quote:

ORIGINAL: MistressDarkArt

I would like to provide a place where literate folk may express their frustration with less-than-literate folk's spelling, grammar, punctuation and syntax gaffes. Note: I'm not referring to on-the-fly forum posting typos or ESL folks who knock themselves out trying their best with a difficult second language.

Here are some of my peeves:

Its and it's. If I had a dollar for every time I've seen otherwise intelligent people type "I love it's color" I could buy that awesome beach house in the good part of town. People: it's is a contraction of 'it is'. if you're not sure whether it's right to use one (comma) say this sentence out loud (semicolon), "I love it is color." (It's) (c)ertainly not right.) {however,} you just gained 20 IQ points, at least on 'paper'.

There, they're, and their. "They're over there with that dog of their's." NOT "there over there with that dog of there's." Or worse yet, 'thers'.

To, too. "It's really too much to expect" becomes 'it's really to much too expect." Or mostly, folks just leave off the second 'o' when they shouldn't, as though there's only one version of the word.

Your and you're. "Here are your gloves. Wear them when you're outside today."

Using apostrophes for plurals. "How many dog's and cat's do you have? She has two slave's and doesn't want any master's."

Random bizarre capitalization in the middle of a sentence. "Yesterday we Went to the Park and there were Lots of kids On the swings." I simply don't get this. At all.

Text speak. Oy, my head... It may be appropriate for sending a quick message to let your friend know you'll be a few minutes late. But for gawd's sake (yes, I know how I spelled 'gawd' and did so deliberately out of respect) you are not limited to x number of characters on this board and most others. Text speak is hard for the majority to interpret in a long message. To my eyeballs, it's the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard.

Phonetic spelling. "Voila" becomes 'wa la' or something else that doesn't even sound like the original word. Craigslist is famous for this. It's hilarious and incredibly sad at the same time.

Prolly. Just because you're too lazy to pronounce all syllables of the word 'probably' doesn't mean it's a good idea to eye-rape us with your illiteracy.

Discrete. Folks, this is a mathematical term. It is not the same as 'discreet' which is what the majority of the married douches here without their spouse's permission mean. It's enough they are a douche; it's too much (that) they are also illiterate.

Definatl(e)y. Or definetl(e)y. Watch for those squiggly red lines! They're there to tell you something is d e f i n i t e l y wrong with your spelling!

Punctuation. Or lack thereof. I have never seen so many run-on sentences in my entire life as I do online. People do a whole effing paragraph where it's impossible to determine one statement ending and another beginning. Or the ubiquitous commas (or ellipses) between words instead of spaces. When, and for gawd's sake WHY did that start? Is it a text thing (comma) and I didn't get the memo? It,sure,is,hard,to,read,I,wish,u,wud,lern,to,make,freinds,with,ur,space,key.

Quiet and quite. OK, sometimes this is just a typo, but mostly not. "I quite enjoy a quiet evening at home." That's the right (correct) way, folks.

"Dinning". If you enjoy fine dining or have a dining room table for sale, trust me you don't need the extra 'n'. Really.

Slashy speak, and folks that capitalize 'Me', 'Mine', 'You', 'Your' in the middle of a sentence and not after a period...anything but proper-English 'I'. Bastardizing the English language in this way just looks like a dumb affectation to me. Same goes for submissive's lower case names and pronouns. It's hard as hell to read and makes me think somebody's shift key isn't working.

There are SOOOOOOOOO many others but I'd like to see your favorites!

PS: I leave you here with our perennial favorite: dominant and dominate. No effing comment...please pass the Advil.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Awareness

quote:

ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
Eh? You'd pronounce the 'h' in 'history' harder than you'd pronounce the 'h' in 'historical'? Why?

  Probably because the emphasis in "history" is on the first syllable.   Phonetically "HIStree", a virtual reduction from 3 syllables to two, although it's fairly borderline and the "o" can sneak back in.   Whereas "historical" has the emphasis on the second syllable "hisTORical"  and thus the first syllable is de-emphasised leading to a softer aitch.

I suspect partially it comes back to information theory.  Words with more syllables provide more phonemes and consequently are more unique and less amenable to being misheard.  Whereas shorter words may require more emphasis up front and so there's an adaption there to ensure their articulation is more distinct.  Without a full emphasis on the aitch, "history" has a good chance of being misheard as "mystery".  Thus, the adapted emphasis.
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quote:

ORIGINAL: LanceHughes

quote:

ORIGINAL: Edwynn
You mean that it might make me sound effectacious if I said "an historical view," e.g.? I wonder how that would effect others' perception of me. I would only hope that there'd be no such affect.

Sorry, this is getting to be too much fun here.

I didn't finish reading the whole string, so I apoligize in advance if anyone else caught Edwynn's reversal of "effect" and "affect."

"Effect" is the noun; "affect" the verb (except in special cases) as we are taught below.
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Generally speaking, affect is a verb and effect is a noun. When you affect something, you produce an effect on it. Even in the passive voice, something would be affected, not effected.

There are certain situations where effect is used as a verb and situations where affect is used as a noun, but very few people ever have a need to use them thus, so unless you are already confident of your ability to use these words correctly,  just treat as general the rule that effect is a noun and affect a verb.

(If you feel the need to get fancy, however, here are the meanings of effect as a verb and affect as a noun. As a verb,  effect means to execute, produce, or accomplish something; as a noun, affect is used primarily by psychologists to refer to feelings and desires as factors in thought or conduct.)

 
- from http://grammartips.homestead.com/affect.html 
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Thus, we see an attempt to be "fancy."

I wonder how that would effect others' perception of me. I would only hope that there'd be no such affect.

CLOSE!

I wonder how that would effect [a change in] others' perception of me. I would only hope that there'd be no such affect.

That is, you can "effect a change," and you can "affect others' perceptions," but you can't "effect others' perceptions."

"Affect" here seems to be so close I'll leave it alone.

quote:

ORIGINAL: xxblushesxx

Ya'll say "fuck" too much.

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Now wait just a minutes, what exactly is wrong with Canadians

quote:

ORIGINAL: Edwynn



By the way, it's "Es tut mir Leid," not "Es tut mir Lied."


'Es tut mir Lied' would mean "it causes me song," whereas 'es tut mir Leid' means "it causes me sorrow." (the German equivalent of "oops, sorry" for the English audience here).

I did that sort of mistake at least once in every test in deutsche Sprache kurs, a near-English pronunciation of a German word causing me to inadvertently spell it in English (for that pronunciation) rather than German.

quote:

ORIGINAL: tiggerspoohbear

Now wait just a minutes, what exactly is wrong with Canadians?  We live a peaceable life up north with our polar bears and continuing to live in our igloos.  We have power generators used to run such things as computers, TVs and electric fireplaces so we don't melt said igloos,    

quote:

ORIGINAL: Edwynn

quote:

ORIGINAL: tiggerspoohbear
Now wait just a minutes, what exactly is wrong with Canadians?  We live a peaceable life up north with our polar bears and continuing to live in our igloos.  We have power generators used to run such things as computers, TVs and electric fireplaces so we don't melt said igloos,    

Sorry, not intended to label the whole country that way. Just one particular sty of them on CM.

The country itself is great, and so are most of the people.

"Melting igloos"? What an insulting stereotype some people use, just because you live in the land of snow. Terrible.

Power generators? I'm sorry, we increase power generation by using more hamster wheels here in the South, are you talking about a motorized something? Interesting.

If the downloads get too slow, we just shake the cage a little bit and we're back up to 20 Mbps in no time. "Overclocking" means a different thing here, sometimes.

quote:

ORIGINAL: tiggerspoohbear
There are still Americans

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There are still Americans who believe we live in igloos and want to know how we manage to be on the internet since it should be impossible to have electricity.  That's when the fun starts. 

Actually this is where the fun really starts!