In an earlier blog, inspired by London's Ben Schott, whose "Schott's Vocab" column in the New York Times asked readers "to exorcise their linguistic pet peeves and vocab vexations by posting a comment," we listed 22 of the most frequently-referenced peeves of the many comments he received. We also invited our readers to share their own peeves. Here are the top results we received:
-Tow the line versus toe the line
-The data is versus the data are
-Pour over text versus pore over text
-Loose versus lose
-Discreet versus discrete
-Try and do something versus try to do something
-Alright versus all right
-Anyways versus anyway
-Administrate versus administer
-Acrost versus across
-Orientate versus orient
-Would of versus would have
-If I was drunk versus if I were drunk
-Excape versus escape
Special mention is due to the prolific outpouring in multiple comments from "classicalgeek" on Huffington Post who not only extended the list of confused and abused words, but also provided us with three valuable discussions on grammar, as well as a link to an entire website dedicated to grammatical mistakes. First, the list:
-Preventive versus preventative
-Principal versus principle
-Who's versus whose
-Eminent versus imminent
-Hung versus hanged
-Compliment versus complement
-Than versus then
-Advise versus advice
-Figurative use of "literally"
-Council versus counsel
-Misuse of compare with and compare to
-Farther versus further
-Misuse of that and who
-Peak versus peek
-Ad versus add
-Apostrophes on plural forms
Astounding that that last practice still exists after all the ridicule in countless articles and books--particularly Lynn Truss' monster bestseller, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.
Next, classicalgeek's discussions of modifier placement, subject-verb agreement, and ending a sentence with a preposition:
Placement of "only" in the sentence (most often it's before the verb, and it should modify what it's supposed to modify). E.g. "Only I want to be your friend" (nobody else does); "I only want to be your friend" (I want it but I don't want to put much effort into it); "I want only to be your friend" (the way most people mean); "I want to be only your friend" (nobody else's friend); "I want to be your only friend" (don't be friends with anyone but me); "I want to be your friend only" (not your lover or colleague or anything else).
On the other hand, "they" as a singular, non-gender-specific pronoun doesn't bother me in the slightest. If it was good enough for Chaucer, Shakespeare, and the many other luminaries of English literature who used it, it's good enough for me.
There is a difference with ending a sentence with a preposition that requires an object, and a stranding preposition. Stranding prepositions (prepositions without objects) are native to all North Germanic languages and are an integral part of English. Otherwise you get such artificial-sounding sentences as "This is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put."
"Before I start foaming at the mouth," classicalgeek concluded, and then gave us a link to a site called "Common Errors in English Usage," based on a book of the same name, written by Paul Brians, Emeritus Professor of English, Washington State University.
Thank you, classicalgeek, and thank you, Professor Brians, for uniting us. Special thanks, too, to Lynn Truss, whose immortal words offering a fitting climax:
If you adopt a zero tolerance approach, when you next see a banner advertising "CD's, DVD's, Video's, and Book's", you won't just stay indoors getting depressed about it. Instead you will engage in some direct-action argy-bargy! Because--here's the important thing--you won't be alone.