Argh--I get so annoyed ( and a bit depressed!) over the state of language when I'm online. In casual chat or such I don't mind mistakes and improper grammar, even in more formal postings typos are fine, but over and over I see the same mistakes which are rather alarming.
Number 1 most annoying mistake:
Should of/Could of/Would of: apparently people no longer realize that these phrases are contracted forms of should have, would have, and could have. It went from should've to shoulda to now should of--which is a logical progression from a morphological point of view (at least somewhat) but so completely annoying and so completely indicative of thoughtless ignorance. I see this one even with people who are otherwise competent writers. Spell check/grammar check in Word even catches this one, and suggests replacing "of" with "have."
Another mistake I've seen a few places recently is with the phrase chock full. This one is a bit more understandable because the word "chock" survives only in this single phrase (I think anyway). People have no idea what "chock" means so they use the next closest word that has meaning to them: "chalk". So the phrase is slowly becoming chalk full--which makes no sense really, but that's language.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
My current language pet peeve is "alright". I only learned recently that it is formally "all right". But now I catch it everywhere. So I wonder how long it will be before it's recognized as a word.
Well, "alright" is one that is being argued still. It is definitely already in use and has been for more than a century, but some people insist that it is wrong. Most, though, agree that while "all right" is preferable in formal or professional writing, "alright" is perfectly acceptable in less formal writing and in written dialog. "Alright" is in most dictionaries as a nonstandard variant of "all right."
Many linguists argue that this change from "all right" to "alright" is perfectly natural and in line with previous changes to our orthography--"all ready" and "all together" have long since become "already" and "altogether."
Post a Comment