What is your English language pet peeve?

The only pet peeve I have regarding any language is likely that most do not allow for individual perception and many times over a lack of self awareness is projected.

"You got any more venomous vile to spew from your unread, undeveloped yet protruding mind!?"

 

Or when superlatives become so commonly overused that the opposite term must be enlisted
If everything is great, it means nothing to say anything is great, so instead it becomes. BAAAAD

 

If a hearse crashes into an ambulance is it convenient, coincidence, irony, or what?

 

Off of

soooo wrong. never hear it in the UK.

You took the cover off you car. You did not take the cover off OF your car.

 

That's 'Murica for you.

 

Sure it's a word: "Jim Bob filled his self full of moonshine and runned me off the dang road."

 

"Could care less" means you care.

It's supposed to be "couldn't care less."

Think about it.

 

After thinking about it, I think the correct term is "ran."

 

Ebonics. We have grammar for a (*)(*)(*)(*)ing reason.

 

No kidding ....

 

People that think ain't aren't proper.

 

There's gold in them thar hills.

 

"expecially"

 

I am annoyed by the pronunciation of the word "Carribian. People say care a be in.I say Cu rib ean.
Also I use the word "alot " to describe a large amount of something. A lot is a term used in real estate or a group of items .
I am fighting this battle currently and since I was in school. Your welcome .

 

And "dragged". Drugs are both legal and illegal. "Drug" is a noun. "Dragged" is a verb.

 

You sound like a highly educated person (so do a lot of posters in this thread. Couldn't list all of them).

I also have a pet-peeve but it's not language-related. Basically, I really hate participants in a focus group who just go on and on and on about their thoughts, opinions, perspectives, basically ANYTHING at all that is going on through their minds at the moment, and all just because the person who led the group said there was no right or wrong answer and that he/she just wanted to hear our views. Makes me want to jam a fork into my eye.

 

I hate the term "People of color." I am not bigoted. I have Asian relatives and a genetic test shows I have 14% Asian genes but it irritates me. The term is illogical, White is a color, and ironically, a composite of other colors.

 

No, you don't have to worry about changing your natural speech patterns. It's okay to end your sentences with prepositions.

Here's a bit of explanation from the Oxford Dictionary website (the entire page is an interesting read):

To sum up, the deferring of prepositions sounds perfectly natural and is part of standard English. Once you start moving the prepositions to their supposed ‘correct’ positions you find yourself with very stilted or even impossible sentences. Well-established and famous writers over the years, such as George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, and Julian Barnes, have been blithely stranding their prepositions to no ill effect: please feel free to go and end a sentence with a preposition!

http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/11/grammar-myths-prepositions/

 

Most people worry needlessly about starting sentences with a conjunction. There is a bit of disagreement, but most authorities seem to be okay with this usage. And as you said, in certain cases it can really improve the flow of a sentence. From what I've read, there is no rule about this.

Here a bit from the Oxford Dictionary website:

Can you start a sentence with a conjunction?
For many of us, our English lessons at school were marked by the stern admonition: ‘Never begin a sentence with a conjunction!’. I was taught this ‘rule’ as a grammatical diktat back in the 1970s, and a quick trawl of the Net shows that the same advice is still being handed down to English students on many websites.

And yet perfectly respectable writers employ this disputed usage, and have done since Anglo-Saxon times. Many grammar and usage experts have also tried to squash this myth, but it seems to be set in stone. Here’s my own attempt to chip away at the foundations of this grammatical ‘superstition’ (as Henry Fowler terms such mistaken beliefs).

http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/01/can-i-start-a-sentence-with-a-conjunction/

 

I always thought that three periods are all you need. So to be sure I went to the Oxford Dictionary website. One of my go-to sites when I have questions about usage or grammar.

I often use ellipses on a forum like this because I like to include only the relevant parts of a post I'm responding to. Doing this makes it easier for other readers to follow the conversation, imo. So I include the quote I'm replying to, then edit out the parts that are not needed. When I do this editing I include an ellipses to show that I have cut a bit of text out. This really cleans up the reply. (This is just a personal preference. I hate when someone includes a page long quote when all they are replying to is a single sentence contained in the quote).

From the Oxford website:

Ellipses
This ‘dot dot dot’ piece of punctuation is written with three dots, no more and no less, and is typically accompanied by a space on either side. Some style guides also call for a space between each ellipsis point. The ellipsis can be used for a few different purposes.

One common use is to represent excised or omitted text, especially in quoted passages, as in The journal entry said, ‘He used to … go to the movies with us’, where the ellipsis might be ‘watch television and’ in the original journal entry. Another use of ellipsis is to create ironic or dramatic effect, as in Do you mean that … you ate the ice cream? The ellipsis is also sometimes used to represent a continuation of a list, as in We danced the salsa, tango, rumba, the Twist …

However, in recent years, people have started using the ellipsis in email and informal written communication to signify general pauses and hesitations, rather than pauses intended to create specific dramatic effect. For instance, it is easy to imagine the following email or text message: Well … I don’t know … do you still want to watch the game?

This use of ellipses is frowned upon in formal settings; these pauses can be indicated otherwise with different punctuation. Rewritten in a more formal manner, the above sentence might read: Well, I don’t know. Do you still want to watch the game?

http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2015/05/punctuation-marks-incorrect-use/

 

Long ago, I had to take a lot of notes while I was at work. One day I read a short article that described a kind of short-hand that the author called: "disemvoweling," or something like that. The name describes the process perfectly: remove all vowels from the words you write. It's simple, fast, and easy to read at a later date. It was easy to learn and worked well for me for a long time.

 

this may have been mentioned before but something i've noticed lately is people using "an" instead of "a" before an adjective or noun starting with h. wtf is with that? "an historical meeting" doesnt sound right at all.

 

repeating it for good measure: "off of"

 

Your and you're. There and their.

 

That is only correct if there is a vowell-sound, for example an hour or an honest opinion. In every other case, it is obviously wrong.

Even I know this and English isn't even my first language.