To get irritated at the wrong usage of there/their/they're

[Made2OrderJelly]

It bloody riles me, i don't know why, it just does

Do you get them right???

It really is not hard!

i think BW is looking for a fight tonight

Alot and aswell. Arg!

Ha! M2J! I'm in a job where I have to proof-read students' work all the time and can't really afford to let anyone catch me out on my typos and English!

bw, I don't email tabloids (don't read them ) but this was so obvious that I took advantage of their putting their email address on the bottom of the advert to give them some constructive feedback

I would have done that too SweetestThing.

You see, it's all very well to have Pedants' Corner, and it is a great place and a welcome haven. But it sort of implies that "normal" people are not bothered about this sort of thing and that it is somehow anal or "sad" to be hung up on grammar.

It isn't.

We are not talking about little typos.

We are not talking about minor errors of spelling, e.g. "dependant".

We are talking about confusing three TOTALLY separate things. Dyslexia etc. apart, not being able to distinguish between their, there and they're is just... MAD. It's like not being able to distinguish between apples, tennis balls and green glass paperweights, because they are all about the same size and the same colour.

I could not believe it at the age of 12 when our English teacher gave us a stern talking-to about mixing these words up, and set us a homework designed to distinguish between them. I wanted to leap on the desk and shout "are you insane, woman? Who in their right mind would mix these up? It never even occurred to me to do so until you said it just now!!"

UQDad, you are very funny

It's like we are entering a new Elizabethan age where anything goes with spelling.

It's interesting that we expect numbers to be totally accurate, and things can go badly wrong if they're not, but spelling isn't taken nearly as seriously, even though getting it wrong can cause communication problems.

I received a leaflet about ISAs from the Cooperative Bank the other day, presumably sent out to ten of thousands of customers, that displayed in lurid green letters the word/contraction it's used as a possessive. Absolutely tooth-grinding. I nearly wrote a letter, I tell you.

Totally agree, my pet hate is things like disinterested/uninterested or loose/lose being used interchangably

They mean totally different things FFS! When did we stop learning the actual meaning of the words?

Grumbles off to investigate Pedants Corner....

Results: 7 Correct 3 Wrong 0 Skipped

Quite agree, UQD, well said.

My pet hate atm is the wanton misuse of decimate. Arghh. The clue is right there in the word!

Yes, I was delighted to see John Simm as the Master in "Doctor Who" using this word correctly when he ordered the Toclafane to destroy 1/10 of the Earth's population!

YANBU
If I were you I'd never wander off to Netmums. If the pink and tickers don't get you "there" kids will.
Remember, if you go, you should of remembered, you were warned.

I am glad that there are threads like this as I can ask the smug lovely pedants lots of questions about grammar.

What about allover / all over? I dropped the bottle of wine and it spilt all over the carpet.

I grew up in the 70s/80s and the emphasis was not placed on teaching English grammar, which was a huge disadvantage when I moved to Germany and started learning German. At age 19 I had to look up the meanings of adjective and adverb.

Yay! 100%

YANBU, it's one of the most irritating things on EARTH! Grrrr!

YANBU.

I hate when people get you're/your wrong too. That's not brain surgery either, oh and wear/we're/where too!

Oh I hate loose/lose!

Grrrrr....

Oh and when I people say "I got xxx off of yyyy"

Isn't it easier just to say "from"?

Oh 10 out of 10...

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"Thanks Stealth, teachers used to write 'sp' in red pen on my essays all the time, my initials used to be SP so it took me a while to realise they were pointing out my terrible spelling!" lol - poor communication on their part!

I don't think lend/borrow is a regional thing!

Typos and errors on here don't really bother me, it's stuff that I know should have been prepared by someone who was being paid to write clearly and correctly, and proofread before being unleashed on the public that annoys me. So adverts, newspapers, magazines etc.