What are your pet peeves re English usage?

@Lustig Andrei,

Lustig Andrei wrote:

No response to "Thank you"? What rubbish. There is almost always a response to this.

As you note, "don't mention it", sometimes preceded by "please" is common, as is "that's all right". "Pray don't mention it" is rather fogeyish. "You're [very] welcome [indeed]", is another widely used response. "De nada" is a bit pretentious, but "oh it was nothing" is out in the wild. People who say "no problem" get on my tits, "no problemo" is worse, and so is adding emphasis by saying "no problem at all". I have heard "All part of the service" quite a few times.

1 Reply

@contrex,

"All part of the service" is the one I have used most.

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@contrex,

Quote:

'Equation,' 'Gingerly' And Other Linguistic Pet Peeves
by GEOFF NUNBERG

Every time I see the word [gingerly] used as an adverb, I can take a quiet satisfaction in knowing that I'm marching to a more logical drummer than the half-billion other speakers of English who haven't yet cottoned to the problem.

Quote:

Is he being serious? I am afraid that people who take pride in marching to "logical drummers" strike me as, to put it plainly, jerkwads.

I think that you should read more carefully, C. This is as bad as Frank Apisa thinking Steven Pinker supported his position on language prescriptions in,

False Fronts in the Language Wars
Why New Yorker writers and others keep pushing bogus controversies.
By Steven Pinker

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_good_word/2012/05/steven_pinker_on_the_false_fronts_in_the_language_wars_.html

One cause of bogus rules is a phenomenon called false consensus, in which, say, no expert believes that split infinitives are ungrammatical, but everyone mistakenly thinks that everyone else believes they are.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/letters/2012/06/04/120604mama_mail2

1 Reply

@MontereyJack,

Quote:

I read the article.

That's what I'm afraid of.

Quote:

I think that's what she does say.

You and Contrex will have learn to read with more circumspection.

1 Reply

@JTT,

JTT wrote:

I think that you should read more carefully, C.

That's exactly what he wrote. I wondered if he was serious. Why can't you reply, instead of trying to be superior? When are you going to explain my Latin mistake to everybody? Are you actually able to?

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@JTT,

JTT wrote:

You and Contrex will have learn to read with more circumspection.

...and you ought to learn to post with less bullshit.

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re JTT, read it again yourself, with understanding this time. She says Brits expect no response to their "thank you" in everyday social interaction and indeed have no response. From what other Brits here say, she's wrong, but that's her thesis. You are the one who's off.

And if that quote above is in fact what Pinker said, then the descriptivists are in fact working on false consensus too, since as he says no one in fact thinks split infinitives are wrong, but you and Pinker and all your allies go on and on as if you think everybody thinks they are. And the only people who do think grammarians think that seem to be you guys. It's one of the two examples you endlessly recycle in your argument, in spite of precious little evidence that anyone thinks people think that except you guys.

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@Setanta,

Can someone here quickly solve this for me. As a content writer I come up with too many sentences that have more than one "And" in it. Somewhere I have read that in such cases I need to use a comma...but cant figure it out.

"Gartner has given highest possible rating - ‘Extensive support’- to Bristlecone’s Supply Chain Planning and Sourcing and Procurement practices in their report"

Do i need to add a comma in this sentence? If so..where?

FYI (sourcing and procurement - is the title given for a practice)

1 Reply

@verbivore,

You could write: Bristlecone's supply chain Planning and Sourcing & Procurement practices...", otherwise two "ands" are okay in this case.

1 Reply

@McTag,

but i was told that ampersands are not supposed to be used in a conversation/explanation

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@verbivore,

How, exactly, would one use ampersand in a conversation?

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@Setanta,

By extending the arms in the air and using two fingers of each hand in an up and down movement to signify bunny rabbit's ears to represent the ironic use of a word which the gesture is timed to accompany.

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@spendius,

There's a foot stamp for a full stop. There's Ignore for hiding from inconvenient remarks. Taking a deep breath in a harangue for a comma.

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@Lustig Andrei,

Lustig Andrei wrote:

No response to "Thank you"? What rubbish.

come to Canada

we'll fight you for the final thank you

Thank you.
Thank YOU.
No, thank you.
Really, thank you.

We also apologize to people who step on us.

Today, I saw/heard someone apologize to a wall they bumped into.

Hopeless.

1 Reply

@ehBeth,

It's better that saying "**** off" Beth which I have heard people use to address inanimate objects.

I would be quite impressed if I heard someone apologise to a wall they had bumped into. It would make me think that they had a sound grasp of their significance in the great scheme of things.

1 Reply

@spendius,

spendius wrote:

I would be quite impressed if I heard someone apologise to a wall they had bumped into.

come to Canada

you'll hear it every day

with any luck you'll also hear someone apologize to a person who has just stepped on their foot

a thank you could possibly come into play in that situation as well

1 Reply

@ehBeth,

ehBeth wrote:

spendius wrote:
I would be quite impressed if I heard someone apologise to a wall they had bumped into.

come to Canada

you'll hear it every day

with any luck you'll also hear someone apologize to a person who has just stepped on their foot

a thank you could possibly come into play in that situation as well

It sounds like you all out-Brit the Brits.

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@Setanta,

sorry I meant...while writing an explanation or detailing a topic...

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@verbivore,

I think you are right verbi, but I don't know of an actual rule. My suggestion is to reserve the ampersand for company titles and such, and then only when it's actually a part of the company's own name. Barnes & Noble Booksellers uses the ampersand, so you should too. In one of the old Marx Brothers movies, there was a law firm called Ampersand, Ampersand & Ampersand.

If you treat the ampersand version of the plus (+) sign, you won't often be wrong. If you wouldn't write "Bob + John went somewhere" don't use the ampersand.

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@roger,

@Roger - Thanks for the explanation roger..guess im doing away with most of my &..we here as a corporate policy do not use the + sign..so am sticking with "and"!!!

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What are your pet peeves re English usage?

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