Something else that drives me mental...

[pjmama]

When people type "I should of...." instead of "I should have...".

Makes me want to scrub out the inside of my head with a pan scourer

I wonder if it annoys anyone else when people use if instead of whether?

I hate hearing "I'll and do it" instead of "I'll to do it"

e.g. "I'll try and go to the shops." No you won't, you'll try to go to the shops.

(Odd example, sorry!).

Even worse than 'I want' instead of 'I'd like' is the brat-speak 'I need a ...' (insert unecessary item of choice). You might need a drink of water or a wee but very little else!

I really do get annoyed when DD (10, should know better) says 'Should of' instead of 'Should have' etc and then argues about it when I correct her. Arghhhhh.

Random capital letters wind me up. A teacher at school does this, makes me cringe, how can you get all the way through school, university and teacher training without learning how to use capital letters?????

Writing things entirely in lower case is just as bad, I get really annoyed at signs or the TV when they do this.

EmmaPr I teach children who not only say 'somethink' but write it down with the k as well.

Wonderstuff, you are not alone in wondering why on earth some teachers can't use English properly (DH is a teacher too, and he, like you, can manage it perfectly ).

I went to a new parents' evening at DS' school last year, and one of the PowerPoint slides had the word "chilldren" written on it ...

DH had to hold me down in my seat and put his hand over my mouth!

Spelling "children" as "chilldren" is as bad as greengrocers who advertise their "tomatoe's" and "potatoe's" ... and, even worse, "strawberrie's" and "raspberrie's" (both seen frequently during the past few weeks).

Gah!!

I love this thread!

DH teaches at a selective secondary school (entrance exam at age 11) where some of the A-Level students are still writing america instead of America ....

He deducts marks for it, even though he's not supposed to and the kids get really upset, but continue making the same mistake. Dunces.

God, yes, complimentary and complementary, being mixed up, I can't stand it.
Can I also add stationery and stationary as in
"The stationary lorry crashed in to my car! "

MummyD - before you explode - would you consider the possibility that chilldren was a typo? Can't be good for your health to get so worked up, surely ...

Today I saw something that made my head ache just looking at it. There it was, before my eyes, actually printed in a book. It said:

"She would of went with him"

Eeeeeek!

I had to put the book down, I just couldn't read on.

I can understand how "Thankyou" came to be on some till receipts (lack of space for printing) but cannot forgive those who say "Thank you" without any noticeable break between the words.

I think others have already pointed out the most common bloopers which make me grimace, though I note even some BBC journalists get it wrong when talking about groups of people, when they say "which" where they should have used "who" (and sometimes the opposite, of an organisation, where they use "who" instead of "which" - but much less common, I know).

No - the worst one is 'loose' instead of 'lose'. Gah! Makes me want to spit!

loose / lose

imput / input

An Americanism I find particularly irritating is 'I could care less' when what they actually mean is 'I could not care less.'

I don't know why it annoys me so much either.

Was proof-reading a friend's MA assignment the other day and had to correct 'loose' to 'lose' and 'where' to 'were'. She's a fellow teacher too.

expect / except

"boughten"

GAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

roll / role

I'm adding these here, as and when I find them.

Another common one is "there" instead of "their."

I quite like boughten. It makes me think of Little House on the Prairie.

sobloodystupid, that is the correct spelling of stationary, surely? Apart from the fact that is can't have crashed into anything
I was always taught 'stationary' is like a pARked cAR and 'stationery' includes papER

weird that we x posted more than 24 hours later on this thread!

I am currently looking at a poster for an event that includes Trampoline and Trapeze Artists, Stilt-walkers and Jugulars.

I wonder what the latter do? Sounds like it could be messy!