Grammar mistakes that drive you crazy

[SpoiltMardyCow]

I have two:

He hung himself. Instead of he hanged himself.

It was so fun. Instead it was either "such fun" or "so much fun"

What are your grammar bug bears?

Sorry for typos. I'm on my phone.

perhaps a quick google would save you from embarrassing situations
I am not embarrassed, Jeanne, nor do I need to for not knowing about a character in a children's book from a country to which I only came when I was 35 (provided it's a UK children's book). I stand being corrected - learning something is a good thing. Why should I be embarrassed about learning something new? Or making a reasonable assumption ("frisby"/"frisbee")?

Spelling is hardly a vital component of English studies (lit or lang)
I am sorry but I will continue to differ on this. As long as we are talking primary school. If we are talking secondary or tertiary education, then I agree that it is not a component, just like phonics is not a component of HE either: basic literacy should have been mastered by then.

some of them may also be relying on the excuse that they didn't learn English until 14 (or later), too.
Does this apply to, say, Medical Science, too? I.e. being accepted to medical school but having to google, say, alleles? Or the superior vena cava? Even though they are secondary school material? It does not matter what history one has up to the point of entry to university. It does not matter if someone was born in the UK and spent the previous 18 years learning English; or if they were born somewhere else and spent n years learning English. At the point of entry they need to have mastered certain things. Spelling, in my opinion, is one of these.

Sorry but I have to bow out of the thread - I don't normally do Mumsnet through the week and it's late.

Yes, that one irritates me MissB. New verbs are generally regular, so texted would presumably be the logical choice. Apparently the 'text' as past tense has come about because of the application of irregular rules (put, cut, bit etc)
It just sounds wrong to me, but I doubt my urine output could be arsed going over a certain temperature about it...

As for the text and texted thing....

Can't you see just how ridiculous English is here? The two words when spoken are phonetically the same....

unless you are being very particular with your pronunciation...

Well, I don't think you need be embarrassed for that, or for spelling. What's wrong with looking up things you don't know?

My issue is that you seem to think you were 'correcting' another poster.

I agree at Primary School, children do need to try to learn to spell. But I think you're wrong to suggest university students should invariably have 'mastered' spelling. There's nothing wrong with them continuing to learn, or with using appropriate aids if they're struggling.

I'm not sure how you mean the parallel with a med student to be taken.

If a med student needs to check how to spell 'superior vena cava', I think that's fine. If an English student needs to check whether or not 'anaphora' has an f in it, that's fine too.

What's not fine is if the med student doesn't know where to find the vein, or if the English student doesn't understand how to discuss effects of repetition in a piece of writing.

So far as spellcheckers in the year I went to university about 10% of the UK population went to university. Spellchecker did not exist.

Today every email, letter, article and most documents I write get run through a spellchecker. It's a useful tool , it takes seconds to use. I dictate to a typist rather than type work. Sometimes one reads what a word is meant to be rather than what has actually been typed. Spellchecker picks it up.

I also mentor law students. One piece of advice I give is always run your CV through an English UK spellchecker before you submit it.

YY, lass, and I always think the people who talk about students's shocking spelling in our modern age of spellcheckers should be made to read dissertations written pre-spellcheck. I assume tolerance for errors simply went down hugely once spellcheck came in. It's not perfect, but it's really useful.

Before spellchecker people just used dictionaries when they weren't sure didn't they? I don't know what the problem is. Same with using calculators for maths.

MrsFrisbyMouse "As for the text and texted thing....Can't you see just how ridiculous English is here? The two words when spoken are phonetically the same...."

How do you work that out? Texted has an extra syllable. Text and texed, would sound the same, but texed is not a word. Texted sounds completely different.

grunt you're right - I was not explaining myself very well! t and d are very similar - and in spoken speech quite often get interchanged depending on the sounds that come before them. (for example boxed isn't pronounced b-o-x-e-d but b-o-x-t) If you apply that to texted - you get t-e-x-t-t - hence why people say text instead of t-e-x-t-e-d for the past tense of text. Don't think I've made that any better though...

Another vote for overuse of reflexive pronouns. It's rife in service industries: "Can I get any thing else for yourself?".

Compliment/complement was my favourite error whilst reading blogs today.

"This statement necklace really complimented the Breton striped top."

What a nice personified necklace.

Exactly. The verb isn't tex, it's text. It is therefore conjugated thus: I texted him, not I texed him or I text him.

I've just had some spam email labelled "inquiry" - for someone who was "enquiring" about improving my website.

"If so, I can provide you with a free mock-up of what the new site would look like before you make any commitment. How's that for zero risk? Shoot me a reply and let's chat about what you need"

Shoot me a reply - seriously?

Overuse of adverbs: wrap up warmly seems to be one used by weather people. When I was young, it was always wrap up warm because it's a state in which one is wrapped up and not a manner. Another one is born prematurely. I gave a reliable source again who says it's a state in which one is born rather than a manner

There was a post upthread about Midge Ure's song, 'If I was'. The one that really irritates me is Snow Patrol's 'Chasing Cars' with the lyric, 'If I lay here, if I just lay here...'. What is he, a bloody chicken?

Isn't it a conditional or something in that song? If I lay here, if I just lay here, would you lie with me and just forget the world? I think that's okay. Like "If I sat here, if I just sat here, would you sit with me and just forget the world?" I don't know if I mean conditional. My brain refuse to grammar.

I found that explained on the Internet www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2009/02/snow-patrol.html

Not so much a grammar one but I've seen this often and it really makes me laugh "Oh she's such a pre Madonna"...would that make them a Debbie Harry perhaps??

People who say "He was bias."

I work real hard.

gwen thanks for the link.
Absolutely hate "lay down" where it should be lie down.

It's a subjunctive, not a past tense. It's the same as if I were

Pre-Madonna! No