Grammar/Spelling errors that get your goat

I'm usually fairly tolerant. For many people on the Internet, English is a foreign language. I'm even often surprised at the quality of written English, because learning English is hard.

However, when I see native English speakers using "loose" when they mean "lose", it drives me up the wall, just because I see it so often.

loose = the 's' is unvoiced, like 'hiss', and means the opposite of tight.
lose = the 's' is voiced like the z in 'buzz', and means to misplace something.

"My jeans are getting loose in the waist."
"Did you lose weight?"

 

Of course your/you're bothers me a lot, but the worst for me is literally. I hate hearing people say things like 'ugh, that was so boring I literally died!'. I'm just standing there like 'well, apparently not...'
Although, I feel like I can't complain about this one, as the dictionary changed 'literally' to have two meanings. Now it means 'when something is literal' and 'something that is not literal'. No wonder foreigners hate the English language...

 

Actually, English is not the only language that has this expression. We say it in French, too.

''Le cours de philo était tellement plate que je suis littéralement mort d'ennuie.''
''The philosophy course was so boring that I literally died of boredom.''

This may be counter-intuitive, but it doesn't bother me.

 

Pronoun usage:
"I am taller than her" should be "I am taller than she"
"You're just as bad as him" should be "You're just as bad as he"
If it sounds wrong then mentally complete the sentence, like "I am taller than she is" or "You're just as bad as he is" but this doesn't work with the fact you need to say "That is she" rather than "That is her". The rules are actually not that complicated and it doesn't take long to learn them.
Most people don't even know the right way to use it and people nearly always screw it up, and the fact it happens so often is the only reason it bothers me.
your/you're. It's just a simple fact if replacing it with "you are" would make sense. I don't even get how you can not know when to use which.
Using the word "literally" incorrectly.
"I could care less"

 

My friend spells "scared" as "scarid" ALL of the time. HOW? It makes no sense to me.

 

I'm more inclined to be a grammar nazi over my own spelling errors than anyone else's. I have physical difficulty with typing as well as, possibly, some mild form of dyslexia although I don't know if I was ever officially diagnosed as such, it depends which of my parents you ask. So put these two factors together and I end up going back and fourth over something I've written several times to check and correct any errors before I've even posted it. Spell check is a brilliant tool for this although I do have to double check more closely with words that come up as errors because I'm using the British spelling instead of American. For example: 'colour' or 'color', 'realise' or 'realize'. It would probably be easier to just go with the American spelling but I don't want to get into the habit of doing this because I need to remember to stick to the British spelling when offline.

The only ones that do annoy me are text speak that is COMPLETELY illegible. I don't mind it as a rule, just when it gets so excessive that I can't even decipher what's being said.

 

"could of" instead of "could have".... *shrugs*

 

I'm a horrendous speller myself.

As a result, I have zero hang ups when other people misspell.

I do make an effort to spell things out correctly.

On here, if I see the red line underneath a word, I first try figure out (by myself ) the correct spelling.

If all else fails, I will search the net for the correct spelling.

 

Misuse of the apostrophe, like when people mix up the singular and plural possessive. What gets me most though is when people use an apostrophe when all they're really trying to do is pluralize a word [1]. For example, "There were lots of car's on the road today." It's just so wrong!

[1] I'll concede that apostrophes can sometimes be used when making plurals, such as with acronyms that mix upper and lower case (PhD's), or simply with lowercase letters (p's and q's). But there are very few of these exceptions.

 

Do you guys think I have good spelling skills?

 

haha I know that, I meant that defiantly/definately grind my gears, although I probably SHOULD OF written defiantly/definately/definitely for clarity's sake, and also to avoid embarrassing explanations.

 

And I've just realised I wrote 'back and fourth' instead of 'back and forth,' ...in a thread about spelling and grammar! :eusa_doh: :lol:

 

to be fair, it's and its and apostrophes in general are really tricky, they're not at all that noticeable while proof-reading.

 

Defiantly!

 

for all intensive purposes!

 

The incorrect uses of Their, There and They're.
Also the incorrect uses of Your and You're.

So many people get this wrong, that I'm actually amazed when I see it used correctly.

Also people who are trying to look cool with text talk, but the amount of characters they use is actually no less than the full word.

 

Whenever someone uses a verb in past form right after the auxiliary "did", which already expresses that the sentence is about the past. I've also seen stuff like "Where did you goed"...

 

"Could care less" instead of "Couldn't care less"! What is that even supposed to mean?

 

There, their, & they're
Your & you're
not using the Oxford comma
...too many to list