What's Your No. 1 Grammar Pet Peeve?

Roberta, the guy with the kittens?

Yes, I would leave a food buffet if I had to listen to that.

Yeeikes!

I feel that way, too!

I think my pet peeve (since I don't recall saying what it was before) is the unassertive rolling-over onto our grammarian backs and limply deciding that a previous rule which grated many has become so commonplace, so Goll-durn common, in fact, that it will now become OK and acceptable under the umbrella of spoken and written English. I cringe to think what the next upset will be.

I also hate it when one of my friends says something is "atypical" when she really means "typical." Of course, that is not a grammar error but it DRIVES ME NUTS. I once tried to explain... but then gave up. Who cares?

Atypical, c'est moi! That's a word we used to use to describe funny looking lymphocytes...

Godiva chocolates? Where are they? Can I have one?

Again, not grammar, but still horrible usage: There's a company (I think local to my area), a restaurant or take-home place that has TV ads and billboards proclaiming, "Pre-heat your oven to 0". If I could preheat my oven to 0, I wouldn't need a refrigerator, would I? Of course they mean room temperature, but that isn't what they say.

LOL, Equus! That one's been bugging me, too.

Oh, Equus, a localized horror. We don't have that here.... yet.

Just saw the ad of my local Chinese restaurant:
"Midday Duck: 5, 20 €" ('Mittag Ente')
Tastes obviously different to the Peking Duck, roasted duck ... and is much cheaper. (And when choosing this, my oven can be preheated to 0° as well!)

(I know that they want to tell about their reduced prices at lunchtime.)

I hate erroneous declination and conjugation the most. Simple past forms used in the place of past participles, split infinitives, 'me' in subject function... But my 'favourite' one is 'I' in object function, where there truly should be 'me': "she gave it to John and I" for example.

Oh, I also despise ending sentences with pronouns, but in informal speech some of correct builds seem too strange to most interlocutors.

Most of my pet peeves have been discussed, but I didn't see one:
She always lays down at noon for a nap. YIKES!

Strange, poorly written, and silly mistakes in advertising. This could be a thread unto itself.

Mutmut, You raise the specter of lay and lie. It must have been the Marquis de Sade who came up with the conjugations of these two little verbs.

the logic is that it would be impossible for you to care any less - zero. zilch, not at all....

it grates when people talk about doing something 'off their own back' instead of bat

That's funny. I heard about a dog, a well-trained dog, who wouldn't lay itself down unless properly asked.

"Lie down!" (OK )

"Lay down!" (Not OK )

I ain't got no particular pet peeve when it comes to grammar . . . 'cause i likes to write just exactly what pops into my little pea brain at the moment . . .

Can y'all smell where i'm comin' from ?

My peeve (and maybe this has already been mentioned; I wasn't in the mood to sort through 12 pages of posts here, so forgive me if I'm repeating what's already been said) has to do with long parenthetical interruptions.

Just kidding! No, it's this: I'm an editor, and when I find a mistake and correct it, sometimes the writer will say, "Well, that's how people say it these days." As if that makes it OK...

Back on "could/couldn't care less" for just a moment — I say "could care less," with the thought that it would just take too much effort to care any less than I already do...

Heh, this reminds me of my conversations with teachers, especially teachers of English, not that it wasn't something unusual with my own language...

I'm with you D'artagnan. I'm an editor. And I see a big difference between informal and wrong. I occasionally work on professionsl business books. My pet peeves? To grow a business. Gag. And this impacts that. Gag again.

Even editors aren't above missing a few--in the current issue of a reputable "serious" magazine (don't know if I can mention it here), was the following:

Goldmann and Wermusch detected the dried-up river bed of this branch, which had discharged into the sea west of the rpesent-day city of Barth. The two concluded that large parts of Vineta must lay buried in the silt of the lagoon north of Barth.