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.

I watched the New Zealand series of The Traitors on iplayer and there is none of the "yourself" nonsense. They have no problem in saying "I'm voting for you, John".

My use of quotes has been well fucked by 40+ years of programming languages.

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

Gender for sex, for example.

Thank you. Two words.
I see it written as 'thankyou' so often.

I work in a school and saw two separate documents this week, written by teachers, that had 'draw' instead of 'drawer' and an incorrect they're/their/there use.

Alot, abit, aswell.

I was always taught that ‘quite’ in the sense of ‘absolutely’ was an acceptable qualifier for unique.
Agreed, though, that it’s just not logical to use qualifiers such as ‘pretty’ as unique is an absolute by definition.

It makes a lot more sense when you remember the BBC is now an entertainment channel.

It should be others' grammar. The grammar of others.

"The United States is ...."

E2A: I think 🤔

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."

I once knew someone who had a run-in with a publisher (which he lost) over this. He had written an article in which he wanted to quote from 1066 And All That - 'history came to a .' The publishers said house style required the . to be outside the quotation marks. He said, no it was part of the quotation, and should be inside. I saw the published article, with the . outside the quote marks, completely losing the point of the quotation.

Just a few posts up, I did a little mini-essay on how group nouns are used with plural vs singular verbs in UK vs US English.

It's a bit different with the names of countries, because in both UK and US English they are referred to in the singular.

However, some country names (e.g. the Netherlands, the United States, the United Arab Emirates), include a plural, so sometimes in UK English we'll say things like "The Philippines are implementing new guidelines” or “The United States have shifted their policy" but would always refer to other countries in the singular (e.g. "France is considering new legislation” or “Brazil has announced reforms").

In US English, all country names will always take a singular verb.

Would of instead of would have.

This one really makes my toes curl.

To the extent that I will stop reading whatever that person writes soon as I see it!

American colleagues used to always say 'Where are you at?' and it made me irrationally annoyed.

"Hating on" someone is also very adolescent and annoying. 'Hate' does not need a preposition.

The blue badge leaflet issued to my mum by the Scottish government made several references to disbaled parking and disbaled access.

So why do you feel ‘is’ is correct there but not for a football team? Seems to me the latter is more of a single cohesive entity than the increasingly heterogenous, not very united states comprising the U.S.A.

I absolutely LOVE the word "quite" because it can mean completely different things depending on context: "It's quite cold today" (= a bit) or "The way you did that was quite brilliant" (= completely).

I count my blessings I was born an English speaker and don't have to try and make sense of all this as a foreign language! And that's without the thorough throughput of coughs and boughs in a borough although it should be enough (I know that doesn't make sense, just making a point about pronunciation 🤓).

I hate these too

It gets on my nerves when people say ‘needs gone’ usually on Facebook community page posts when they’re trying to get rid of some old tat and don’t want to pay for someone to take it to the tip

I do too, it seems to be an American thing and I really hope it doesn't catch on here.

The tickers are a regular complaint on BBC Newswatch! 😂

Ugh! So daft when the House Style Police win (or should I say wins?!) at the expense of content. If it was at the end of a sentence, to avoid a full stop both inside and outside the quote marks it could have been edited so that the quote appeared earlier in the sentence, and/or some other solution found e.g. italics.

I was sat. Ffs, you were SITTING.
I brought a new coat in M&S. Ffs, BOUGHT.
I walked passed the door. Ffs, PAST.
Your a great artist. Ffs, YOU'RE.

Why, why, why are these kind of mistakes everywhere? I cannot bear them, and no, it's not because I think of myself as 'superior', but because I care about the damage being done to the English language. It does matter. People need to stop being so defensive and resistant to learning how to spell correctly.

Not read the whole thread so it may have already been mentioned, but the misuse of 'literally' annoys me. As in 'It's literally boiling today!'

No it literally isn't.

Does that bother yourself?

Yeah, spin mentioned, but it bares repeating.

sic

Well I am allowed to hide behind the fact that expecting logic in English is a lost cause.

It is a mongrel language spoken by a Frankenstein people.