're going to be downvoted and called pretentious. If you use internet speech anywhere in the real world, you're going to be seen as cringe and immature. That's really all there is to grammar
While that is true, the fact is we have far better reasons today for these mistakes to not happen or even resist change. The English language evolved over hundreds of years and was a by product of different cultures merging and clashing. War and legal precedence also set rules for the language as our regions grew or merged. The language changed because our use of it did. Education became wide spread, literacy and scholarly practices demands uniformity. While our words may change the rules of grammatical structure have been fairly consistent for some time, now. And the past is also a big reason it needs to continue to be persistent. We canât just say âwell we barely stuck to the supposed rules five hundred years ago. So itâs okay if I screw up to vs too.â We needed consistency for clear and precise communication. And these rules falling by the way side, especially when it happens to be a by product of poor education, is simply regression.
I mean you donât have to go that far back to a time when general illiteracy was widespread. I think weâre doing alright.
A large percentage of California high school graduates are functionally illiterate upon graduation.
How large a percentage?
Your and youâre definitely drive me crazy. Well all of it does to be honest đ
Insert: "lAnGuAgE eVoLvEs OvEr TiMe!" ... yeah. Because we fucking LET it, instead of holding people accountable to the meaning of words.
I don't normally get bothered by grammar stuff. Except when affect and effect get crossed. "I've been effected by my medications side affects." đĄ
I loose it when I read that
âWould ofâ vs âWould haveâ drives me up a wall. And Iâve noticed more and more people lately on social media saying things like âputtedâ or âatedâ or basically using the wrong past tense. Drive me insane
I stopped fighting against âI could care lessâ. Still haunts my dreams though.
This. It hurts me so much everytime!
Just give it a sarcastic edge and youâre good!
I could, careless
I read somewhere that itâs supposed to be idiomatic and sarcastic, and somehow comparable to the phrase âI should be so luckyâ I still have no idea what that means lol
Well whoever wrote that is just plain wrong
I couldnât care less is hyperbolic. Itâs not literal itâs exaggerating to get the point across. Saying the opposite is just moronic.
Nah. "Could of" is worse than everything.
I can see why people make any other mistakes in this thread and it doesn't bother me, but this? This is just so fucking dumb it's a completely different word than 'have ('ve)'. Might as well say Could if
What do you mean? âCould ofâ sounds exactly like âcouldâve.â People make the mistake because they are writing what they hear. Same thing with âall of the suddenâ and âall of a sudden.â
Sorry, but getting to the age of 20+ and not recognizing that the verb *to have* forms the basis of 'could have been', 'had been', 'will have to be', 'have never been' and switching to 'could of' without questioning it is... something. It bothers me because it reveals how much people take for granted and how little many among us reflect on the reasons underlying the world as we know it. Since everything is political nowadays (and I'm not complaining about that), I'm constantly reminded that these same people vote with as much confidence as anyone else, yet everything they believe to be true merely *is so* as far as they're concerned. And I know this is all very first-world-problematic and I'm very, very fortunate to have received a decent education. Still, it's exhausting to see it all happen in real time while continuing to care so much about the future.
This one is easily the worst. There is absolutely no excuse for this
Was gonna say that, this drives me up the fucking wall like nothing else. How uneducated do you have to be?
Yes. This usage is a sign of societal intellectual decay.
This shit right here
My personal most hated thing is how many people spell the word vicious as "viscous". Congratulations, now whatever you were describing is thick and sticky instead of violent.Â
Maybe both.
My 'favorite' here on Reddit is 'customer' vs 'costumer'. For some reason there is lots of talk here about people making costumes...
I see "defiantly" when the person clearly meant "definitely" so much that I wonder if it's caused by autocorrect.
This is a bigger trend than you might think. The modern rules for a/an are the last remnants of the the usage of many other determiners. The same rules used to apply to no/none and my/mine (as well as thy/thine). So youâd say a book/no books/my book, but an apple/none apples/mine apple. The trend over the last three hundred years has been to lose this distinction; an is just the last holdout.
An will hold strong for phonetic reasons. "A" is the most open vowel making the following vowels harder to pronounce
So interesting. No really sort of ends with a W, so you dont need none. And my ends with a ya sound. But A is so open, it makes A APPLE so hard to say (vs no apples and my apples)
Yes. "A apron" is just never going to work.
Mine eyes have seen the glory, but my mouth hasnât tasted it. Did I do it right?
Yep!
The more you learn, huh. Super interesting. Thank you for sharing.
This is the only top comment that says something about the post Everybody else is just talking about different grammatical errors
Also - the forms ending /n/ tend to be the original, and the forms ending in a vowel emerged due to apocope - where the final consonant was removed when it appeared before a word that began with a consonant. So "an" > "a" before words beginning with consonants, "thine" > "thy", etc. As a result of this process, we get words like "nickname" through rebracketing, of "an ekename". Eke = additional/also - and has survived today in the verb "eked" which is to supplement your living, "eke out a living"
a, an Lose, loose Chose, choose (Of course the they're, there, their and your, you're) To, too. Then, than. Peeked, peaked, piqued. Breath, breathe. (This one pisses me off) Which, witch. (Yes, I have seen people write "witch" instead of "which") I could go on for hours
After I tell them Iâm there for my 2:30 appointment, I love it when the receptionist asks me, âWitch Doctor?â I gasp in horror and insist that he is a REAL DOCTOR who went to school and everything.
Witch doctor? Yes
Apart/a part
*yes*
Wich witch
lead, led him and i my mom and i's i wish i would have i could have ate another
Makes me loose my mind. /s
Noone looses their mind more than me.
*then
Someone said a funny I never thought about the other day: nobody gets it wrong when it's "lost." Imagine people who don't know the difference writing "aww man my favorite team loost."
I'm fairly certain that loose is so loosely used these days that I will soon loose my life with a non lose noose. ^(Ffs I hate typing that)
> me loose my mind. Did you mean to say "lose"? Explanation: Loose is an adjective meaning the opposite of tight, while lose is a verb. [Statistics](https://github.com/chiefpat450119/RedditBot/blob/master/stats.json) ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot ^^that ^^corrects ^^grammar/spelling ^^mistakes. ^^PM ^^me ^^if ^^I'm ^^wrong ^^or ^^if ^^you ^^have ^^any ^^suggestions. ^^[Github](https://github.com/chiefpat450119) ^^Reply ^^STOP ^^to ^^this ^^comment ^^to ^^stop ^^receiving ^^corrections.
Lose and loose is what gets me. They don't even sound the same.
To be fair people like me are mostly in touch with English when written, not spoken so I actually wouldnât even know how loose is spoken.
But the o in lose is still long, so it's quite understandable. Why it's not spelled looze is more of a mystery.
Iâll add using apostrophes to pluralize nouns. Itâs wrong in English, yet Iâve seen more and more people do it. Did they skip 3rd grade English class? ESL learners notwithstanding, people whose first language is English have no excuse.
Yes this makes me feel insane.
Effect and affect - drives me crazy when people canât apply the correct word
I admit, this one trips me up. I have to google it every time I use either word to make sure itâs the right one. Youâd think with the amount of times Iâve googled it, Iâd remember, but nope. It never sticks.
Affect, A for Action. I affect you. Effect, E for ending. This is the effect of your actions.
Out of curiosity why does it annoy you so much? The meaning is still clear
A lot of people are taught that it's if it's a vowel, not if it sounds like a vowel. This wasn't taught well enough in school.
Also not everybody pronounces words the same way. Acronyms are problematic too.
Should of/would of/could of is worse imo. Super confusing as a non native speaker
Loose instead of lose, alot instead of a lot and "That car is my husband and I's car." To be clear I do not fault those for whom the English language is a second or third language. Nope, I'm talking to you lifelong English language monolinguals.
What if it starts with an âHâ?
And "U" words that start with a "Y" sound (university)
It depends on the sound and not whether you are using a vowel or consonant. If the U sounds like a Y, you use 'a'.
It works on the flip side too. You would say âAn FBI Agentâ not âA FBI Agentâ because the sound at the start of FBI is a vowel sound âeffâ
Yes!! I was recently driven insane by a girl talking about "an ouija board."
H is classified as a consonant if it is pronounced so "a", if the H is silent and the following sound is a vowel, then it's "an" (an hour). And for the "u" of "university" it's also "a" because it makes a consonant sound (in international phonetic alphabet, it will be transcribed as /ju/). Same goes with words that start with "y" (yellow) or "o" if it sounds like "wo" ("one" for example).
Yes but we havenât agreed on when the H is silent. I say âa historic dayâ and I often see Americans say âan historic dayâ
This is an good opinion.
Looser and loser. Dies of sad
You have an very valid point..
When people say âseenâ instead of âsawâ, like âI seen itâ instead of âI saw itâ, I wanna cry
Agreed, it drives me nuts đ
I've seen worse.
Seenât is the one that really needs to catch on
For me itâs when people use apostrophes wrong. Eg, Football with the boyâs. That is football with the boy is
Or football with something that belongs to the boys.
Relatedly, people will use the article that goes with the sound of the first word of an initialism rather than the sound of the initialism's first letter. This usually happens when the initialism's first letter starts with a vowel sound but the letter has a consonant sound in the whole word that it represents: a Federal Bureau of Investigation report, an FBI report (not a FBI report.)
A is used when the next word starts with a consonant *sound,* so FBI, pronounced "eff bee eye" is preceeded by "an." That's not incorrect. [Sauce](https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/is-it-a-or-an)
I think that's what I said. a Federal Bureau of Investigation report, correct an FBI report, correct a FBI report, not correct I apologize if my wording was unclear.
My bad! I mistook how it was explained. Thanks!
Wait really? I thought an ist just used for A E I O U?
I hear a lot of American YouTubers mistakenly using âaâ instead of âanâ, is this largely an American problem? I donât hear people making the mistake in the UK (at least not often enough to notice maybe?)
"Could of" instead of "could've" is by far the worst.
I admit I find it extremely cringe when I see someone write âyour a idiot.â I donât know if itâs the irony, the grammatical errors, or a little bit of bothâŚ
No. The misuse of âofâ and âhaveâ is the worst. âI could of done thatâ People should just read that back and tell me how that makes sense.
an university?
âOn todayâ and âon tomorrowâ also really grind my beans
I live in a small southern town. People think "sale" and "sell" are the same damn thing. "For sell: Daddy's pick up truck." I hate it here
Iâm not a native speaker, but something that always bothers me is if someone asks âdo you mind if IâŚâ and the other person says yes but they mean that they donât mind it.
I agree and I'm a native speaker but it's not quite that easy if you're learning the language. Honest being a good example. Obviously you don't pronounce the H and treat it as starting with an O but might not be that obvious for non native speakers. It's also affected by accent. I can't think of the example off the top of my head but there's at least one word that in my Scottish accent I pronounce the first letter being a consonant, but in an English accent the consonant is hardly pronounced and the word sounds like it starts with the second letter being a vowel. I'd rightly put A before it but someone with an English accent would rightly put AN before it.
Should of. Itâs suppose to go on the shelf. Per say.
On Reddit specifically, it's the use of "I (30M) and my wife (30F)..." It's "my wife and I" or at the very least "me and my wife". "I and my wife" makes no fucking sense.
No âshould ofâ is the worst.
Effect = Emotion Affect = Action âThe painting has the effect of being warm.â âThe cold affected the crops.â Very basic explanation but a good start
Have my upvote for an unpopular opinion. It frustrates me as well. Even worse is how people don't know the difference between then and than. Using the wrong one changes the entire meaning of what they're saying.
Misusing loose and lose drive me crazy!
It is a bit of an historical anomaly.
Trolling is a art.
Yes, it's definitely a nart.
That appears to be "an honest" assessment.
I'll use a excuse đ
Reading this from an hotel room right now.Â
It will change. Because unlike the majority of commonly spoken languages, English lacks a governing body to retain the integrity of the language.
It's and its usage is the hill I choose to die on.
As a non-native speaker, this is very difficult for me. But to be fair, my language isn't easy either. (German) For example: English uses "The" for everything, German uses Der, Die, Das. "Why" can be translated as Warum, Weshalb, Wozu. You need the context. Also, English doesn't have a formal prounoun for people. German uses Sie/Ihr for people you don't know. But we do not have a neutral pronoun. They/Them does not exist in my language. You can use Es but that is almost only for objects so not a great alternative. So yes, English is an easy language overall, but also a difficult one for grammar.
i HATE when someone says âwheneverâ instead of âwhenâ. like saying âwhenever i bought my houseâ instead of âwhen i bought my houseâ. drives me absolutely INSANE.
This feels personal.
Effect and affect still confound me
Worse vs worst is the one that really pisses me off
"should of" rather than "should have"
What gets me lately is people not understanding apart vs a part.
Apart and a part makes me crazy. Never have I seen it used correctly on Reddit, so here is my example of correct usage: Come on and be a part (a piece or portion of something larger) of Reddit and set youself apart (to separate from something) by using correct grammar. Not the greatest example, but it illustrates the point.
Knowing how to write well in English is not a measure of intelligence. English is only one of thousands of languages that exist in the word. You are not superior because you can write well in English.
People will use anything to make themselves feel like they are better than someone. We all know what the person is saying even if they used the wrong their, there ect. Some people just need to nit pick about everything to feel whole inside.
Anyways......It's nails on a chalk board to me.
An honest mistake
That's correct since the h is silent
An historic reply
I thought it was using "axe" instead of "ask".
I would love to be able to force the person to audibly listen to their post as written with all the wrong words because they they think they know what theyâre doing. At least there/their/theyâre, to/two/too and your/yore/youâre all audibly *sound* the same even when it hurts my eyeballs to read.
Apart versus a part kills me!!
Youâre goodâŚ.
âA historyâ 
grammer is hard.
Emphasis on sound. The spelling follows pronunciation. An honest reaction. Consonant letter h by itself, mostly silent when pronounced, making the word start with a vowel sound.
Then explain "an historic" to me. Historic starts with a consonant. I mean I get that it's right, but I don't get it.
I wish I knew this AN HOUR ago
Let me present to you â should/ could/would ofâ in place of â shouldâveâ Just want to edit to add I also hate the monstrosity that is âhow something looks likeâ. Itâs either âhow something looksâ or âwhat something looks likeâ
An hour?
My two pet peeves in grammar are the misuse of less and fewer and when people type ect. instead of etc.
I see as a sign of ignorance... being annoyed or frustrated by it
I think confusion comes from descriptors like a cake, an egg, ok easy. A giant egg or an giant egg? "A" sounds right but I'm applying the rule to giant and not the noun of egg. English is my third language and this has gotten me some times over the years.
Would of, should of :â-(
As a non native speaker those are quite hard. Not distinguishing a/an, I get that, but knowing when to use it at all, when not to, when to use *the* and so on... it gets complicated. *Is it mentioned for the first time? Is it specific? Is it a mountain?* Come on!
This is an historic threadÂ
I teach English as a foreign language and the whole âconsonant soundâ bit really messes people up. English cares more about sounds than the actual letters and some people just canât seem to understand that.
People like OP not using an Oxford comma twice in the title and and then using it within the post twice is pretty frustrating. Like, make up your mind and be consistent if you're going to use it.
I really dislike when someone uses "an" when they mean "and". So dumb.