Top 10 grammatical errors that make you look stupid

**gijoe1313** · 14th April 2007, 09:13

Originally Posted by Fairlie

How about "The dog wagged his or her tail"...that's lovely flowing prose, and values her/him as a loved pet.

Or the tail wagged the dog as a tall tale of how a tale about a tail shouldn't be tallied!

**Krusti** · 14th April 2007, 09:16

I don't need grammatical errors to make me look stupid. I was born that way.

That's why I joined a stupid biker forum.

**Beemer** · 14th April 2007, 09:46

The addition of unnecessary apostrophes or the misuse of them irks me - one of the chain stores has an ad on tv at the moment for a sale of women's, children's and infant's clothing. The first two are correct because those words are plural, but the third one should be infants' because they are referring to more than one infant!

The misuse of the words weather, whether and wether in print are another case in point. Most illiterates seem to think there is only one word - and it's spelt wether... and they look sheepish when you point out their mistake!

Loose/lose and choose/chose are two that are also confused quite often - if I had a dollar for every time I came across sentences like "call this number if you want to loose weight" I'd be rich!

Bought/brought are another two words that most people think are interchangeable.

My mother adds an 'h' to certain words like heighth so it sounds like she has a lisp!

Complimentary and complementary are the two words most people can't differentiate between. I saw two instances of the wrong use in the local paper last week - one in the editorial! - so there's no hope.

One of the grammatical errors that REALLY annoys me is this: "I could OF done that" - NOOOOOOO! It should be "I could HAVE done that"!!! Don't get me started on "gonna" either... used often by tv 'journalists' and the like.

**yungatart** · 14th April 2007, 09:58

I have a lot of pet peeves!

I sometimes cringe when I see the appalling spelling and grammar on here, but most of what irks me has already been covered.
A large part of the problem, as I see it, is the lazy way that Kiwis speak...e.g., could've (spoken) translates to could of (written).
It doesn't help when we have English teachers who cannot spell, teaching children who also cannot spell.

And, while we are on the subject, can someone please enlighten me as to why one can't write in capitals at Year 12 level, when it was acceptable to do so at Year 11? It seems that correctly written English in capitals is an automatic fail, but one could "achieve" if one's spelling and grammar is incorrect, as long as it is written in lower case, with appropriate upper case usage e.g., proper nouns, beginning sentences etc.

**terbang** · 14th April 2007, 10:09

Saya Ingrish tidak bagus..!

**scumdog** · 14th April 2007, 10:11

Originally Posted by terbang

Saya Ingrish tidak bagus..!

Bloody show-off, acting the kambing again!

**terbang** · 14th April 2007, 10:13

Kambing Gila..

**Virago** · 14th April 2007, 10:15

"Waive" and "Waver" are two totally different words, but apparently completely interchangeable......

**Beemer** · 14th April 2007, 10:19

I'm doing a writing, sub-editing and publishing paper through Massey and the spelling and grammatical errors in the course material have to be seen to be believed. In a section about sentence length is the following gem: "If you have to read a sentence more than one [should be 'once'], it is probably too long." Another section required students to correct any errors they found in five sentences (some did not have any errors) but one sentence they said had no errors in fact did! It was: "The Ross dependency is administered by New Zealand." The word dependency should have been capitalised - I didn't get marked down for correcting it, but that was listed as being error-free!

When I was in the seventh form (god knows what they call it now!) I was classed as 'bright' so one of the 'benefits' of that was being forced to help third formers with their remedial reading. I lasted one session before refusing to go again because we were not allowed to correct the students if they made any mistakes! So if they read "the quiet brown box lent over the lazer green frog" instead of "the quick brown fox leapt over the lazy grey dog" then that was fine. I'm sorry, but how the hell is that going to help them learn to read properly?

I got good grades for some subjects at school (and it's the same with my university study - an A for things I am good at and a C for those I am not!) and don't accept this namby-pamby system where you get rewarded for trying, but not necessarily achieving. Why should someone who works hard and does all the course work receive the same recognition as someone who doesn't even bother or just doesn't have the skills to pass? It's a fact of life that not all of us can grow up to be a brain surgeon or a fighter pilot. It doesn't mean that all those people who work in retail or fast food don't have any brains, merely that to get the really top jobs, you DO have to be better than the rest of the field.

**rainman** · 14th April 2007, 11:37

My pet peeves (apart from your/you're which I seem to come across daily at the moment) are:

Number/Amount: A large amount of people were at the event. Aaarghh.
Less/Fewer: There were less people there than last time. Ditto.
Good/Well: How are you? I'm good. Well, possibly, but that isn't what I'm asking...

I've just come across this site (www.drgrammar.org), which has a good FAQ page. Rather unfortunate site motto though, given the announcement on the front page!

**Lorax** · 14th April 2007, 12:07

Double superlatives.

eg "The most coolest", "It was the most awesomest movie ever"

I smack these people in the face too. Literally (or was that figuratively??).

**Bass** · 14th April 2007, 14:40

Originally Posted by scumdog

"Yerr, I seen thirrrteen or fourrrteen mallarrd drrrakes in the yellerrrr willeerrs overrr at the rriverrr on Thurrrsday so I drrove into town and brroughrt a new RRemngton"

You can always tell a Southland girl by the way she rolls her R's

**Flatcap** · 14th April 2007, 15:03

More accurately, the title of this thread should be "Top 10 grammatical errors that make one look stupid" .

However in using wholly correct grammer one sounds like an inbred toff, so one bastardises one's vocabulary so one doesn't get a kicking.

**Big Dave** · 14th April 2007, 15:37

Originally Posted by Fairlie

More accurately, the title of this thread should be "Top 10 grammatical errors that make one look stupid" .

However in using wholly correct grammer one sounds like an inbred toff, so one bastardises one's vocabulary so one doesn't get a kicking.

Oh! No. I would never stoop to using the vernacular or take short cuts in my day to day speech. fukin A.

**Ixion** · 14th April 2007, 15:49

Originally Posted by McJim

,,
Surely if something belongs to "it" you must write "it's"

The dog wagged it's tail.
,,

Not so. "its" here is neither a genitive pronoun nor a contraction. It's a possessive adjective. You wouldn't write hi's tail. Confusion arises because the stem of the adjective ("it") happens to be the same as the pronoun. We have no pronoun "hi" so we don't get confused on that one. Comparison with the Latin is interesting.

A similar and very interesting argument is the use of "their" to refer to the singular "Anyone who thinks their interests are affected".

Originally Posted by gijoe1313

The more I do so, the more schadenfreude I garner

Schadenfreude is a german term meaning "pleasure taken in the misfortune of another". I do not think that is what you meant.