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<p>Ugh! Not just ads, I’m hearing this all the time on radio, tv and in these forums from educated adults! I know it may be considered picyune to some but it really grates on me to see/hear the word “less” used when it should be “fewer”.</p>
<p>A punctuation error that drives me crazy is when people place commas and periods outside of quote marks. For example, “she was hell on wheels.” This is the correct usage. “she was hell on wheels”. This is incorrect. Commas and periods always go within the quotes. I can’t believe the number of teachers and other professionals I see making this mistake.</p>
<p>^Not always the case in academic writing. For dialogue this is always true. However, when ending a sentence in an essay with a citation, you put the period outside of the quotation marks, after your parenthetical. The same is true any time the punctuation is not actually included within the citation. Take an example from my own writing in a recent essay: “He would make her feel passionate and excited, then hear her ‘voice enraged’ and become ‘a child afraid of her’ (Fowler 7).” </p>
<p>This thread is delightful though. It’s always fun to see people get so nit picky about things as inconsequential as a split infinitive, fewer/less, and other colloquialisms that have as much right to be expressed as their more traditional–in some cases institutional–counterparts. I’m looking at you, ConCerndDad! </p>
<p>P.S. I know you were going for a joke, but the awkwardness of your sentence “Don’t forget to not split those infinitives!” is just inexcusable ;)</p>
<p>Relating “academic writing” to “things as inconsequential as” correct grammar? :(</p>
<p>^I only follow academic writing convention because the risk of sounding uninformed (note: not actually equal to * being * uninformed) isn’t, in my opinion, worth practicing my opinions about grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc. If the person’s mistake legitimately confounds readers, instead of irritating them, then obviously the author should address the issue. However, I quickly and easily ignore many of the “mistakes” lamented in this thread because they don’t impede my understanding and simply differ from the institutionalized norm.</p>
<p>I also meant my post to be taken lightly and whimsically :)</p>
<p>So who is more irritated, the informed seeing grammar mistakes, or the uninformed seeing correct grammar? I think the former, which is why I try to use correct grammar.</p>
<p>Another: that instead of which and vice versa.</p>
<p>cbug, I found the following interesting because I do put periods and commas outside quotes, depending on the cirmucmstances. I’ve worked in a copy writing job in Europe and guess I picked it up there.</p>
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<p><a href=“http://grammartips.homestead.com/inside.html[/url]”>http://grammartips.homestead.com/inside.html</a></p>
<p>Ugh, I can never tell whether I should use “who” or “whom”.
It completely confuddles me.</p>
<p>Who is for subjects (nominative), whom is for direct and indirect objects (accusative and dative). When the marriages were arranged, who gave whom to whom?</p>
<p>I teach elementary school. The kids who end up as adults making these mistakes can barely recognize their letters in 2nd grade. You let me know when a good time to teach them grammar would be. We have a rememediation program in place, and one of the scripted questions I had to ask them was “to whom (something something)” and they looked at me like I had 5 heads even after I explained it until I rephrased it putting “who…to?”. Kids will not write correctly if that is not how they speak. The things on the list are things you cannot hear the difference between. (between which…? haha). You can try and teach them at a “young age” but if they can’t even read the words or spell simpler words than that then it’s not going to do much good. I got most of my grammar education in middle school and it turned out just fine for me. Students have to learn grammar for their writing SAT as well.</p>
<p>Maybe everyone splts infinitives now, I know I do, but if you are looking to get a good SAT score on the grammar part, don’t do it.</p>
<p>I and who are subject of a sentence (taking the nominative case, if you are in Latin, Greek or German), me and whom are objects of the sentence (taking the accusative case (or dative or ablative, depending upon the preposition)).</p>
<p>“Their objecting to some of my comments is not surprising.” The subject of this sentence is “objecting” (a gerund), thus it is “their”, not “they”, and “is” not “are”.</p>
<p>These questions are ALWAYS on the SATs. You used to be able to get the “Question of the day”. Do it, you’ll see. The SAT does not care whether “everybody does it”, the SAT cares only about what the correct way in which to write a sentence (not “the correct way which to write a sentence in.”).</p>
<p>As if I quote from a paper where there’s no period at the end of the quoted passage, I also put the punctuation outside the quote, otherwise I would be misrepresenting the quotation and giving the false impression that the quotation was the end of the author’s sentence and thought.</p>
<p>But foggetabout dem and doze – we all know rap-English is correct! “Bad” is now “good”.</p>
<p>OK folks. Help me here:</p>
<p>“Who Do You Belong To?”</p>
<p>Is this grammatically correct?</p>
<p>[EDITORIAL:</a> Who Do You Belong To?](<a href=“Black AIDS Institute – A leader in ending the HIV epidemic in Black America.”>Black AIDS Institute – A leader in ending the HIV epidemic in Black America.)</p>
<p>No, it’s “You belong to whom?”</p>
<p>“Whom” is an ugly, outdated, cumbersome word, destined to go the way of the washboard and the antimacassar.</p>
<p>Avoid using it, regardless of the context, and let the prescriptive grammarians seethe. You’re enjoying life much more than they.</p>
<p>“The men, four of whom are ill, were indicted for fraud.”</p>
<p>[Who</a> and whom](<a href=“http://web.ku.edu/~edit/whom.html]Who”>http://web.ku.edu/~edit/whom.html)</p>
<p>“The men, four of them are ill, were indicted for fraud.” Is this also correct?</p>
<p>No, but it can be “The men, four of them ill, were indicted for fraud.”</p>
<p>@LurkerDad, Thank you.</p>
<p>Whom is a fine word!!!</p>
<p>This isn’t really a grammar question but rather a spelling one – when did “yea” become “yay”? (BTW…In this example, the end mark goes outside the quotation because it’s not dialogue.) I’m curious if “yea” (term for excitement/cheer) is no longer acceptable and has now been replaced.</p>
<p>One that bugs me is when people forget that “a lot” is two words. I see it written “alot” all of the time and wonder how people don’t notice the red warning line from their spell checker. </p>
<p>But to be fair, I am a terrible speller and don’t always get my grammar correct either, so not judging. It just happens to be one thing that was drummed into my head so the pet peeve has been passed on.</p>