Just need to vent, but this has been one of my pet peeves for ages: why is it that so many people (most recently seen in an academic meeting) seem incapable of differentiating between principle and principal? The two words are completely different in meaning. And yet, so many times, I have seen people blithely write 'the principle effects...'.
The other couple I constantly come across is 'affect' and 'effect'.
Tribe, are we the only ones who care to express our thoughts with precision?
The other couple I constantly come across is 'affect' and 'effect'.
Tribe, are we the only ones who care to express our thoughts with precision?
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Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Sat, November 10, 2007 - 7:20 AMThe affect vs effect issue drives me up the wall, but I can try to understand that it might be a little much to expect every single person to use them correctly. What really bothers me is the simple issues. How could anyone not see the difference between their-they're-there or your-you're or two-too-to?
Yes, apparently, there are very few of us left who truly appreciate lexical precision. -
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Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Tue, November 13, 2007 - 12:34 PMI also have an issue when people misuse:
• their they're there
• your you're
• to two too
I once saw a sign:
• Please insure you close the door
someone had written on it, that it should be "ensure" (which I personally agree with), but a whole debate ensued and many were convinced it really should be "insure", even quoting the dictionary.
Thoughts? -
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Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Tue, November 13, 2007 - 11:55 PMI was certain, but did the background checks, and unexpectedly, insure *can* be used in that manner. For me, 'Insure' had always had a financial connotation, but the dictionaries (and the etymology of insure) are clear: one of the meanings of insure is identical to ensure. It looks like sufficient numbers of incorrect users will *ensure* that wrong meanings make it into common useage, and thence into dictionaries.
Why people would want to use an ambiguous 'insure' in lieu of a perfectly unambiguous 'ensure' is beyond me (other perhaps that their vocabulary doesn't exceed 500 words, of course).
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Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Sun, November 11, 2007 - 9:29 PMcompliment/complement! -
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Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Mon, November 12, 2007 - 10:08 PMMy stepson just sent me an email with his Christmas list. One of the items:
"polo or dress collard shirts " -
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Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Mon, November 12, 2007 - 11:40 PM
I hear these collard shirts come in some lovely greens. -
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Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Tue, November 13, 2007 - 3:03 AM"Collard" reminds me of the way some older people refer to African-Americans as "them thar collard folk."
It always makes me cringe.
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Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Tue, November 13, 2007 - 10:17 AMA few years ago, someone on Tribe was starting a group for new submissives called "Collared Greens." That was cute . . .
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Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Tue, November 13, 2007 - 12:27 PM>> ... some older people refer to African-Americans as "them thar collard folk."
which reminds me (and I cringe) when some people say:
• Let me ax you a question?
More recently I've been cringing by the pronunciation of "height" as "hi-th".
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Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Wed, November 14, 2007 - 10:25 PM
Well.. since "we Nawthenars" often assume that soul food (ie; beans and greens) is a black thing, I'm somewhat amused by people referring to them as "collard folks". Maybe I should keep that one to myself..
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Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Sun, November 18, 2007 - 7:37 PMPerhaps you are mis-hearing "colored" folk as collard?
Although I have a friend who (in good nature) calls Hasidic Jews "Acid" Jews. -
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Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Mon, November 19, 2007 - 3:49 AMNo, it's really about how the speaker pronounces the words. It's similar to the folks in Maryland who put "earl" in the car, or maybe even like those who "warsh" the dishes. -
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Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Mon, November 19, 2007 - 5:18 AMHere's one that I hear frequently from our dear president and grind my teeth every time: "Nucular". -
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Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Mon, November 19, 2007 - 1:24 PMHere's one that I hear frequently from our dear president and grind my teeth every time: "Nucular".
That actually became a point of discussion, at least when he was running against Kerry. I remember a mock "debate" on Public Radio, making fun of that very point. But, seriously, I've heard more and more reporters use that. I honestly believe that the way a President talks will influence enough underlings to promote a greater change in the accepted pronunciation.
Another metathetical [adj?] peeve is jewelry pronounced jewlery.
Craig in Arcata -
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This is the maximum depth. Additional responses will not be threaded.
Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Mon, November 19, 2007 - 10:01 PMI work in Geriatrics and one I hear all the time is "Altzhiemers" with a T.
I've also noticed a hickly tendency to either add a posessive or preface with "the" at random, i.e. "The Wal-Mart's", or to make a plural into a posessive, such as in the case of the family home sign ("The Larson's") -
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Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Tue, November 20, 2007 - 5:44 AMAccording to my handy Taber's, it is correctly pronounced "altsheimers." Most likely, it was named for a German doctor who first identified it. In German, the "Z" is always pronounced "ts," while the "S" usually takes the soft z sound.
When talking about a family's home, I will often say that I'm going to Jane's or the Smith's, just dropping the implied word home or house at the end.
But I definitely agree with your gripe of adding "the" to shops and locations. I know many older folks who do this and I thought it was a regional thing. Of course, the same peole often tend to use the brand name for all items of the type, such as Kleenex, Scott-Tissue, Saran-wrap, etc. I caught myself doing this when I got a nasty cut while living in Prague and I kept asking for a Band-aid and no one knew what I was talking about. I finally grabbed a dictionary and realizd I needed the word for the generic bandage, which happens to be "plast" if anyone is interested.
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Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Tue, November 20, 2007 - 8:57 AM'According to my handy Taber's, it is correctly pronounced "altsheimers." Most likely, it was named for a German doctor who first identified it. In German, the "Z" is always pronounced "ts," while the "S" usually takes the soft z sound. "
German native speaker here: I confirm that pronunciation of Alzheimer. In fact, in German, it's closer to 'Ultzhymer' than 'Oltzhymer', which is the way I remember hearing it in the US.
Also the " 'Z' is always pronounced 'ts' " rule is almost always true (Zitterbewegung, Zither, Zugzwang,...) - I'm having a terribly hard time coming up with counterexamples (Azerbeijan, Azuki, ... - all foreign words) -
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Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Tue, November 20, 2007 - 1:47 PMI studied German for years and it's always fun to realize the similarities and differences with English.
I was curious in writing my post whether the "s" is always as like a "z" in English or could sometimes be like our "s." I was thinking of Sie and sicher, but couldn't think of any like the "s" in English, although I guess maybe with the old s-set (how does one spell that in English anyway?") I mean the double "s" as in "Wie heisst du?" -
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Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Wed, November 21, 2007 - 12:20 AMGerman "s" like English "z" : Sage, Sein, Sichel, Sonderregelung, Sucht - these are indeed the most common.
German "s" like English "s" (ß) : sakral, Seminar, Sexualität, Silizium, Solarkraftwerk, Subtiliät, System (although I have heard it pronounced as 'zystem') - not as common, and it appears to me that all are imported words.
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Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Wed, November 21, 2007 - 1:50 AMOh, and another one that gets to me:
site and sight, in particular in the context of the web. My *feeling* is that only 'web site' is correct (I can check, but I'm pretty sure that that's the way the name was coined here at CERN), but I've often come across 'web sight', which puts a different (and I think, incorrect) spin on the concept. A concept in the making - how often do we get to see that? -
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Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Wed, November 21, 2007 - 5:19 AMmichael - My peeve is when people use "site" instead of "cite" which they often do on web "sites". It's "website", "site" as in location. All pretty logical really. What I've found though is that increasingly people are using "site" when it should be "cite" (as in "citation"). Can't say I've ever actually seen anyone us web "sight"! -
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Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Wed, November 21, 2007 - 5:40 AMI saw a job ad that said they offered "on-sight" babysitting. I was highly amused. I also love the jobs that post "good grammer required" and similar errors. -
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Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Wed, November 21, 2007 - 5:42 AM"on-sight" babysitting....*lol* "You! Kid! I see you! Sit!" ;-)
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Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Wed, November 21, 2007 - 7:53 AMOne that's going around my office these days is "flush it out" rather than "flesh it out"... -
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Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Wed, November 21, 2007 - 8:33 AMechidna - Well doesn't that kind of give one an insight into what people think of their work! ;-)
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On the Beeb, no less...
Tue, March 18, 2008 - 12:47 AMFifi says: "Can't say I've ever actually seen anyone us web "sight"!"
No that I was actively seeking it out, but I stumbled across it this morning, and that triggered my background process that had been flustered at not being able to provide evidence ;)
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7294910.stm
"The underlying issue is that people do not want to pay the high legitimate prices that exist for things like CDs and DVDs, so they often go to pirate sights (sic!) to download material." -
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Re: On the Beeb, no less...
Tue, March 18, 2008 - 5:57 AM_michael_ - Oh, and apparently I'm prone to typing "us" when I mean "use"! I don't feel so bad now that the Beeb has shown themselves to be just as prone to this kind of thing ;-)
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Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Tue, March 18, 2008 - 12:22 PMoh yes this stuff drives me nuts as well, and not in a nice car but one that smells of old vomit and burning dust and the wind blows on your ankles.
i get less upset by more "complicated" words like ensure/insure as the really very basic ones like their/they're/there or your/you're or two/too/to, as mentioned earlier. how can people live without knowing the difference among those words? how can they navigate books or conversations?!? i don't understand how it is that they don't wander off into a fog of their own misunderstandings and confusion and disappear.
conversational tics really get to me as well, like "an' all that", which people around here append to each thought and partial sentence. it doesn't seem to indicate anything in particular, and seems to be implying my collaboration or previous knowledge in some way when such is not the case. this drives me fucking mad, but every time i mention it i get blank stares.
i've given up correcting people or even asking for clarification on one of those words; if i can't figure it out by context i just move on. grrr....
(as a side note, it is nice to know there are other people out there who value precision and flexibility and poetry in their language. thanks guys!) -
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Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Sun, March 23, 2008 - 9:21 PMI have always been distressed by those who pronounce, "realtor" as [reel-it-tor] instead of [ree-uhl-tor]. -
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Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Mon, March 24, 2008 - 5:23 AMIn my area, people tend to squeeze sounds together, so realtor is more like two syllables - reel-tur. There is just the slightest stress that could almost be the "a" sound.
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Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Mon, March 24, 2008 - 9:13 AMI am even more dismayed that otherwise fine periodicals such as the Los Angeles Times (and countless others, I assume) have given into the demands of the trade association and insist on capitalizing Realtor in stories.
Feh.
Shameless pandering.
The LAT, also, insists on writing the plural of millenium as "milleniums" [sic]. Double feh.
Lex -
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Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Tue, March 25, 2008 - 12:25 PMMilleniums?!? Aaarrrggghhhh!!!!
what's next, bacterias? radiuses? sheeps?
*laugh* -
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Re: Peeve: spelling skills and homonyms
Tue, April 1, 2008 - 5:17 PMand then there is the most basic of pluralization errors: putting an apostrophe before the s. It's become so rampant, I see it on sign's lot's of place's. Aaaargh!
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