Grammar Pet Peeves: Valentine's Day Edition (PHOTOS)

In honor of Valentine's Day, we searched for some love-themed grammar pet peeves.

We are absolutely enamored, besotted, obsessed...uh, is it of, by or with? And you and me, oh wait, you and I...well, view the slideshow to find out how to finish these phrases.

Did we leave any V-Day-themed grammar problems out? Let us know in the comments!

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Besotted with vs. besotted by

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His mind is besotted with fear concerning entering a relationship, yet he is besotted by her youth and beauty.

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His mind is besotted with fear concerning entering a relationship, yet he is besotted by her youth and beauty.

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Comments

[NMRK]

01:26 PM on 02/16/2011

The Yogi-ism. Thank you. Media stop scratching on that blackboard. Same for "less" versus "fewer."

jennnorton: Huh? I stick to my usage.

Fewer vs. less, Free Encyclopedia

"In traditional ... grammar less is the comparative used when speaking of a continuous quantity that is not numerically quantifiable ....). Fewer, ...., is used of discrete quantity ..."

"Thus, "less flour in this canister", but "There are fewer cups (..pounds, bags, etc.) of flour in this canister", flour is uncountable unless measured in a unit, in this case cups.
Some supermarket checkout line signs, ... say "10 items or less". Although '10 items or fewer' seems pompous ...,[1] there is a tradition of considering the alternative ungrammatical. A British supermarket chain replaced its "10 items or less" signs with "up to 10 items" to avoid the issue. .....

Oxford English Dictionary 'Less' or 'fewer'?

"Use fewer when for people or things in the plural (e.g. houses,... dogs, ...). Example: Fewer students are ...

" Use less when you’re referring to something that can’t be counted or doesn’t have a plural (e.g. money, air, time, music, rain). ... Example: "It’s a better job but .. pay you less money. ... less time in traffic jams. ....

[tploomis]

01:36 AM on 02/16/2011

"Safe haven" is redundant. Have you ever heard of an "unsafe haven?"

[c-tom]

11:49 PM on 02/15/2011

Apparently the moderator doesn't allow certain words so I'll try to work around that. My peeve is when a word starting with the letters st and ending with d and meaning slow of mind is used instead of one starting with the letters ig and ending with t meaning destitute of knowledge or education.

[P Alan Grene]

11:44 AM on 02/15/2011

My pet peeve-- people who say "grammar" when they mean "usage."

[Tulka2]

01:04 AM on 02/15/2011

When i come to an article about grammar, i do not expect to see a little dog French kissing Paris Hilton.  Did it live?

[c-tom]

12:38 PM on 02/15/2011

Far as I know Paris is still okay.

[Tulka2]

03:25 PM on 02/15/2011

A grammar joke!  As you know, it can only refer to the dog. So i take your point.  heh

[SueEll]

04:58 PM on 02/14/2011

"Where's it at?" Instead of "Where is it?"

[deepintheheartoftejas]

05:45 PM on 02/14/2011

"Where is it" doesn't sound nearly as nice in speech as "where's it at", which is a nice, vigorous anapest.

[naschkatze]

05:59 PM on 02/14/2011

So if you're writing poetry, you could use either one depending on your meter.

[deepintheheartoftejas]

03:27 PM on 02/14/2011

A number of non-mistakes in here: "enamored of" is more common, but "enamored with" is standard English. Likewise, "enthralled by" vs "enthralled with".

A number of usage writers have claimed "between" can only be used with two items, but the OED provides over a range of citations of the word used with three or more things, that span more than a thousand years. It provides this money quote: "In all senses, between has been, from its earliest appearance, extended to more than two."

[SueEll]

02:55 PM on 02/14/2011

"let's don't" and "I've not got"

[Thomas Mascope]

02:43 PM on 02/14/2011

"Irregardless".

[mmsuki]

01:50 PM on 02/14/2011

One of my pet peeves is when people say "I could care less",
when what they mean is "I couldn't care less".

[c-tom]

10:05 PM on 02/14/2011

How do you know they don't mean "I could care less"?

[deepintheheartoftejas]

10:31 PM on 02/14/2011

But they mean the same thing! Idioms in any language often do not make any literal sense.

Why is it so many people have a peeve about this, but I never hear anyone loudly complaining that people who say "head over heels" are wrong, and should be saying "heels over head"??

[Lordemil]

03:37 PM on 02/15/2011

Why would you consider this an idiom when one form makes sense and the other not so much?

[Clark]

01:36 PM on 02/14/2011

I just clipped this from a comment on another HP post:
"She cares about money, period, and found an untapped base to make money off of and sell books to."
The term "period" does not mean "comma"; it means "period", period.

[gotgat54]

02:06 PM on 02/19/2011

'To make money off of' is the one that offends me. Better is 'off which to make money'.

[jafsie]

01:20 PM on 02/14/2011

"You and I are getting married this weekend, and the judge will be marrying you and me."

Not the most brilliant sentence ever, but grammatically correct.

[jl4141]

01:47 PM on 02/14/2011

It's the gramatically correctest!

[PunKinPai]

02:12 PM on 02/14/2011

The confusion of objective and subjective pronouns bugs the heck out of me. You even hear it on BBC and NPR.

[Linda GR]

02:23 PM on 02/14/2011

as in the pretentious use of "between you and I" instead of 'between you and me".

[annieR]

01:19 PM on 02/14/2011

For use of "besotted," check with Tom Brokow. He repeatedly called the large crowds at Obama events "besotted."

[brooksmf224]

01:18 PM on 02/14/2011

The one that I DEPLORE is the redundant phrase..."6 a.m. in the morning". As opposed to what...6 a.m. in the evening?? You hear this on newscasts and from people who should know better! Saying "a.m." means that you don't have to say, "...in the morning" and saying "p.m." means that you don't have to say, "...in the evening".
ARGH!

[Analyze This]

09:39 PM on 02/14/2011

Unless you're a circulation manager for a newspaper and you have to tell 100 12 year old they need to deliver their papers by 8:00 a.m every morning. Believe me, I know. : )

[PunKinPai]

09:49 PM on 02/14/2011

I've heard this three times in the last two days. Grrrrrrrr.

[no monky]

01:08 PM on 02/14/2011

My spelling Sucks
...
Thanks for enduring my misplaced and missing letters
for whatever reason .... I always had trouble writing
...
But, I know math good and how to count my bananas