Everyone makes mistakes and typos and spelling errors. Those are completely normal and completely forgivable.

However ... one thing which drives me absolutely mad is interchanging the words "then" and "than". They are not interchangable. They are not the same word.

then -

adv.
1- At that time: I was still in school then. Come at noon; I'll be ready then.
2- Next in time, space, or order; immediately afterward: watched the late movie and then went to bed.
3- In addition; moreover; besides: It costs $20, and then there's the sales tax to pay.
4- Used after but to qualify or balance a preceding statement: The star was nervous, but then who isn't on the first night of a new play.
5- In that case; accordingly: If traffic is heavy, then allow extra time.
6- As a consequence; therefore: The case, then, is closed.

n.
That time or moment: The bus leaves at four; until then let's walk.

adj.
Being so at that time: the then chairman of the board.

than

conj.
1- Used after a comparative adjective or adverb to introduce the second element or clause of an unequal comparison: She is a better athlete than I.
2- Used to introduce the second element after certain words indicating difference: He draws quite differently than she does.
2- When. Used especially after hardly and scarcely: I had scarcely walked in the door than the commotion started.

thank you

sheba,

Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! That is one of my biggest pet peeves. My other would be the "would of" thing...it's 'would have". that gets on my last nerve *lol*.

That's a good one, Sheba.

I have some others to add...

People who pronounce Realtor as "real-a-tor". Two syllables, folks.
and
People who use the term "irregardless", particularly in memos. The word is "regardless". Irrregardless is not a word.

The biggest one these days are the web-posters who apparently cannot spell worth a darn. And I am not talking about the internet shorthand (aka. "did u see 2nite's Lost?") I am talking about people who post three sentences and have five spelling errors. With all the spellcheckers out there, why is it so hard to get words like "though" or "ruse" spelled correctly?

Please, don't get me started.

I just needed to vent. I mean, if a poster makes a typo once, that's one thing ... but when the same poster makes the same error over and over, it isn't a typo.

I just get so tired of reading the same person (and there are several, not just one) write something like "I would rather see this then that." NO-NO-NO!

If you were raised in Bolivia or Spain, then you can be forgiven a vowel error, since you are probably writing the word as you hear it or speak it ... but if you were raised in an English speaking country, you have no legitimate excuse for making that mistake.

Come on now! You can't expect every one to be near perfect. Remember, their are some people on here from other countries that may not have great English skills. That may be why they continually make the same mistake. (And may now see this thread and not feel comfortable to post, when we enjoy them just as much.) Let's give them a break.
At my job, I deal with Japanese, Korean, Chinese natives that speak maybe 25% English. They travel here (US) for the company which is based in their countries as well. I have to speak to them only knowing English myself. It is very difficult.
Their for, I don't think mixing 2 words around is so bad. You think it's so bad, until you think about how much more worse it could be.

Come on now! You can't expect every one to be near perfect. Remember, their are some people on here from other countries that may not have great English skills. That may be why they continually make the same mistake. (And may now see this thread and not feel comfortable to post, when we enjoy them just as much.) Let's give them a break.
At my job, I deal with Japanese, Korean, Chinese natives that speak maybe 25% English. They travel here (US) for the company which is based in their countries as well. I have to speak to them only knowing English myself. It is very difficult.
Their for, I don't think mixing 2 words around is so bad. You think it's so bad, until you think about how much more worse it could be.

Please refer to my post, directly above yours. You are correct in saying that if English is a second language, that is different.

Come on now! You can't expect every one to be near perfect. Remember, their are some people on here from other countries that may not have great English skills. That may be why they continually make the same mistake. (And may now see this thread and not feel comfortable to post, when we enjoy them just as much.) Let's give them a break.
At my job, I deal with Japanese, Korean, Chinese natives that speak maybe 25% English. They travel here (US) for the company which is based in their countries as well. I have to speak to them only knowing English myself. It is very difficult.
Their for, I don't think mixing 2 words around is so bad. You think it's so bad, until you think about how much more worse it could be.

This is very true. And if I realize the poster is of the English-second language variety, it does not bother me in the least.

Howevar, ewe can always run you're post threw a word prossessing program like WORD for a grammer and spell chek so that there posts can be red with eaze.

I sespect that most errars are maid bye people whoze furst languige is English and jest aren't carefull with there spelling and grammer.

Yes, I have seen them this bad.

Affect and effect. When folks mix those up I go grrrrr.

(My mom was an English teacher. :rolleyes:)

Sheba, Sorry about that, I missed that.
I run a production line, and I all here is complaints. I deal with a lot of crap, and sometimes when people just step back for a minute and put themselves in anothers shoes, they may realize it isn't as bad as they make it out to be.
PosseGal, Wow, you've really seen them that bad? I can understand being upset about that!
Edit to say, if they type/spell that bad, can they read well?

Come on now! You can't expect every one to be near perfect. Remember, their are some people on here from other countries that may not have great English skills. That may be why they continually make the same mistake. (And may now see this thread and not feel comfortable to post, when we enjoy them just as much.) Let's give them a break.

Well, the funny part is that mistakes like "then" vs. "than", "would of", "affect" vs. "effect", "you're" vs. "your" or "there" vs. "their" vs. "they're" (my personal pet peeves are the last two) are made by native speakers most of the time! I think writing things like "your cool" instead of "you're cool" is next to impossible if you aren't a native speaker for the mere fact that no matter how fluent you are in a language, you still tend to translate what you write back to your mother tongue which makes finding those mistakes much easier. Unless you see those mistakes each day, that is, in that case it might rub off on a non-native speaker (made that experience myself!)...

Three other things that get to me, are the above mentioned "They're, there, and their". Those three words give my students the hardest time. I'm constantly stressing to them the difference between the three and have even made them write a list of sentences with the correct usages until they either remember it or want to kill me *lol*.

P.S. I also make the same mistakes when I'm in a hurry, so I do try to be gentle with them when they do.

This thread made me "LOL!"

The your vs. you're is probably the one that makes me the craziest. I have a friend who mailed out 40 birthday invitations with "Your invited!" in bold letters at the top. When I pointed it out to her (no, I couldn't contain myself) she just looked at me with this puzzled look and still didn't get it.

One other thing, not related to the written word, that drives me nuts is hearing people put an L on the end of idea. I don't know if it's just a weird accent thing in certain parts of the US, or if they are actually confusing the words?
Everytime I've ever heard someone say "I have an ideal!" I've just been on the edge of my seat to hear it, because there is obviously a stroke of genius about to be imparted upon me...
Jen

Edited to correct a typo, I love irony.

Edited to correct a typo, I love irony.This really made me laugh, Jen. :lol:

One other thing, not related to the written word, that drives me nuts is hearing people put an L on the end of idea. I don't know if it's just a weird accent thing in certain parts of the US, or if they are actually confusing the words?
Everytime I've ever heard someone say "I have an ideal!"

I have an aunt that says "Ideal" in place of "Idea" all the time *lol*

This thread made me "LOL!"

The your vs. you're is probably the one that makes me the craziest. I have a friend who mailed out 40 birthday invitations with "Your invited!" in bold letters at the top. When I pointed it out to her (no, I couldn't contain myself) she just looked at me with this puzzled look and still didn't get it.

One other thing, not related to the written word, that drives me nuts is hearing people put an L on the end of idea. I don't know if it's just a weird accent thing in certain parts of the US, or if they are actually confusing the words?
Everytime I've ever heard someone say "I have an ideal!" I've just been on the edge of my seat to hear it, because there is obviously a stroke of genius about to be imparted upon me...
Jen

Edited to correct a typo, I love irony.

Bet you loved the subtitling in tonight's show then. :D

Lessee...this one doesn't happen a whole lot except for history class and church, but mixing up Calvary and cavalry bugs me. Also, when people say that something left a "whelp" rather than a "welt". You got bit by a bug and it left a puppy? Probably fits Starrox's example pretty well, only native speakers would really do that. I remember living with my German host family in college, and they were alarmed because the three year old started imitating my mistakes.
Vocabulary screwups bug me more than grammatical ones, I guess, probably because I still make grammatical ones. I mix up lie and lay (amazed that hasn't shown up on the peeve list!) and have a bad habit of saying good when I mean well. I do recommend reading "Eats Shoots and Leaves" (or was it "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves") for anyone adding to this thread. :)

Sheba, Sorry about that, I missed that.
I run a production line, and I all here is complaints. I deal with a lot of crap, and sometimes when people just step back for a minute and put themselves in anothers shoes, they may realize it isn't as bad as they make it out to be.
PosseGal, Wow, you've really seen them that bad? I can understand being upset about that!
Edit to say, if they type/spell that bad, can they read well?

Ironically, in last night's Lost, the word "you're" was used in the closed captioning when it should have been "your". Did you catch that?

And, yes I have seen them that bad. It's like there are people who just could care less whether they spell words correctly as long as they work phonetically. Kind of frightening.

Bet you loved the subtitling in tonight's show then. :D

Lessee...this one doesn't happen a whole lot except for history class and church, but mixing up Calvary and cavalry bugs me. Also, when people say that something left a "whelp" rather than a "welt". You got bit by a bug and it left a puppy? Probably fits Starrox's example pretty well, only native speakers would really do that. I remember living with my German host family in college, and they were alarmed because the three year old started imitating my mistakes.
Vocabulary screwups bug me more than grammatical ones, I guess, probably because I still make grammatical ones. I mix up lie and lay (amazed that hasn't shown up on the peeve list!) and have a bad habit of saying good when I mean well. I do recommend reading "Eats Shoots and Leaves" (or was it "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves") for anyone adding to this thread. :)

Yes, I totally loved the fact that they made that mistake on the very day we were discussing it here LOL

I'm with you though, vocabulary mistakes drive me up the wall. (btw, "bit by a bug and it left a puppy" just about made me pee my pants, thanks!)
As someone mentioned above, regardless/irregardless is one I hear frequently.

Here are a few others that make me crazy...

supposedly- supposably
et cetera- excetera
ask- ax
nuclear- nucular (George Bush anyone? lol)

Ok, I'll stop now, I could probably go on all day LOL

I guess this is the time to toss in eXcape. I hate that.

I personally hate "their" v "there" and "where" v "were" anyway my english grammar is terrible even though it was drilled into us at school. When I lived in France for college everyone there was amazed my French grammar was so good and when I helped them with their english homework they complained when i gave them a couple of wrong answers! Another thing i hate is when people put in apostrophes all over the place when there's no need!!! grr

YES!! There was a you're/your typo in the subtitles last night and I couldn't beleive that slipped past them!

Also hate people messing up passed/past and "I could care less" it's I couldn't care less! Couldn't!

I have an aunt that says "Ideal" in place of "Idea" all the time *lol*
I've heard "idear". Never "ideal". Interesting.:ohwell: :)

I found that I often does this too! Thanks for pointing it out! :biggrin:

The biggest one these days are the web-posters who apparently cannot spell worth a darn. And I am not talking about the internet shorthand (aka. "did u see 2nite's Lost?") I am talking about people who post three sentences and have five spelling errors. With all the spellcheckers out there, why is it so hard to get words like "though" or "ruse" spelled correctly?
I'm a horrible speller, so I love spell check, but alas I cannot use the spell check on this new board. If I'm writing a long, hopefully intelligent post, then I will copy my post into word to check it there before posting it. I also type very fast and make numerous typos like spolier. Every time I type it, it comes out like that, I can't seem to retrain my fingers to type it correctly, so now I just edit it after I type it.


nuclear- nucular (George Bush anyone? lol)
That was my old roommate's biggest pet peeve.

My biggest pet peeves are:
to - too
your - you're
affect - effect

I'm a horrible speller, so I love spell check, but alas I cannot use the spell check on this new board. If I'm writing a long, hopefully intelligent post, then I will copy my post into word to check it there before posting it. I also type very fast and make numerous typos like spolier. Every time I type it, it comes out like that, I can't seem to retrain my fingers to type it correctly, so now I just edit it after I type it.

I type very fast as well, and do the same thing, PG! Often, I type "thing" for "think" and the other way around. And for some reason, I always put a 't' at the end of "enough" (lol, I just did it unintentionally!) I don't know why. But I always try to proofread my posts. It's just ingrained. :rolleyes:

I do recommend reading "Eats Shoots and Leaves" (or was it "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves") for anyone adding to this thread. :)

He, that reminds me of one the guys who taught a lecture called "Language & Use" last semester, he talked about that book all the time! And he giggled. Like a girl. Like a British girl around 50 dressed in a suit complete with tie and vest...

Hehe. I've always been known as the Grammar/Spelling Police. So right on -- some things just need to be said.

Back when I was living in Orlando for a couple of years, I was good friends (still am) with a co-worker of mine. Every morning, he'd come into my office and we'd compare the grammatically incorrect or misspelled ads or signs we'd seen... My, oh, my are we geeks! :blush:

hmmm...interesting thread. please dont shoot me!!! but i have never in my 4 yrs of post-secondary gotten docked grammar marks for using then when i shouldve used than or vice versa. my professor even told me in my first yr that as long as it is used consistently, then and than are interchangeable. ive gotten docked grammar marks in a lot of things, but never this. lol.

Ok this post is for me... i'm a Grammar nut! Online i dont' care much about caps and where i place my apostrophes and such but other than that... if it deals with spelling words, it annoys me when i don't spell things correctly. The only thing that i actually have to think if i'm using right anymore is the "they're, their, and there" thing. You have permission to slap me if i misuse anything! :p

We will always see the misuse of words, incorrect spelling and way too many commas but what can you do except try to decipher the message and move on.

nuclear- nucular (George Bush anyone? lol)


it is not just him...there was a movie in the 90's where a family
was "pretending" to be from the US. Meet the Applegates (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100129/) one of the things they
"coached" them about saying was nucular. so that has been around
for a long time. probably as long as there has been nuclear energy and bombs. ;)

i have one two:
altheimers or even oltimers disease. old timers disease? :24:
prostrate cancer? yeah they fall down on their face.

Guess I should add my two favorites:

When people say "mute" when they mean "moot".

There's the whole regardless, irregardless (wrong) and irrespective scenario. And lasty....things that happen over and over recur, the don't reoccur. :)

J (whose Mom was also an English teacher)