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.

Also, my DH - I’m going toilet/are you ready go?. 🤬

Not really what you asked, but I was walking around a market once and there was a stall selling various plaques and coasters with slogans on them. One caught my eye that said "I'm silently correcting your grammer" which made a bit a bit of a mockery of the message!

I also found a top in M&S a few years ago that said "Girl's can do anything" 🥴 What a clanger! And again made a mockery of the message!

https://www.agood.com/blogs/stories/the-history-of-stationery

It is incorrect, the dictionary says so!

English dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. If you have a problem with that, then contact Susie Dent and tell her she's wrong.

Unless you are trying to start a grift for an Academie Anglaise ?

No, I mean faeces but with a p at the beginning. The pronunciation of PCs should be more like Pee Sees

Ooh I thought of another weird pronunciation one. People who say 'sht', or even 'sh-ch' instead of 'st' in words which begin with 'st'. For example saying 'How long is a piece of shtring' or 'Don't be sh-choopid!'. Argh!

'Could of'
IT'S COULD HAVE. HAVE HAVE HAVE HAVE HAVE....

Re ending with a preposition, I think this rule is based on Latin (which doesn't permit this)

Part of the charm of the English language, and it's subtle anti-foreigner construct (although I say that having never tried Russian or Mandarin) arises from the attempts of some well meaning (and possibly not so well meaning) academics to make it "more like Latin". Which is where the -ize ending got excised as Latin doesn't have a "zed" (or an "zee" 😀). . The fact I once knew all the irregular Latin verbs, and no one here could ever list all the English ones does highlight the futility in that task.

@AlertCat the incorrect use of ‘myself’ - arrghhhhh!

Don’t agree, sorry!

Sorry, I pronounce "faeces" liike "pieces" but with an F...? Am I doing it wrong?

Maybe I am... Years ago, I had a job where I had to phone the University Department of Surgery and ask if they kept their student's theses for future reference (this was pre-internet era). The admin secretary misheard what I was asking, and we had what can only be described as a really awkward conversation 😳😂

My nephew is called Christian. I remember his mum correcting people who said “Chrishtian “.

So when you say 'I got some lovely presents for my birthday', you mean you went and got them yourself?

Another instance is their spurious objection to split infinitives. We should continue to boldly go regardless of their excessive pedantry!

Which leads us to ‘irregardless’ …no!

IME the main reason for needing to understand the distinction between ‘disinterested’ and ‘uninterested’ is so that we can understand the concept of ‘pure disinterested love’ in Jane Austen. Mind you, we have to also be able to deal with Mr Darcy violently making love to Lizzie (something like that) meaning no more than strongly expressing his emotions!

Quite, in that case you would say ‘I got myself some lovely presents’.

Incorrect capital letters, everywhere!

Loose and lose makes me ridiculously annoyed

If it’s on a word which could conceivably be a proper noun that’s likely to be autocorrect - it can sometimes be ridiculously persistent. I think it’s given up doing it for colour names also used as surnames at least, regardless of context. The one which currently irritates me is if I write that I’m just going to a Quick Look at something and it does that ⬅️…I neither know nor care what product has been thus named but if I’m taking a hasty glance at something I really don’t want to have to wrestle autocorrect to make it leave ‘quick look’ alone.

Oh God yes. Really gives me the rage. My Mum. In Summer. At School. The Cinema. Her Teacher. And if you're my brother, all of them!

According to whom?!

Because it’s grammar belonging to “others” not grammar belonging to “other” in which case it would be “another”.

Oh that’s annoying

Even with it's cornucopia of words to choose from, English can still come up short with some subtle nuances. Hence it's rapacious attitude to other tongues. As someone once said :

“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a <insert trigger warning phrase of choice>. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”

Digression question for the class. How long does a loanword have to be in common usage before we are allowed to call it English ? For example as far as I am concerned, "schadenfreude" is now a regular English word. In common usage and it's quite unique* in it's meaning and intent.

*Yes. I did. Deliberately on purpose too.

Lots of it's/its mistakes on this thread