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

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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.

Weird use of inverted commas: ‘He said “he didn’t eat meat”’ so I said “I didn’t care, he could eat it or not.”’
If you’re quoting someone, quote them, or convey the gist of the conversation without quoting, either is fine.

Jane Austen does that.
....he thought her “less thin in her person, in her cheeks; her skin, her complexion, greatly improved; clearer, fresher. Had she been using any thing in particular?” “No, nothing.” “Merely Gowland,” he supposed. “No, nothing at all.” “Ha! he was surprised at that;”

There seems to be a weird thing over plurals in some places that jars. Usually when you can treat a group as a single entity. E.g. "Manchester United are a football team based in the UK" to my ears sounds correct. "Manchester United is a football team based in the UK" doesn't. I guess there could be a very subtle rule at play, but blessed if I know it.

It's a shame we stopped bothering with genders in English. We lost a whole battlefield there

Upmost for utmost 😡

Devine instead of divine

I genuinely think I have some kind of word OCD.

I definitely have a visceral reaction to the sort of mistakes people are talking about here. It feels as though everything is flying out of control and it makes me really uncomfortable.

I'm not talking about typos btw, or when autocorrect or formatting changes what's been written, it's the virus-like spread of willful wrongness that makes me panicky.

I was going to say this one too. Really bugs me.

No, I think it's gone beyond that on social media now, and people have accepted it as the correct version.

You would hate The Traitors then! "I've voted for yourself, John..." 🤣

It actually slows down your ability to read and understand a paragraph if it's littered with grammatical and other errors.

In UK English, we tend to use a a plural verb with group nouns where you're thinking of members acting individually ("The crowd were cheering wildly" or "The committee are preparing their own speeches") but singular where the group acts as one ("The crowd was silent" or "The committee has prepared its decision").

In US English, they tend to prefer singular verbs regardless of context, e.g. "The staff is very helpful" (which always sounds odd to me but that's just the way they roll).

Punctuation also varies between UK and US English, for example we use single quotes with puncutation outside, 'like this', whereas in the US the convention is double quotes with punctuation inside, "like this."

It will not surprise you to hear that 'Manchester United is a football team....' sounds right to me. I suspect I have been influenced by speaking French and Italian, where verb endings are more numerous than they are in English.

There's only one team. Multiple players in the team, but only one team, so Manchester United is....
I can see why this could be confusing though.

I'm pretty chilled about other people's mistakes because I'm certainly not perfect.

But it does get my goat when official communication has glaring errors.

I keep getting letters from my local hospital trust, informing me that they take no responsibility for any valuables 'bought' onto the premises 😐

I'm really risk adverse. I'm not adverse to the idea.

Can't actually speak when I think of this one....it's all over the place on MN.

It actually slows down your ability to read and understand a paragraph if it's littered with grammatical and other errors.

Words have meanings. 'She was very definite about it' and 'she was very defiant about it' mean very different things.

I sometimes do even though I know the difference. It comes up when you only want a small slice of cake. I sometimes get fewer and less wrong as well. I imagine that crops up quite a bit on these threads.

It was when I started noticing regular errors in the BBC new tickers on the main evening news progammes that I knew we were doomed as a nation. 😆

Discrete and discreet do not mean the same thing, they are not interchangeable spellings of the same word.

Would you say ‘The United States of America is…’ or ‘The United States of America are…’?

Gosh yes, I used to make allowances for the dyslexic person who used to type up the minutes from our meeting but every week without fail there would be a serious mistake eg wrong surname of student, wrong spelling of first name, even wrong pronoun! It just showed that proofreading by another staff member never happened

All of them! Just all of them! I try to rise above it, though, else I would go insane!

So many people pronouncing specific/specifically as Pacific/Pacifically. It boils my blood.

There isn't enough room on the internet for my grammar/vocab peeves...but here are a few:

Gifted instead of given
Impact instead of affect
Likely will instead of Probably will or is likely to
Myself instead of me (or I)

Yes and using social media speak for things. Just because they can doesn't mean they should.

Off of.
Occasionally DH says it and it gives me the rage.