Annoyances

Good point. I always thought YOU guys were weird but you're probably right. It IS "aluminium" isn't it? Maybe that would help all the poor souls who get tongue-twisted and end up saying ALUNAMUN. Or maybe not.

The misuse of apostrophes is my all-time biggest pet peeve and it is epidemic. I think the internet has made it worse. It used to be that you'd find people occasionally sticking an apostrophe in the possessive "its" where it doesn't belong any more than it belongs in "his" or "hers," but now you find simple nonpossessive plurals abused in the same way. I looked through this thread and found only one abuse, however, the plural "Americans" misrendered as "American's." I have to work hard not to think less of people who put a welcome sign at their entrance saying "The Webster's" to indicate a family of Websters.Another pet peeve is the mispelling of "caramelized" by a few on this very thread, a case of the common error of saying "carmel" for the browned-sugar candy when "caramel" is meant. Carmel is a mountain in Samaria and also a seacoast town in California. It is not browned sugar. But "caramel" is.There, now a few of the ways I restrain myself from being a pedant hundreds of times a day are expressed where it should be acceptable.This message has been edited by Faith, 08-07-2005 02:34 PM

Is that one common? It seems to have escaped my pedantic eye if so.

Yup I goofed misspell. That's what I get for being a pedant. What goes around comes around.

OK we HAVE to be friends (no matter how crazy we drive each other) if we agree on apostrophes used in plurals (which drive me even crazier ).

Somebody mentioned people who do not use turn signals. What bugs me is people who leave them on for miles and miles and intersection after intersection.

That's really bad. But funny it's so bad. I try to tune them out but maybe I'll try to collect some instead. I think the worst one I've ever seen was "cat's." I suppose strictly speaking it's no worse than any other, but I think it bugs me particularly because "cat" is one of those very first three-letter words we all learn when we're learning to read and didn't we learn plurals at about the same time? You know, dogs and cats.

Never heard that term before but glad to see the apostrophe offense is noticed. That term probably won't catch on here, though, as we don't say "greengrocer", at least not in my (western) part of the country --it's "grocery store" or "grocery" or just "the market." Maybe we could call it the Veggie/Vegie Aisle Apostrophe******
[digression]
and come to think of it, that's another pet peeve of mine. Phonetically speaking, it should be spelled "vegie" in order for it to be correctly pronounced "vedgie," but if you spell it with the single "g" then people mispronounce it "eggy" and since they also mispronounce the double "g" as "edgy" you pretty much have to misspell it so that people will pronounce it correctly.Yes, that's a BIG complaint I have, that they stopped teaching PHONICS in most schools decades ago so that otherwise educated people stumble over new words, can't pronounce anything, can't spell anything. Drives me nuts. Must be a liberal plot. Actually, it was. [/end digression]******I'll have to make a point of checking how bad the vegie aisle signmakers are. But most signs are officially printed now, rather than hand-lettered, so they may not be the big offenders any more anyway.This message has been edited by Faith, 08-08-2005 07:07 PM