Transterrestrial Musings

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Bad grammer annoys me two.

Posted by Big D at December 1, 2007 04:03 PM

Amen, Rand!

Others that bother me: hoard/horde, discreet/discrete, desert/dessert.

But never forget the Iron Rule of Grammar Flames: any post complaining about spelling or grammar is certain to contain at least one howler itself.

Just to make sure: Here's mind.

Posted by Cambias at December 1, 2007 04:23 PM

My favorite. I don't know the attribution, I saw it somewhere.

Discreet means prudent.
Discrete means separate.
You don't want to be discrete about sex. It's lonely and makes you go blind.

Posted by Fuloydo at December 1, 2007 04:37 PM

Dunno, it seems like the IEEE is in the throes of the Grammer Gestapo.

Their style manual tells you to not use "while" as in "The transistor is rated at 5 volts, while the remaining portion of the circuit is restricted to a 2-volt maximum." They tell you to use "whereas" instead because "while" means "at the same time" as in "While waiting for the bus, Mike was accosted by a panhandler." Gee, I thought the transistor was limited to 5 volts at the same time the rest of the circuit was at 2 volts -- what is the problem? Some "while" ago there were the "which" "that" police.

Their other bugaboo was using "alternately" when one meant "alternatively" unless you mean something that "alternates." I meant to use "alternately" to describe an alternate notation and keep it in there because I was "alternating" between the two notations to suit different purposes. I guess when I can't make it to Faculty Senate meetings, I should look for the person in my department who is the "alternative Faculty Senator" rather than the "alternate."

Posted by Paul Milenkovic at December 1, 2007 04:46 PM

Well, technically, this isn't a grammar rant--it's a spelling rant. My bad.

Posted by Rand Simberg at December 1, 2007 05:00 PM

My own personal bugbear is 'reign in' instead of 'rein in'.

BECAUSE OF THE HONONYMS!!!111!!!

Oh, sorry, wrong site.

Speaking of which, on what site did you sight that cite.

Posted by Kevin_B at December 1, 2007 05:28 PM

And yes, it was a deliberate misspelling, (he lyed).

Posted by Kevin_B at December 1, 2007 05:30 PM

There and their.
Your and you're.

Posted by at December 1, 2007 06:20 PM

It's and its. If you can say the sentence with "it is" and it makes sense, it's not its.

Posted by Big D at December 1, 2007 06:46 PM

It doesn't help that 'lose' is one of only two words in the English language where /uz/ is spelled with . (And the other, 'whose', is the inflected form of another word.)

Posted by Roger Strong at December 1, 2007 07:14 PM

"That's the looooooooosing team."

UCLA cheer.

Posted by K at December 1, 2007 07:29 PM

or chose and choose.

I personally can never spell the word, definitely correctly to save my life. Even just now I had to get the spell checker to help me. Which I don't feel to bad because even the Firefox spell check didn't know what hell I was talking about. I had to get Google whose very first hit is an article about how not to spell definently. Doh, I hate you Mrs. 1st grade phonics teacher.

Posted by Josh Reiter at December 1, 2007 07:58 PM

"..... but after quite a Google search, I couldn't find a good explanation..."

Maybe because most people aren't so anal about it?

I suppose you've never miss-typed before... oh but wait, given the occasional bad link you've posted I guess you have too! I wonder if I Google up a cure for that?

Posted by Cecil Trotter at December 1, 2007 09:02 PM

I suppose you've never miss-typed before... oh but wait, given the occasional bad link you've posted I guess you have too!

Very few of my bad links are due to mistyping. They are generally a result of not dragging the URL into the tag properly, or the linked words.

Cecil, I went out of my way to not pick on you specifically, and to attempt to correct you gently without pointing out why I had my rant, or providing you with my personal opprobrium. But since you want to make an issue of it, and be obstreperous, I'll point out that in a comment to this post, after quoting someone who spelled it properly, you insisted on then misspelling it. Sorry, but that's not just a "typo."

Just go forth and sin no more. And stop whining.

Posted by Rand Simberg at December 1, 2007 09:32 PM

then/than

Right now, there's an AP story up about the WVU-Pitt football game, and it says this:

"a program that has won more games then any other in major college"

Aren't they supposed to be professional writers?

Posted by Eric at December 1, 2007 10:03 PM

I blame it on "spell check" in MS-Word.

And the complete (compleat?) collapse of intellectual rigor among writers. That is, if ever there WERE intellectual rigor among writers.

And the zombies. Mustn't forget the zombies....

Posted by MG at December 1, 2007 10:33 PM

I don't recall where I saw this, but I find that when teaching children how to spell, having them memorize the following cute little jingle is helpful. As a bonus, it can be recited to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan's Modern Major-General.

I before e,
except after c,
Or when sounded as "a",
As in "neighbor" and "weigh,"
Or "weird foreign sheik"
Or absenteeism Aeneid agreeing albeit aniseikonic
apartheid atheism atheist being
Boeing Budweiser casein Cassiopeia
counterfeit cysteine decaffeinate decreeing deify deity
deoxyribonucleic dyeing edelweiss einsteinium
Fahrenheit fleeing forfeit forfeiture freeing gauleiter
Geiger gneiss guaranteeing Guggenheim Heidelberg heigh height heighten
heir heiress Heisenberg herein hereinabove hereinafter hereinbelow heterogeneity Holstein homogeneity inhomogeneity kaleidescope kaleidoscope leisure leitmotif leitmotiv Liechtenstein l'oeil Madeira Madeleine meiosis mullein neither nereid nuclei nucleic
obeisant Oneida O'Neill onomatopoeia onomatopoeic Oppenheimer Oresteia
pantheism pantheist pharmacopoeia plebeian Pleiades Pleistocene Pompeii Poseidon prosopopoeia protein Raleigh Rayleigh refereeing Reich reimbursable reimburse reinforce Reinhold reinstate ribonucleic seeing seismic seismograph seismography seismology
seize seizure Sheila sightseeing simultaneity sleight sovereign sovereignty spontaneity stein surfeit teeing their theism theist therein
vermeil villein weir weird wellbeing wherein
wisenheimer Zeiss
and, (take a breath)
ancient coefficient concierge
conscience conscientious deficient efficient financier glacier
hacienda inefficient insufficient omniscient proficient science
scientific scientist societal Societe society specie species
sufficient
(take another breath)
and that should be sufficient!

Posted by Hillary-Supporter at December 1, 2007 10:36 PM

"stop whining."

Said the pot to the kettle.

Posted by Cecil Trotter at December 2, 2007 06:04 AM

My favorite annoying grammar glitch: Using the possessive apostrophe to indicate a plural, usually (but not always) with acronyms--

CD's instead of CDs
SUV's instead of SUVs
37 shopping day's until Christmas!

Also "utilize" when "use" would be just fine.
"The storm impacted everyone in the city" instead of "affected".

Posted by LB Parker at December 2, 2007 07:37 AM

Rand,
I think this is one reason I link here, even when I am so often in opposition to your political views. You do care about quality. I wish more poeple did. Thanks.

Posted by Offside at December 2, 2007 08:38 AM

And of course I meant people ; how fitting to slip right when I'm on the topic of accuracy.

Posted by Offside at December 2, 2007 08:41 AM

For some reason, the more unusual confusion over pique bugs me, if we're going for less common things than, say, it's and its, their, there and they're, and such. Pique isn't commonly used, but people usually spelling it peak or peak makes use of the word, if not the meaning, even less common.

Posted by Jay at December 2, 2007 08:46 AM

Jeez Louise, loosen up, Rand. How do we know the author's a loser, unless they're using looser spelling and loose the extra 'o'? Stop with the Luce thing--you're losin' it.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at December 2, 2007 09:22 AM

I'm not whining, Cecil, I'm ranting. It says so right there, in the post title.

Posted by Rand Simberg at December 2, 2007 09:25 AM

Definately! We must tow the line. I should of thought of that.

While we're at it, abajo apostrophe abusers.

Posted by Jonathan at December 2, 2007 09:29 AM

Hillary Supporter... ROFL! I'd never thought about how many exceptions there were, but I came to understand them better after taking German in college.

Posted by Jay at December 2, 2007 09:34 AM

I suppose you've never miss-typed before... oh but wait, given the occasional bad link you've posted I guess you have too!

Repeated avoidable errors tend to make me wonder what else the writer got wrong. Repeated frequently, such errors suggest a lack of consideration for the reader. Proofreading doesn't take much effort and will get more people to read your work.

Posted by Jonathan at December 2, 2007 10:06 AM

I've miss-typed quite a bit, especially in my younger days. It's actually a lot of fun, especially when the miss is cute.

Posted by at December 2, 2007 10:13 AM

Rand,
Some people just were not properly taught spelling in school, others just don't care. What really bugs me these days is the use of "'s" as a plural rather than a possessive form, as in, for instance, "Many people misspell word's these day's. This may be a failure of our school's or it may just be that people don't care about spelling rule's these day's." I know that when I was growing up these rules, grammar and spelling, were taught in school but I couldn't be bothered with learning them until my 11th and 12 grade English teachers *made* be care about them.

Posted by Michael at December 2, 2007 11:16 AM

In the majority of cases, when the first issue of a new magazine appears, the cover will say "Premier Issue!"

Posted by Mike G in Corvallis at December 2, 2007 01:09 PM

Michael:

http://www.angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif

See also

http://www.angryflower.com/itsits.gif

BTW, today the correct spelling is "l00x0r".

What exciting times we live in!!111!!1!eleven!

Posted by Paul F. Dietz at December 2, 2007 01:11 PM

"CD's instead of CDs"

I do this - I guess I should stop.

A really entertaining discussion is at
http://xml.coverpages.org/properSpellingForPluralOfDTD.html

"Q: Why do so many people spell the plural (incorrectly) as DTD's?
A: Authorities offer different explanations -- while in general agreement that there is an observable trend toward (gratuitous) usage of apostrophe as a plural marker in many contexts (e.g., "pizza's"; "Nut's for sale"), including some very silly contexts ("He complain's a lot." and "We should wait until it cool's off.") Several possible explanations:

* Writers may subconsciously feel an analogy to "referenced letters" (as in: "Mind your p's and q's."). This could happen because the character string 'DTDs' is typically pronounced or sub-vocalized as a three-syllable word highlighting the alphabetic letters: "dee-tee-dee(z)". The analogy is wrong, however, failing to distinguish linguistic reference from usage. In the example above, the letters "p" and "q" are are not used but are referenced as letters; hence they would normally be set in italic to signify reference/mention (p's and q's). When we say "be sure to dot your i's and cross your t's" we are not using i and t; we are referencing these letters as alphabetic characters. The phenomenon of "referenced letters," however, is fundamentally irrelevant to the use of 'DTD' in its plural formation: with 'DTDs' we are talking about usage, not reference.
* Writers feel that the morpheme boundary between the base (i.e., DTD) -- which is not an ordinary "word" --- and the simple plural marker s is not sufficiently accounted for by a letter-case-shift. So they want to "add something" in the orthography to mark the boundary. The apostrophe serves as an added marker in the case of simple contractions (e.g., can't for cannot), so it is pressed into service as a marker here too, even though nothing is actually missing in "DTDs". One should no more write "look at these three DTD's" than one would write (for plural absolute) "look at these three document type definition's".
* Other explanations: ignorance (mere lack of education), forgetfulness, stupidity, inattentiveness, indifference, perversity, postmodernist arrogance, language terrorism, sloth.
* Another explanation: the orthographic manifestation of mind fumbling and verbal stumbling is apostrophe-insertion. Speakers who suffer episodes of tang tongueling -- i.e., they falter on the pronunciation of 'DTD', often uttering or stuttering 'D-D-T' instead -- are similarly predisposed to suffering finger twitches at the moment of typing 'DTD' in the plural, generating otiose apostrophe."

I'd like to use 'language terrorism' as -my- excuse, but more likely it's the "morpheme boundary" issue.

Posted by JohnS at December 2, 2007 02:00 PM

You know, if I were applying for a job, emailing a client or writing a professional report I would (and do) take the time to proofread more closely, but for goodness sakes this site is simply a forum in which to CASUALLY exchange ideas and opinions! I have better things to worry about rather than double checking my grammar and/or spelling just in order to avoid setting off someones pet peeve.

Posted by Cecil Trotter at December 2, 2007 02:52 PM

this site is simply a forum in which to CASUALLY exchange ideas and opinions!

Says who?

Posted by at December 2, 2007 07:43 PM

This would be a whole lot easier if we all used the NATO phonetic alphabet.

Posted by at December 3, 2007 12:24 PM

One can use an apostrophe for a contraction like compact d's or document type d's. But if the capital is already implying the abbreviation, the contraction rules probably don't apply. Mind your Ps and Qs? Is p's short for pees?

Posted by Sam Dinkin at December 3, 2007 01:34 PM

It's "defuse the tension", not "DIFFUSE"!

Posted by Jim C. at December 5, 2007 08:50 PM

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