December daily: Grammar pet peeves

[resonant]

terrio prompts: Just for fun: What are your top 5 grammatical pet peeves? (can also include misspellings, misused words, etc.)

My number 1 pet peeve is grammatical errors that spring from people trying to be more correct -- like when people think that "between you and I" sounds more elevated and formal than "between you and me."

I hate it when people mix up "ostensibly" with "ostentatiously." This happens more than you might think.

In journalism school, they taught us that if you were making a comparison, and there was going to be a verb after your comparison word, then your comparison word needed to be "as" rather than "like." (You know. "Like a virgin," but "as a cigarette should.") I've about given up on that one -- sticking to it makes you sound excessively formal, like saying "It is I" -- but "like I said" still sets my teeth on edge.

In writing, I'm annoyed to an irrational degree by the lack of the comma that signifies direct address. ("Sherlock, is that my shoe?" "You should recognize your own shoes, John." "You idiot, the reason I didn't recognize it is that I've never seen it on fire before.") It seems to me that writers in England view this comma as optional. It is not optional.

And this isn't really grammar, though it's disguised as grammar: I hate to read something where the author writes this cutesy little opening that says, "Saying 'he or she' all the time is such a huge distraction and burden that I'm not going to do it; I'm just going to default to 'he.'" Funny how they never, ever, ever have that introduction and then say, "So I'm going to call everyone 'she,' and trust my male readers to be able to make the imaginative leap." Also, using gender-neutral language (in material that's written and edited, no less!) is just not that damned difficult.

Comments

[krait]

"Saying 'he or she' all the time is such a huge distraction and burden that I'm not going to do it; I'm just going to default to 'he.'"

People do this? Outside of internet posts about their puppy, or kinkmeme prompts, I mean? O.O

Wait, okay, I do remember Steven Brust doing this, sort of; but his intro at least acknowledged that "in the made-up alien language I'm pretending to translate from, there's a gender-neutral pronoun that English doesn't have; I've used 'he' instead" -- which strikes me as being several degrees better than "boohoo, 'he or she' is soooo burdensome", but perhaps that's just me.

[nny]

grammatical errors that spring from people trying to be more correct

SO MUCH. "If you could email that to myself" being my absolute least favourite.

[terrio]

I've actually heard a couple of people use the long form of number 1: "to you and to I". Which, just... WHAT. How can you think that's right?

And then my head explodes.

Excellent peeves, all; thank you!

[metaphortunate]

Ursula K. LeGuin basically did that in The Left Hand of Darkness. She has since stated that if she had it all to do over again, she would find some kind of actual neutral pronoun instead.

[zooey_glass]

[Here via my network.]

The 'neutral' he is pretty widespread in philosophy papers, and in response to that a friend of mine made a point of writing a journal article defaulting to 'she' instead. The editor of the journal sent it back demanding that the pronouns be revised - not to neutral, but to male. (I'm happy to say my friend declined to publish in that journal rather than revise his paper.)

Which is a long-winded way of saying OMG yes, your final point is so an issue.

[panisdead]

Uh oh, I'm pretty sure I commit "like I said" all the time. I hope not to you!

[mad_martha]

It seems to me that writers in England view this comma as optional.
This jumped out at me, because I'm English and when I was taking secretarial classes as a teenager in the late Eighties, I had an argument with our teacher about the missing comma ... plus a few other things. I always used, and still do use, what she referred to as "old standard punctuation", while she preferred to teach "modern punctuation". So-called modern punctuation strips out things like 'unnecessary' commas, removes full stops from the ends of some sentences, and so on.

She HATED my use of standard punctuation. However, she couldn't mark me down on it because the exam boards recognised both forms of punctuation; the only rule was consistency, you used one or the other and would be marked down if you mixed them up.

I don't know if that's still a thing that's taught here (it probably is), but I do know that it annoys me. Punctuation is there for a reason, and missing commas will throw me out of a sentence far more readily than poor spelling.

[nestra]

removes full stops from the ends of some sentences

WHAT. That is anarchy!

[starfish]

removes full stops from the ends of some sentences

o.O

[resonant]

Wow, this was a thing that was taught? I thought it was just that every country develops its own forms of linguistic sloppiness.

I guess when texting and twitter arrived, modern grammar people had a head start!

[reginagiraffe]

Re: She and I VS she and me: I wrote a snippet about this in TS fandom because it annoyed me so much.

Re: Missing comma: Let's eat, Gramma VS. Let's eat Gramma. Enough said.

[toft]

THE COMMA SIGNIFYING DIRECT ADDRESS IS SO IMPORTANT.

[jesse_the_k]

I'm a shocked butterfly under your lovely bear's paw.

[jesse_the_k]

Your #1 "hypercorrection" peeve is astutely phrased and entirely true.

The worst instance I encountered is a blog where the author always writes "whom" instead of "who." After a decade it bugged me so much I wrote him about it. Bad idea and it didn't change his behavior.

[mad_martha]

In retrospect, the part that really puzzles me is that it was taught at secretarial school. Secretaries are usually the pickiest people I know! But I was mostly bemused because that was the first time I'd heard of it. We were taught "proper" punctuation at school (even though, admittedly, not all of it stuck very well!)

[mad_martha]

I know! Full body shudder here. Terrible injustices were inflicted upon the semi-colon too.

[mad_martha]

I know!

[lotesse]

I got a (class-wide) email from a faculty member at the end of a graduate seminar bitching us all out for using gender-neutral pronouns instead of the so-called neutral he; he wrote that we were losing the war, and I thought, don't you mean winning?

[castiron]

Recently I checked out a non-fiction book from the library, planning to buy it if I found it sufficiently interesting. I got about halfway through the first chapter and returned it because the author was using "he" as a gender-neutral...and given that the topic was neuroscience and literacy, it needed to be absolutely 100% clear whether a given phenomenon had been seen in both males and females or only in males. So, the author lost my money because he couldn't be bothered to write in gender-neutral language.

[gurrier]

I'd never noticed the missing comma, but now it's going to be everywhere, isn't it?

[resonant]

I would prefer that. I think the days when people could pretend that readers could read 'he' and picture a woman are long gone.

[resonant]

Eek, that's perfectly awful.

[resonant]

That's ... really weird. (Makes me think of the Christmas song "I Wonder As I Wander": "For poor ornery people like you and like I.")

[resonant]

That's pretty funny!

The spouse's seminary has a strict rule that non-gendered language must be used to refer to God, and some of his classmates are really freaked out about this.

I would cut people some slack on their spoken language, but if something's in writing, it can be revised, and I say again that it is just not that difficult.

[resonant]

I'm sure I do something equally annoying that I'm not even aware of.

I used to have an acquaintance who used "like I said" as a conversational filler, the way some people use "basically" -- so it was doubly annoying, because it should have been 'as' and because she hadn't said any such thing!

[resonant]

Perfect example!

The senior choir at the kidlet's school performed PDQ Bach's "Uncle John" at the concert -- have you heard it? I've not been able to find a recording, but it plays around with musical pauses, so that for three lines you have "Throw the Yule log on, Uncle John," and then the fourth time you have "Throw the Yule log [breath] on Uncle John."

[resonant]

I hate that error so much.

[resonant]

Wow. That makes me think of the housekeeper in "Mary Poppins": "And 'oom is going to 'ave to look after them? Me, that's 'oom!"

[resonant]

Ha! What do you mean 'we,' white man?

[resonant]

That's another pet peeve of mine, the way medical research is often reported in lay publications without any mention of the gender of the research subjects, so that the results of a study of 50 men will be reported as results seen in 50 people.

Somewhere (maybe even here), I read a comment by a woman who was a scientist; she asked her father (also a scientist) what his generation were picturing when they wrote a sentence like "Every researcher is responsible for keeping his lab space clean," and her father said, "Males. We were picturing males."

[resonant]

... sorry.

[minutia_r]

There are dialects of English where the subject/object pronoun distinction has disappeared n favor of the subject pronoun, though. (See also the Wurzels song "Don't Tell I, Tell 'E.")

[superborb]

Mmm, so what gender-neutral pronoun do you prefer? I like zie/zir/zim, but a lot of people I know IRL prefer "they."

[rydra_wong]

Funny how they never, ever, ever have that introduction and then say, "So I'm going to call everyone 'she,'

I have, in fact, seen a few male authors do just that, deadpan; they seem to feel it may be salutary for certain male readers.

[reginagiraffe]

My closest co-worker does this except she uses "like YOU said". And often I've said no such thing. (She also tends to repeat the last word or two you've said. Oy.)

[reginagiraffe]

If you search youtube for "pdq bach john", a bunch of versions show up.

[auctasinistra]

hat's another pet peeve of mine, the way medical research is often reported in lay publications without any mention of the gender of the research subjects, so that the results of a study of 50 men will be reported as results seen in 50 people.

My grammatical peeves are legion, but they pale next to how much that pisses me off.

[resonant]

I'm actually not crazy about newly coined words outside a sci-fi context, though I'll roll with whatever a writer chooses.

What I prefer is for people to re-word the sentence so that it's not necessary, and most of the time that's just really not difficult at all. "Every researcher is responsible for keeping his lab space clean" --> "Researchers are responsible for keeping their own lab spaces clean," done, no difficulty at all.

In speech you don't have time to edit, so it's a bit more difficult, and I'll cut people more slack. And in speech I don't really have a problem with "Every researcher is responsible for keeping their lab space clean," either, though I would want it edited if I encountered it in writing.

And of course it's more difficult if the source is poetry, which is why so many church hymns are either still referring to God as "He" or being rewritten in hideous fashion to avoid this.

[resonant]

I like that! I do think some male readers/listeners discover just how non-neutral the wrong pronoun is.

[resonant]

Oh, that's in "Redemption Song," now that you mention it: "Old pirates, yes, they rob I."

[lotesse]

fwiw, there's a solid usage history of singular "they"; Shakespeare does it, and so does Thackeray.

[out_there]

Also, using gender-neutral language (in material that's written and edited, no less!) is just not that damned difficult.

Hmmm. Personally, I'm a big fan of swtiching the he's and she's around in an article. He doesn't have to be universal; examples can be "she" as well.

It is not optional.

No, it is not.

In journalism school, they taught us that if you were making a comparison, and there was going to be a verb after your comparison word, then your comparison word needed to be "as" rather than "like."

Huh. I don't know if I do that, but I'm going to try to keep an eye on it.

[resonant]

I've been reading back in the Ask A Manager blog, and at one point she suggests that everyone should just use their own gender as their 'neutral' (so that she would write, "A boss should be able to give good guidance about what she wants," and a male reader would reply, "Any boss who can do that consistently deserves his pay," or whatever.)

(I found it surprisingly difficult to write sentences like that, gendered and singular, because for so long I've been practicing doing the opposite!)