What's the most annoying common grammar error, and why is it using apostrophes to pluralize words?

[mistysue]

I love having a reason to tell this story. Long ago, my dad purchased a building which came with a functioning salon. It was a surprise to him. At closing the former owner handed him a binder for his new business. Anyway, we let the employees rename it. They went with "Accent's salon."
They ordered signs and business cards and had no idea what the issue was. I have an ex-boyfriend who still asks "Is Accent available?" when he sees or calls me.

 

[Mysterian]

Interesting, as I type out "and" in texts and it's quicker and easier than having to hit the caps button and then the alternate symbol keyboard to find the "&".

I just type "and" in any venue, but the point is I'm not going to fuss if someone uses an ampersand in a text. Abbreviations are often used in texts, right?

 

[Mysterian]

I have a friend of mine who always uses the plus sign (+) in his emails in place of the word and. Drives me up a wall.
Dan + Marie.

Maybe it's an equation. If I recall mathematics, Dan + Marie = Agatha.

 

[Deb1993]

Double spacing after a period is a pet peeve of mine. Double spacing dates back to the age of the typewriter. It simply isn't necessary anymore in the world of truetype fonts and thus a good reason they changed the standard from 2 spaces to 1. You will notice if you type two spaces after a period (like I did before this sentence) HTML is setup to only display one of them. For good reason

I feel attacked. I am the age of the typewriter and I. Won't. Stop. LOL

 

[Deb1993]

How can it be a pet peeve if HTML doesn’t even display it any more?

I just saw that!!

 

[Mysterian]

Double spacing after a period is a pet peeve of mine. Double spacing dates back to the age of the typewriter. It simply isn't necessary anymore in the world of truetype fonts and thus a good reason they changed the standard from 2 spaces to 1. You will notice if you type two spaces after a period (like I did before this sentence) HTML is setup to only display one of them. For good reason

Periods are important, right? Which is why the period, or other necessary punctuation, should come before the emoji.

Unless you're using an emoji that resembles a form of punctuation, like an emoji question mark.

I feel attacked. I am the age of the typewriter and I. Won't. Stop. LOL

See? Deb1993 does this correctly.

 

[Kennywood]

I double space after ending a sentence. I also double space between the state and the ZIP code. It's the way I was taught in typing class.

 

[disney_runner]

I just remembered a story. Back in eigth grade, my English teacher was a stickler for all puncuation and grammar rules and it was highly amusing to me. For my last paper of the year, I wrote it with everything wrong I could reasonably write that way and still get the point of it across. Spelling, grammar, no paragraph indentations, extra spacing, they're their your you're, allot, anyways, etc.. Just everything I could think of. She got such a kick out of it that she didn't even ask to see the real paper. A+ And then she signed my yearbook the same way with a nice little paragraph full of intentional mistakes. She was awesome, thank you Ms. Church!
I think I've forgotten a lot of the lessons learned, but there are still a lot that bother me! (some probably in this little story!)

 

[mrodgers]

It was "prolly" my dad. My nephew said it when he was little and now my dad does it on purpose.

Ha, I don't like picking up the kid speak from the kids at home and having it come out at work. I told someone at work I was "full of hands" and they just stared at me. It's what my daughter said when she was 3 or something when she was carrying something and we used it all the time as one of the typical family quirks that come up. "Can you get the door for me please, I'm full of hands" (my hands are full), LOL.

 

[jrmasm]

I'm not sure that mitten pronounced mi-en with the missing t's is a New England thing. I grew up in New England and never heard kitten and mitten pronounced that way until a relative returned from school in Utah. She came back saying IN-surance, living room suit (not suite), jewel-a-ry and all children were kiddos. I visited my family member several times in the great state of Utah and never gave a thought to anything beyond the friendliness of the people and my first bite of funeral potatoes. Yum! I celebrate regional differences in usage which is completely different than spelling errors and egregious grammatical mistakes.

I worked with lower income families for many years and I will tell you that correcting spelling and pronunciation was low on the priority list. I remember going to a student's apartment and seeing him and his younger siblings sitting in a circle at suppertime. The lights were off and they were eating canned beans. I asked him what was going on and he said his mother was working, he was watching the 3 little ones and the lights were off to save money. That boy is now a college graduate and small business owner. There is only so much a child can absorb in the formative years. For him, it was math, science and survival.

I thought it was NJ.

A mispronunciation that really bugs me is fustrate instead of frustrate. I swear its a new trend.

 

[JoanneAZ]

I thought it was NJ.

A mispronunciation that really bugs me is fustrate instead of frustrate. I swear its a new trend.

Or flustrate.

 

[Kennywood]

 

[Moliphino]

Or flustrate.

I kinda like that one to express when you're so frustrated that you get flustered. Not that I've actually used it.

 

[dioxide45]

How can it be a pet peeve if HTML doesn’t even display it any more?

I still see it in written documents. I worked in an office where I wrote a lot of procedures that had to be sent to someone else to review/proof. They would add double spaces after every period. They were then sent back to me to upload to a central location. Before uploading, I would do a find and replace in Microsoft Word to find all double spaces and replace them with a single space. Double spaces are necessary with fixed width fonts where every letter is the same width, but true type fonts put the correct spacing after a period.

 

[dioxide45]

Periods are important, right? Which is why the period, or other necessary punctuation, should come before the emoji.

Unless you're using an emoji that resembles a form of punctuation, like an emoji question mark.


See? Deb1993 does this correctly.

The smiley face was the period. But I have put the period here this time to please everyone.

 

[Kennywood]

Dad almost fell for WhatsApp scam but spotted typo he knew his son wouldn't make

A dad has revealed how he was nearly conned out of thousands by a very convincing WhatsApp scam.

Scientist Alan Baxter said he spotted the scam – and avoided being fleeced – because of punctuation mistakes.

The scammers were posing as his son and trying to convince Alan, from Australia, to send financial aid.

‘Dad, I planned to make a payment today but as you can see I won’t be able to do that myself,’ the scammers wrote in a WhatsApp message.

‘Can you help? I’ll send you the details if it’s fine’

Posting the entirety of the interaction on Twitter, Mr Baxter showed how the scammers were trying to get him to pay $4,700 AUS (£2,691).

But he quickly clocked that it wasn’t his son sending the messages.

‘My son is an English teacher so the lack of grammar and full-stops alerted me,’ Mr Baxter told the Daily Mail.

Source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/grammar-mistake-in-whatsapp-scam-saved-dad-from-losing-3000/ar-AAYW9zd?ocid=BingNewsSearch

 

[ThistleMae]

I'm from New England, born and raised. I say ki-in. I have some friends from NJ who have also said it's very common there (themselves included).

I hear that T, even if others do not....LOL!