Why are people now saying ‘use to’ instead of ‘used to’?

[FaithHopeAndSkulduggery]

And leaving out the ‘ed’ on lots of words.

‘Bake beans’. No it’s baked beans.

‘I use to like that show’ . No, it’s fucking ‘used to’.

Lots of other examples I can’t bring to mind right now.

I want to burn the screen when I see that.

Also, when people say ‘long story short’ in conversation instead of ‘to cut a long story short’.

Aibu to hate this?

I want people to stop saying "exasperated" when they mean "exacerbated".

Since we're confessing to personal bugbears I have to go with affect vs effect.

Also, the utter inability to use the possessive 's properly. I used to drive past a big yellow sign for something like 'Ben's Barn' across the front of a huge warehouse and they hadn't used an apostrophe. If you're going to spend literally thousands of pounds on a huge lit up yellow sign on your roof, at least make it gramatically correct!!

I worked with a french person who used to write am instead of I'm! And as a result of of reading it constantly am after getting into the habit of doing it now too

@Sethis I do wonder how often sign writers spot such errors and whether they are expected to raise them with the client or just don’t bother!

Another bugbear of mine is how ‘in’ and ‘on’ increasingly seem to be used interchangeably. I think a lot of this is because it’s an easy typo but I do wonder sometimes whether people have actively chosen the incorrect version - possibly because they’ve read so many typos! That said, I haven’t heard it in (on) spoken English (yet).

OP:

Because they are not properly educated?

“What do you think TO this dress?”

I saw the above on the Style forum recently.

The one I absolutely hate is when people say brought instead of bought. Eg "We just brought a new house". 🤬 No you fucking moron, you BOUGHT a new house! You don't bry things, you BUY them and then they are bought.

Rant over.

Interesting thread - DD2 is having the ed problem at the minute.

Main issue seems to be not being corrected at school for a long time - so were are going over at home.

Though I’ve done the could of instead of could've - not covered in my school sounds same in my accent and I've only realised it's wrong as an adult. Took extra reading in my 20's to feel happy about apostrophes.

My older children at doing commonly confused words at the minute most of the ones that get mentioned on these threads are covered– one that bemuses me is take and bring apparently these days they are muddled up.

Could've and could of both sound extremely similar when it comes to pronunciation, so for speaking and listening getting it wrong is understandable. However there is a clear and obvious difference when writing that should be corrected.

I think the Millennial generation (my own) got screwed out of basic English knowledge because for all my time in school we were never really taught the grammar at all, it was just corrections as you went along. Nobody sat down and said 'here's a list of irregular verbs, and here's how the tenses work'.

On the other hand I hear now about primary school kids being given 2 hours of homework about subjunctive clauses and split infinitives, so maybe we got off easy...

I do know, however, that learning a language is much easier when you understand the mechanics of your own native tongue.

I think there are also fewer children reading for pleasure as there are so many alternatives. They are no longer regularly seeing the written form of words and are just going by sound and guessing.

YANBU

Sethis, I agree with you.

I can't remember ever being taught grammar at school, whereas my primary school age children started learning it straight away. Some of the things they come out with confuse the hell out of me. It makes me really AWARE that I wasn't taught grammar and I try my best to get things right.

OP, YANBU. I have been lamenting the decline of the past participle adjective for years. It makes no sense at all to use the present form. In speech, I agree, it's often (though not always) hard to hear any difference, but in the written word it looks awful and makes no sense.

I mostly blame texting/social media/autocorrect. I find that helps keep my blood slightly below boiling point rather than blaming poor education.

I haven't particularly noticed this, but what winds me up is when people incorrectly use "used to" in the negative which seems to happen all the bloody time. E.g:

"I didn't used to play tennis" is incorrect. It should be "I didn't use to play tennis".

"I used to play tennis" is correct however.

For the same reason people choose to end statements with question marks:

"I had soup for lunch?"
"I'm from Wales?"

And they choose to say: "I could care less"

It doth verily vex me OP. Tis often spake that language wilst change, but not for I.

I heartily concur with all your summations.

Userplusnumbers

Point taken. But I can still feel annoyed. Don’t remind me about ‘could care less’ pp.

I keep hearing people saying 'the proof's in the pudding', which makes no sense. The expression is 'the proof of the pudding is in the eating'. For some reason this really annoys me.

I've noticed people shortening a lot of these old expressions and rendering them meaningless. People just don't seem to listen to themselves when they speak.

Fwiw - I do agree with the point about "could care less", but try to be sanguine about these things, as long as the meaning is clear, it's not worth getting hung up on some imaginary rules of 'grammar'

Or you could go full out French and start taking people to court about it

I have a friend who says and writes ‘are’ instead of ‘our’. Makes me cringe. I also have another friend who consistently uses proverbs and phrases incorrectly like ‘cut her nose off to despite her face’. She also does the he/his thing. But when texting I would say for brevity, missing words out is fine, I wouldn’t think that person didn’t know the correct way.

I give you:
I text her yesterday
I