Grammar Pet Peeves

Ahmet

Sparked by discussion elsewhere but many of these quite prominent in Achaea, what are your biggest grammar pet peeves?

Mine:

"Yay or nay" (as opposed to yea or nay)

"All in favour say I" (instead of aye)

Szanthax

All in favour say I... That made me laugh just now.

Y R U so mean 2 B saying dat(?)

Jinsun

Every time @Proficy says "Your fucking Retarded." 

Rodhel

While "All in favour say I" makes me cringe, I can see why such things become accepted usage over the years when there is some ambiguity in whether or not "aye" or "I" makes more sense -- e.g All in favour say I could be interpreted to mean "I am" OR "Aye I am".

Another (think|thing) coming is one of my personal love-to-hates.

Shirszae

Uncapitalised words annoy me more than they should. People writing 'i' instead of 'I' and such. 

Quisse

Lower case 'i' and 'u' standing alone anywhere makes me want to punch kittens. And I really like kittens.

Aodfionn

For all intensive purposes.

Ahmet

Aodfionn said:

For all intensive purposes.

Rohai

Try not to let these kinds of things get under you're skin. For all intensive purposes, everything on Achaea is herd, were not really righting any of it. I try not to let grammer and spelling errors bother myself. It's a decision I should of made a lot sooner.

Ahmet

Rohai said:

Try not to let these kinds of things get under you're skin. For all intensive purposes, everything on Achaea is herd, were not really righting any of it. I try not to let grammer and spelling errors bother myself. It's a decision I should of made a lot sooner.

Taking out a contract in 3... 2... 1...

EDIT: Another thing, people using 2 or 4 periods for ellipsis. Fk those people.

Kayeil

Oh there are many. Would've versus would of. You're versus your. The list goes on, really.

My own mistakes annoy the hell out of me, too. Sometimes I'll miss a whole word in a sentence or some other random mistake just because I'm thinking of two things at once, or my thought process has quickly moved on to something else. It's not that I can't write, spell, or use proper grammar... I just get way ahead of myself. Pretty easy in a fast-paced game, I suppose. Now if it were something like a college paper, or some other written work of importance, I'd put a lot more care into editing myself along the way before submitting. I usually submit whatever I'm typing on Achaea before I bother re-reading. A bad habit? Yeah. Oh well.

Rohai

Ahmet said:

Rohai said:

Try not to let these kinds of things get under you're skin. For all intensive purposes, everything on Achaea is herd, were not really righting any of it. I try not to let grammer and spelling errors bother myself. It's a decision I should of made a lot sooner.

Taking out a contract in 3... 2... 1...

EDIT: Another thing, people using 2 or 4 periods for ellipsis. Fk those people.

Don't higher on me!

Sarapis

Contractions. They're the worst.

Morthif

We used to torment Clementius with "here, here" instead of "hear, hear"

Rom

lose/loose @Rangor !!!

Honestly though the only thing that bothers me is when people put zero effort into capitalizing anything. There were like 5 people in the Black Lotus a few years ago that must have popped out their shift keys.

Kez

Rouge in place of rogue.
Which in place of that.

Rangor

Rom said:

lose/loose @Rangor !!!

Honestly though the only thing that bothers me is when people put zero effort into capitalizing anything. There were like 5 people in the Black Lotus a few years ago that must have popped out their shift keys.

you're to mean.

Jadys

then and than

ex. I am taller then you.

Cesarina

I don't even have good grammar but I hate improper word forms...
Shelf is a noun. Shelve is a verb. I am sitting on a shelf. I shelve my books.
Please ;_;

Jemaine

I hate when I forget to type a whole word in a sentence. I'm not too bothered by others but it bugs me a little when someone copy pastes a line from the game and puts in on a public channel.
(Channel): Soandso says, "Biba hands you a pile of gold. Haha she buys rabbits that's hilarious!"

Jubal

I'm a bit of reformed grammar nazi. I say "reformed" because I've learned to let go of my grammar pet peeves and to just let people speak the way they want to. Usually.

That said, my biggest pet peeve is the disappearance of the word "fewer" in English. If I have five apples and you have three, then you have "fewer apples", not "less apples" as most people say. The word 'fewer' should be used with countable items; whereas, 'less' applies only to uncountable items like water, heat, love, etc.. For better or for worse, I think this is one of those unstoppable changes in the language, so I've ceased correcting people on this one.

Cynlael

Not just Achaea, but the internet in general. People who think they're smart when they say 'per say'

It's fucking per se. God damn it. I can count on one hand, the amount of people I've seen who spell it correctly without me needing to point it out. Only one of which actually plays Achaea.

Rodhel

Jubal said:

I'm a bit of reformed grammar nazi. I say "reformed" because I've learned to let go of my grammar pet peeves and to just let people speak the way they want to. Usually.

That said, my biggest pet peeve is the disappearance of the word "fewer" in English. If I have five apples and you have three, then you have "fewer apples", not "less apples" as most people say. The word 'fewer' should be used with countable items; whereas, 'less' applies only to uncountable items like water, heat, love, etc.. For better or for worse, I think this is one of those unstoppable changes in the language, so I've ceased correcting people on this one.

+1

Synbios

Using 'aide' in sentences where 'aid' is the correct term.

Blujixapug

Rohai said:

Try not to let these kinds of things get under you're skin. For all intensive purposes, everything on Achaea is herd, were not really righting any of it. I try not to let grammer and spelling errors bother myself. It's a decision I should of made a lot sooner.

I think it's part of the latent psychic talents every Achaean possesses. Everyone's tapped into the infosphere. This is how people can send tells (short for 'telepathy'), it's how you can check honours and help files, it's how you know someone's name without being introduced. It also sends out a glaring red blip of wrongness when someone apostrophises incorrectly, or uses the incorrect homophone. You can feel the true shape of the  spoken word. You just know, and it hurts.

Also, @Krypton's Pedant class needs a 'pet peeve' as its loyal. I'm thinking like a dog-sized bumblebee creature, but its face is just a gnashing mouth.

Krypton

This thread title.

Rispok

I swear I'll kill the next person to use a participle to describe in place of an expegetical infinitive.

Sarapis

Rispok said:

I swear I'll kill the next person to use a participle to describe in place of an expegetical infinitive.

I is a college graduate. You shut up.

Taeltwo

Krypton said:

This thread title.

I dunno. For a game like Achaea, I'd say it's pretty likely that educational level has effected some people's gameplay. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure I discovered Achaea while I was at school.

I'm pretty unbothered by people's grammar choices, which I guess comes with the territory for linguistics. Spelling errors don't bother me much either.

No matter how I try, I cannot, however, get over the word "anyways". For some reason it just sounds completely terrible to me in a way that no other word even approaches. It immediately pulls me out of any sort of fiction and I can't help but think it sounds stupid.

But on the whole, I'm a lot less bothered by things like people using literally as an intensifier than I am by people complaining about people using literally as an intensifier*. My grammar pet peeves are mostly about other people's linguistically naive arguments in favour of their grammar pet peeves.

*It's had an intensifier usage (exactly parallel to really and truly, which gained intensifier usages at the same time) for more than three centuries and no one ever pretended it was confusing until about twenty years ago.

Rispok said:

I swear I'll kill the next person to use a participle to describe in place of an expegetical infinitive.

I think you mean epexegetical

Jubal said:

That said, my biggest pet peeve is the disappearance of the word "fewer" in English. If I have five apples and you have three, then you have "fewer apples", not "less apples" as most people say. The word 'fewer' should be used with countable items; whereas, 'less' applies only to uncountable items like water, heat, love, etc.. For better or for worse, I think this is one of those unstoppable changes in the language, so I've ceased correcting people on this one.

That's not a change that's happened over time. It didn't disappear. There was never a time when only fewer was used with countables. There are also countables where fewer is extraordinarily rare - distances for instance.

It has never been the case that fewer was only used with countables in English. Things haven't changed. People aren't getting sloppy. It's just a completely fabricated "rule". In fact, we know the precise origination of this particular prescription: Baker 1770. It's never had any basis beyond the fact that a singular guy in 1770 thought people should use the word that way.

There are attestations of King Alfred using less for countables in 888.

This is exactly the sort of thing that bothers me.

Taeltwo

I can't edit it, but that should say "There was never a time that only fewer was used with countables in English", not "There was never a time when fewer was only used with countables in English".

Fewer is only used with countables. Less is, and always has been, used with both countables and uncountables.

Taraus

The variety of ways people will misspell the word 'definitely'.

And boy, are there alot.