To say it's QUEUE, not QUE?

[ImWearingReallyJudgyPants]

Every time I see "que" on here, all I can think about is Manuel in Fawlty Towers.

It's a sodding QUEUE.

Another one is chock instead of choke ie "my ds was chocking". Makes my teeth itch!

I keep seeing plurals used when it's a singular possessive e.g. 'the babies nappy needed changing' instead of 'the baby's nappy needed changing'. Or 'I went to my families house' instead of 'family's house'. I can understand skipping apostrophes; not everyone is confident using them and it's faster not to type them, but to just use a plural instead is weird.

oh, don't get me bloody started! I agree with all of the above.

DameFanny: As any fule kno!

@josbd

oh, don't get me bloody started! I agree with all of the above.

DameFanny: As any fule kno!

Molesworth rules.

Don't worry, all the SPaG they do in ks2 now there will be none of this in 10 year's time.

Or years'.

The next person who asks;

"Will you borrow me a fiver?"

Shall be killed and the remains burnt and the ashes scattered on salted ground.

I feel like that about some posts. I’m afraid I stop reading when I come across a “should of” or something similarly nonsensical.

This is what bugs me about the attitude to grammar on MN. Mildly mentioning that someone's grammar makes what is written difficult to understand seems to be regarded as one of the greatest crimes around. On MN, apparently it's fine to tell someone that they're hard work, rude, inconsiderate, greedy, lazy, dirty, racist, sexist, bigoted, a bad driver, etc; but suggest that they could write "would have" instead of "would of" and you will be instantly torn apart. But it seems to me that not bothering to write coherently so as to make your posts easy to follow is also bad manners. I know some people are dyslexic (though that gets trotted out as an excuse on an unfeasibly frequent basis) or simply not very well educated, but often it is obvious that it is simply laziness.

@YellowandGreenToBeSeen

Misusing ‘take’ and ‘bring’ makes me violent.

‘Shall I bring my dad to his hospital appointment next week when I am vulnerable to Corona?’

TAKE! IT’S SHOULD I TAKE MY FATHER!!

‘DP says he won’t bring me to my sisters house next week. Is he BU?’

Yes he is.

BUT SO ARE YOU IF YOU’RE ASKING SOMEONE TO BRING YOU TO THE FUTURE.

Ahh. That’s my day off to a good start.

Thank you! I often see 'bring' here and think it doesn't look right but didn't quite know why.

There's another one that doesn't look right to me and I'm not sure why is 'embarrassed of'. As in 'I am embarrassed of my weight'. Surely it's 'about', not 'of'? Could someone enlighten me please?

Yes, I know there's an error in that post! I wish we had an edit function.

I'd have said 'embarrassed by', though 'about' is better than 'of'.

I came back to this thread to note the widespread misuse of 'tenant' instead of 'tenet' - sometimes misspelled as tenent.

Or tennant.

I pointed out to a dental surgery that ‘Patient’s parking’ made it look as though they only had one patient. They didn’t change it.

Cygne - I teach people grammar for a living. The idea that it's bad manners to post with poor grammar on social media is frankly laughable. People use incorrect grammar because they were not taught (or at least not taught much) correct grammar. Also, some people have a good memory for that kind of information and some don't. Putting right lifelong written and spoken habits is a huge task. So is looking up everything when you don't even know which bits you're getting wrong.

Branding somebody as lazy for not wanting to devote a lot of time and effort to mending their grammatical ways so as not to offend the petty sensibilities of people on a bloody chat forum is mean-spirited and ridiculous. For a job application or an important letter, fair enough.

@HowManyToes I see "loose weight" more often than "lose weight" on the internet. Most women in those vitamin pill pyramid schemes who spam social media can't spell it seems.

LazyLinguist - I also often skip a lazy, incoherent post if it's littered with 'would/should/could of', 'bare with me', 'loose/lose' type mistakes. If they can't be bothered to write it intelligibly, I just can't be bothered to decipher it.

Same with the posts which start at the top and continue throughout without a single punctuation mark. Other than maybe a few !!!!!!!!!!! at the end. It's hard to read, and hard to understand.

I see "loose weight" more often than "lose weight" on the internet.

Hence the need for 'toning'?

IMO, unless it's a thread in Pedants' Corner or deflating arrogance, it's best to simply model correct spelling and grammar rather than being snippy.

I've read that it's not really true that small children can learn foreign languages more easily than teens and adults (other than ability to distinguish different sounds, acquired at a very young age) - but it can appear to be easier because adults naturally model good usage rather than picking on faults.

What about the new mystery of the missing “to be”?

E.g. It needs done, it needs cleaned, it needs gone.

I see this on MN all the time, but I don’t hear it in speech. Where has it come from and why? It irritates me beyond reason.

@lazylinguist

Cygne - I teach people grammar for a living. The idea that it's bad manners to post with poor grammar on social media is frankly laughable. People use incorrect grammar because they were not taught (or at least not taught much) correct grammar. Also, some people have a good memory for that kind of information and some don't. Putting right lifelong written and spoken habits is a huge task. So is looking up everything when you don't even know which bits you're getting wrong.

Branding somebody as lazy for not wanting to devote a lot of time and effort to mending their grammatical ways so as not to offend the petty sensibilities of people on a bloody chat forum is mean-spirited and ridiculous. For a job application or an important letter, fair enough.

I agree with this. Threads like this appear regularly and I often just scroll past. I’d suggest it as a good solution for those who can’t cope with grammatical mistakes in posts. Meanwhile couldn’t you use pedants corner?

Scroll past threads if bad grammar upsets you that much.

@ptumbi

LazyLinguist - I also often skip a lazy, incoherent post if it's littered with 'would/should/could of', 'bare with me', 'loose/lose' type mistakes. If they can't be bothered to write it intelligibly, I just can't be bothered to decipher it.

Same with the posts which start at the top and continue throughout without a single punctuation mark. Other than maybe a few !!!!!!!!!!! at the end. It's hard to read, and hard to understand.

Same here, I just can't be bothered. I also never share Facebook posts with glaring errors (or - separate issue - swearing) even if I agree with the sentiment.

@Cygne

I feel like that about some posts. I’m afraid I stop reading when I come across a “should of” or something similarly nonsensical.

This is what bugs me about the attitude to grammar on MN. Mildly mentioning that someone's grammar makes what is written difficult to understand seems to be regarded as one of the greatest crimes around. On MN, apparently it's fine to tell someone that they're hard work, rude, inconsiderate, greedy, lazy, dirty, racist, sexist, bigoted, a bad driver, etc; but suggest that they could write "would have" instead of "would of" and you will be instantly torn apart. But it seems to me that not bothering to write coherently so as to make your posts easy to follow is also bad manners. I know some people are dyslexic (though that gets trotted out as an excuse on an unfeasibly frequent basis) or simply not very well educated, but often it is obvious that it is simply laziness.

Agreed.

Same here, I just can't be bothered. I also never share Facebook posts with glaring errors (or - separate issue - swearing) even if I agree with the sentiment.

I do the same. Just can’t help it.

Meanwhile couldn’t you use pedants corner?

No. This is not an issue that should be stuck in a corner - for the reasons given above.

would have thought the op would post in pendants corner.
seeing they are so clever!!!

My eyes are drawn to errors, Abs my brain takes time to correct then which slows me down, but I really don't mind then in a chat setting. There's many reasons why a post may be grammatically inaccurate, and if the meaning is clear, best just to flow with it.

I do get rather irked by errors in environmental print, though

Surely when large companies produce written matter, it should go through several processes to ensure accuracy?

My current peeve is my local Co-op which is

*Open 07:00 - 22:00
Everyday
*
I may stage a mini pointless protect and shop at the Spar instead