To invite the grammar and language pedants to share their pet peeves?

[AlertCat]

AIBU to feel annoyed when I see people say Slither instead of sliver? It was even in a book I read recently. A slither of cake. No! That makes no sense, unless the cake’s been trodden into the carpet!

Also see: step foot in instead of set foot in

There’s plenty of others but those will do for now.

Some people do say "S" "Q" "L" though ... it's very much the bath/bath of computing (it really isn't 😀)

I’m pretty sure the vast majority of commercially produced biscuits in the U.K. are single baked. Twice baking was mostly to dry it out for storage, as with ships biscuits. It’s really only a few very dry things like some rusks, and of course biscotti, which fit the etymology of the word now.

on using floor instead of ground and ground instead of floor.

why do not people know the difference?

Include in that incorrect pluperfects. E.g. "If he had have told me". Why make your work for yourself when "If had told me" does the job perfectly well?

Are you joking with sank? 😂

"Reach out" when you mean "contact". Reaching out implies a specific movement of the arms. It cannot apply to sending an email or text, or making a phone call. And it sounds really stupid.

When people get "stationery" and "stationary" mixed up!

I'm a primary school supply teacher, and the amount of drawers of pens I see labeled with "stationary" is surprising!!

E for envelope, A for absence of movement.

Fortunately that’s not the sort of thing humans really need to get into nowadays.

WHY does MN have this double standard, though? Apparently it's absolutely fine to tell other people they're getting it badly wrong in terms of parenting, relationships, cleaning, catering, washing, driving, health care, diet, drinking, financial management, you name it - but dare to suggest that "could of" is to be avoided and apparently you've committed a major crime. It's so hypocritical.

This has crept in from the US, I think. I remember in the early days of video calling, we were discussing an upcoming conference with a US client, who always used "reaching out" to describe contacting someone. At one point, discussing a speaker who was being rather awkward, she said with great emphasis, "Oh, why don't we just blow him off!" (in the US sense, meaning dismiss him). I remember wishing to god that video calls had not been invented so that I could die laughing, but somehow managed to make it through the rest of the call.

I haven't RTFT but for me, people on this site saying "I'm sat here crying" or "I was stood".
Do the words sitting and standing no longer exist in the English language?

"I'm sat here crying" and "I was stood" doesn't make any logical sense and looks and sounds like broken English.

Ah, that's good. It is in my line of work (which is, obviously, being paid to be a nut job)

Oh my God, me too. When and why did this become a thing?

American office speak is a whole other thread.

Perhaps we should stick a pin in it and circle back after we've reached out to others?

"I brought a car, paid £3k for it".

"I borrowed him £5"

"Chester draws" or "draws" instead of drawers in any context.

People who refer to any school holiday as "half term" and not only the weeks half way through a term. Christmas and Easter are not half terms.

Great wiki page - thank you!

Poor buggers learning English and its inconsistencies.

There’s a current thread about giving a baby a cup of tea. The baby is going to scold themselves drinking the scolding tea 😂. I resisted being “that” pedant pointing out its scald.
The Pp who mentioned phase v faze…..I thought it was just me !

The first option.

I think that might be because it's easier to say. Many many of these mistakes are people speaking lazily. 'Nucular' instead of 'nuclear' for example. Sometimes we just have to force our mouths into unfamiliar positions and we seem very reluctant to do so.

I would like advice on this one:
I always thought that the phrase ‘the exception that proves the rule’ meant that for a rule to be a rule there must be an exception.
However I was then told that in fact it means the opposite, as ‘prove’ in this case is the old-fashioned sense of ‘test’, as in ‘prove dough’.
Therefore the phrase means the exception that tests the rule and shows it is not a rule - which actually makes more sense.
Is this the case?

I think to a degree it's due to how much informally written printed material is now out there. When I was a child, there were books, newspapers, magazines, all were edited and there was an expectation that written material would be checked for spelling and grammar errors before it was published. The internet was in its infancy, social media and forums didn't exist, so everything people were exposed to was largely correct. Even if you were not terribly well educated yourself, years of exposure to correct spellings & forms probably gradually took effect.

Now there are people whose main consumption of written english is from unedited websites, social media and forums. There are also self published books/fan fiction that aren't edited properly. The poor spelling and grammar becomes self perpetuating as its all people are exposed to.

Its probably how language evolves.... in 500 years will "drawers" simply be spelled "draws".

Calling respite ‘rest bite’ - I’ve even seen this for medical professionals.

Referring to people as ‘yous’ e.g. yous two fancy a drink?

In some instances. For remuneration it's more likely that people think 'numera' relates to figures and therefore is more logical for it to be renumeration. My two pence.

That one's illogical though. There's nothing at all unfamiliar or difficult about the sound combination 'clear' on the end of 'nuclear'. 'Clear' is a common word. The stress/emphasis is different from how it is in 'nuclear', but the sounds and mouth positions are identical. Arguably 'nucular' is harder to say!

Might depend on how you say it. I say 'new-cle-ar' three syllables that have to be very distinct. Nu-cu-lar can be muttered a lot more easily and sort of run together.