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.

explanatory. It is making explicit what the change involves. A listener or viewer would have to know the current voting age threshold to glean that information from the other phrase.

If that is true, then all it explains (to me) is how thick "people" are.

What part of "lowering the voting age to 16" suggests that 17 year olds are not included ?

Although if that is the case, then it's using clunky English to solve basic innumeracy.

No wonder young people do not know how to talk and which words to use!! that is shocking!

When I posted, I used "preferred" referring to "hit or miss", but that is more American, while the "and" version is preferred in the UK. Both have the same meaning. I haven't come across any info that the phase's use is typically regional. The expression's origins are accredited to Whitlock c1600's .

https://www.oed.com/dictionary/hit-or-miss_n?tl=true

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Whitlock_(writer)

I've just read a post on another thread that began,
"I and my husband ...".

Anyone else find this jarring?

No, I think that's OK! Not very Queen-like, though 😂

Although usually not grammatically incorrect, the latest overused phrase doing my head in is “That being said” or “That said”.

It’s rife on here and often used by those using “myself” incorrectly.

I have heard it used incorrectly in too, mind you.

Can’t stand it!

Without any commas to off-set the clause "my husband."?

I, and my husband, [...]"

I realise this is a thread on Mumsnet and not homework, but you've made at least three errors in your post...

Six?

It depends on the rest of the sentence. For example, "I and my husband are from London" is grammatically correct but unconventional because the convention is to put oneself second. But it's not wrong.

So, no guillotine?

Adding commas is not essential - doing so would change the emphasis very slightly, as though the husband is of secondary relevance IYSWIM. A bit like putting it in brackets: "I (and my husband) decided to sunbathe naked."

The test of whether it makes sense grammatically is just to take out "and my husband" and see if the sentence still works: "I ... decided to sunbathe naked." It wouldn't work with "Me" or "Myself."

Can you point them out please, I can't see them. Genuinely interested.
It's a bit like one of those hidden object games 😁

Oh, there they are in the post from @ChimpanzeeThatMonkeyNews

Ah, interesting. I like to think I'm pretty good at English and grammar but I missed those.

No actually, just looked again. Can't see them.
Where am I going wrong?

I don't mind errors that are obviously made from typing too fast (when someone writes 'soemone' rather than 'someone') or random commas or if it is obvious that the poster has dyslexia and a dreadful spellchecker (which is often where homophones creep in). What makes my skin prickle is usages of words which make it obvious that the poster doesn't read much except online and is just continuing a mistake that they don't realise is a mistake because they've only seen the word wrongly used on other fora and have no idea how it should properly be applied.

Oh and nonplussed, which is STILL annoying me.

Yes! I’ve seen similar abuse of old English usage on supposedly funny birthday cards. E.g. ‘you maketh…’

Of course those of us of a certain age will probably have had the advantage of hearing daily readings from the St James Bible in school assemblies and Scripture lessons. We absorbed thee, thou, hath, maketh, etc. with our horrible school milk.

You also need to remember that not only do we have autocorrect now, but increasing layers of "AI" that can silently "improve" someones writing. This means that people whose SPAG is weak don't realise what has happened to their meaning.

One day soon, a Very Important Document will be "AI" mangled without anyone realising it until too late and there will be some sort of scandal.

My gut feeling is it will be in law, but there are plenty of areas where people have made communication so ambiguous it could happen.

I have just commented on another thread that picking up peoples SPAG errors on the internet is a rather fruitless pursuit. I would only query something if no clear meaning can be drawn from the text ....

You are quite right. I always forget about AI because I have disabled it everywhere I can and refuse to use it. I KNOW WHAT I MEAN and I don't need some computer program which has just scraped content from other people to tell me that it knows better than I do what I meant to say!

Really horrid to repost someone's comment with errors highlighted, sorry PPs! Especially as some of those are not errors and others are clearly typos, easily done when texting.

Remember they are cramming "AI" wherever it isn't. So opting out will be a brief experience. Much like trying to live without a smartphone.

And even once you have pressed "send" and see what you typed posted, you may have to contend with it being "improved" (i.e. changed to suit the sites politics) long after you sent it.

Imagine sites changing "sex" to "gender" in order to "align with out values" ?

How boring must your life be that you can remember that as an absolute fact from all the words you must have heard in your 69 years 😁, that can't possibly be true

I was reminded of this thread earlier when someone on the radio said hit or miss, correctly used

1. "spelling and grammar errors" is plural, so it should be "never fail" not "never fails";
2. "i" should be capitalised;
3. "posses" is missing the last letter;
4. Your first dash is redundant (no punctuation is required at that point in the sentence);
5. "man alive" should be separated by either two commas or two dashes, but not one of each.

I don't remember the difference between hyphens, en-dashes and em-dashes, but even I am not going to be that pedantic!

I think you have to have a pretty thick skin to discuss SPAG on AIBU ...

So many things. Faze and phase annoy me most I think. Apologies if already mentioned, but the newish trend of describing past events in the present tense. This seems most prevalent in American documentaries. ‘So I walk into the room, and I see a man there…’. I find it jarring.