Friday, November 21, 2008

Language Laziness

Over at Written Expressions today's blog is a rant on the misuse of "I," "me," "us," "we," and "them." (Me and him are best friends, etc). I agree that this is a seriously irritating epidemic. It makes me cringe every time I hear it.

However, my personal language laziness rant has to do with the misuse of "less" and "fewer."

For instance:

Diet soda has less calories than regular.
10 items or less.

Apparently advertisering copywriters everywhere have less intelligence or education than they need to do their jobs!

(p.s., the misuse of "your" versus "you're" gets me irritated too....)

So, what's your language laziness pet peeve?

7 comments:

alana said...

I actually question myself when I use the proper "I," "me," "us," "we," since I feel like it comes off as pretentious on the web. (I know, kind of sad. lol)

The thing I hate the most, is when people use “your” instead of “you’re.” I don’t know why but it drives me crazy.

Angie Ledbetter said...

My top language pet peeve is the its/it's you see so often incorrectly.

Michelle H. said...

"You're" for "your"... "its" for "it's" - both are my bane. Another one is their/they're.

Jessica Nelson said...

I would really love to know about her/she.
As in: This is she. Or is it: This is her.
Erk. I always forget.

Anonymous said...

..well, i hate it when i hear unnecessary s's, like in "with regards to".. i often hear that. or when when someone says 'you rocks'. uhh! cool.. -o-

Susan Storm Smith said...

My top one is your/you're, then comes their/there, and it/it's. I remember in school we had to diagram sentences so we could understand all parts of the sentence so we,us, and I I just think of the "apple" of preposition.

Thanks for allowing us the pleasure of ranting with you SOMF (smile on my face)

Sal said...

Starting a sentence with " And " , " But " or " Or ". I see it in newspapers all the time, but it was a fail when I was at school. Also the confusion between i.e ( Id Est ) and e.g.(Exempli Gratia) Many times they are used wrongly, and mixed up. Both are latin, the first means " that is" the second " for example ".
Two examples:

" Please join us for our usual Thanksgiving meal, e.g Turkey, cranberyy sauce, pumpkin pie ".

" A great American holiday i.e Thanksgiving,is almost here ".