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!

Please don't shout at me, but as an Australian I just don't understand why things like the lend/borrow issue are OK if they are a "regional thing". How many people do you have to have getting the same thing wrong in the same area before it becomes OK?
Do they actually teach these things differently in these regions? Doesn't this become a problem when people go their bank for a mortgage?

"Doesn't this become a problem when people go their bank for a mortgage?" lol, should be OK so long as they stick to a local branch

Yanbu, also agree with UQD

It's not anal or sad to want to read English that makes sense.

If we all decided to communicate through great lumps of unpunctuated spelling/grammar mistakes, how would we effectively convey meaning? We'd all be very confused, surely.

Something tells me Humpty Dumpty wouldn't have liked Pedants' Corner

Bubbaluv - at the moment, it won't really matter how you ask for a mortgage. There's no money to lend anyway, so no matter how it is asked for, the answer will be no.

Message withdrawn

I've got a question too. In Aus, if a race was five miles long it would be described as a five mile race. Here (on the BBC for example) it seems to be described as a five miles race.
Do I need to take my question to pedants' corner?

The question being which is correct!?

"It's not anal or sad to want to read English that makes sense."

Are you really arguing that the wrong use of their/there/they're makes a sentence impossible to understand? That I find ridiculous, context means far more than the correct placement of i's and e's. After all, how else would we know what people meant when they were speaking and half of these commonly confused words sound exactly the same?

Oh I do this on occasion.. must preview more before posting. as I post and then kick myself!

10 out of 10

In speech mode, I agree laweasel, of course we rely on context as there are so many similar sounding words with differing meanings. Why though with writing should we have to rely on context? I think it distracts from the content and ime puts me off reading further, especially in work related matters.

dilemma, affect is a verb meaning to have an effect on sth so 'my mother's death deeply affected me' it's rarely used as a noun whereas effect can be used as a noun to mean the result of an action/consequence 'what effect will this have on my career?' or a verb (not as often) to mean to produce or bring about 'the politician wants to effect change' hope that helps!

Bubbaluv, I would say five mile race too, the other way doesn't sound right.

On the decimate and other semantic shifts - it just happens, I'm afraid - look at Old English, Middle English and Early Modern English and you'll find lots of words that don't mean the same as they used to.

It's language evolution. You don't have to like individual changes, and you can bemoan a loss of distinction which you personally found useful/elegant, but it's not a sign of decay per se.

"It's like we are entering a new Elizabethan age where anything goes with spelling. " - that rather implies that somewhere in the intervening centuries there was a golden age where everyone spelt everything in exactly the same way. I defy you to find evidence of that!

My pet hate is - well - all of it really. But I really was furious when I saw a sign in M and S advertising "Half Price Chino's". How many people saw that sign before it was put up? And at the moment I'm getting increasingly cross about people who say "everyday" wrongly, eg "this will be happening everyday". And outside Forest Hill station last year, a poster for Ribena: "Nevermind, millions of berries make it". I blame Nirvana.

10 out of 10 for me too!!!

YANBU

One that I see on MN a lot is people on the Education and Schools threads, banging on about getting their children into "Grammer" School. I want to say, you haven't a hope in hell if you can't spell grammar!

Oh and - much as this will depress you, the dictionary definition of decimate now also means to destroy a large part of, with the 1 in 10 idea being a secondary definition. Although the Dr Who thing made me laugh too...

YANBU. It's not rocket science.

I remember the Ribena "Nevermind" poster. I've mentioned it on here before. It's like "anymore" and "everyday" (as a noun) - very annoying, because it's being done by people who don't know any better.

I used to wonder what NASA say for "It's not rocket science". Apparently it would be "this won't take a Tiger Team." This was covered in Grauniad "N&Q" a few years ago.

Oh I am a pedant too!

This morning I corrected (for no reason other than my own satisfaction, and a bit of smugness) a mail shot sent out by the marketing dept of my employer. It was short, aimed at clients and had about 6 silly errors. Set my teeth on edge.

That's interesting LTJ about the use of decimate. I noticed 'disinterested' also now has a secondary definition of 'not interested'.

Think habbibu has a point though, about language evolution. There were probably similar pedantic reactions in the 17th century when 'thou, thee, thine' etc.. were dying out: 'The country's going to the dogs I tell thee!'

What about were instead of where and weather instead of whether. Cant they look at it and tell its not correct?

Woohoo 10 out of 10.

Point is, though, how useful is decimate in its original sense? How often do you actually need to say "take out one in every 10" as opposed to every 5, or 20? You may not like the amended usage, but it probably has a broader and more useful communicative function.

InSearch - every period in history has people bemoaning language change, as if they've just emerged from a Golden Age into A World of Decay.

John Cheke in the C16th:

I am of this opinion that our own tung should be written cleane and pure, unmixt and unmangeled with borowing of other tunges; wherein if we take not heed by tiim, ever borowing and never paying, she shall be fain to keep her house as bankrupt.

For then doth our tung naturallie and praisablie utter her meaning when she boroweth no counterfeitness of other tunges to attire herself withall, but useth plainlie her own, with such shift as nature, craft, experiens and following of other excellent [writers] doth lead her unto... This I say not for reproof of you. . . but for miin own defense, who might be counted overstraight [too strictly] a deemer of things [prescriptive], if I gave not thys accoumpt to you, my freend and wiis, of mi marring this your handiwork.