Language and grammar pet peeves

[Tdol]

An athletic small dog- what's the problem?

 

[Amigos4]

 

[Amigos4]

I wonder if I'm the only person who is infuriated by the use of the letter 'o' instead of the word zero, when a telephone number is being recited.

 

[Tdol]

That's pretty standard in BrE, so don't ask us for our numbers.

 

[Amigos4]

That's pretty standard in BrE, so don't ask us for our numbers.

Fair enough! But don't ask me to recite the alphabet: ... "L", "M", "N", "Zero", "P" ...

 

[Amigos4]

Unintended and Hidden Redundancy:
“When I was in third grade in elementary school, I had a crush on a girl.”
Do you see the problem with that sentence?
“Third grade” is a part of “elementary school.” You don’t have to say it twice. It’s redundant.

 

[Tdol]

Fair enough! But don't ask me to recite the alphabet: ... "L", "M", "N", "Zero", "P" ...

That's fine, and it's oh in the alphabet to us, but you're possibly a bit weird about the last letter of the alphabet to us.

 

[Tdol]

Unintended and Hidden Redundancy:
“When I was in third grade in elementary school, I had a crush on a girl.”
Do you see the problem with that sentence?
“Third grade” is a part of “elementary school.” You don’t have to say it twice. It’s redundant.

It might help those of us for whom the American education system is bizarre, and I come from a country where public school is private school.

 

[Amigos4]

That's fine, and it's oh in the alphabet to us, but you're possibly a bit weird about the last letter of the alphabet to us.

It might help those of us for whom the American education system is bizarre, and I come from a country where public school is private school.

Oh, you Brits are such a fun group to banter with!

 

[Tdol]

Think of me as a sad Brit, and that's saying something.

 

[Rover_KE]

nuptuals instead of nuptials

lingeray instead of lingerie.

a fine toothcomb instead of a fine-tooth comb

 

[jutfrank]

a fine toothcomb

For those with refined tastes and hairy teeth?

 

[emsr2d2]

stationary/stationery
affect/effect

Using a double 's' in "focused" and "focusing". (To be fair, there might be a new acceptance of that but it was drummed into me as a child that it's a verb that ends with a single 's' and it remains so even when you change the tense.)

 

[jutfrank]

People answering questions by beginning with "So ... "

 

[Tarheel]

"Actually" is a word I avoid. I can always use something else.

 

[5jj]

So I feel the same actually.

 

[jutfrank]

"Actually" is a word I avoid. I can always use something else.

This is of course a highly useful word in its proper use of correcting information:

A: The film starts at six so we'd better hurry up.
B: Actually, it starts at half past.

However, many native speakers (noticeably young people) often use it like this:

A: What do you do?
B: Actually, I'm a student.

It seems to me like a completely useless discourse marker there, and it annoys me no end. Just last week, one of my very advanced students (non-native) used it in exactly this way and so I told her it was wrong and that she shouldn't do it. Not ten minutes later, we were watching a reality TV programme where two native speakers (unsurprisingly to me, other young adults) used it in just the same way. "Ha!", yelled my student. You can imagine my frustration as I had to concede that though I don't like it, it is quite natural for some speakers.

 

[Tarheel]

A: The film starts at six, so we better hurry up.
B: No, it starts at 6:30

Or:

In fact, it starts at 6:30

Or:

Not really! It starts at 6:30

While it's not totally useless, it's definitely not essential.

 

[Rover_KE]

haitch