Grammar and Spelling Thread, Anyone?

@Summit Scheduling wrote:

I think the one I see most often (not in MS necessarily) is compliment vs. complement.

That one was drilled into my brain in high school! I can understand people getting confused about which to use, but that begs the question: Why not LOOK IT UP?

With google, online dictionaries, etc., it's easier than ever to look up a spelling or usage. Yet, it seems the less inclined people are to do so. Some sort of weird inverse relationship that I simply can't understand.

I learn something new every day, but not everyday!
I've learned to never trust spell-check or my phone's auto-fill feature.

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More About Grammar & Writing Skills

Another issue I have is, no capitalization. Not even for the letter "I."

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My pet peeve is "yeah" vs. "yea".

When someone uses the wrong one (usually they use yea when they mean yeah), I always read it in my head as "Yay!! I'll take the 11 o'clock colonoscopy appointment". It's very jarring.

Shopper in California's Bay Area

Mine also. I keep telling my friend to duck off. It's frustrating.

"Never believe anything you read on the internet"- Abraham Lincoln

@MA Smith wrote:

@BirdyC wrote:

@MA Smith wrote:

Birdy C,
Oh, and "irregardless" makes me violent.

THANK YOU!, THANK YOU!, and THANK YOU! I swear to the heavens I ended up with one of the lowest grades I had in college because my professor was right behind me; I mouthed off that I did not know how anyone could get their doctorate and never found out 'irregardless' isn't a real word. She was also known for starting a sentence 'Me and...'

It's not so much I hate the word. I hate explaining the 2 negative. No one gets it. Tonight I'm a happy girl, my 94 year old dad pronounced guacamole correctly. We will now work on tortilla.

Yeah I hate the word. But I'm loving you.

"Irregardless" grates on me as much as "expresso", "supposably", "liberry", "anyways", "aks", "Illinois" with an audible "s", "preventative", and "pronounciation:, As a respiratory therapist, my occupational pet peeves are "C-PAK" instead of "CPAP" for the continuous positive pressure breathing equipment used for those who snore and cease breathing, and "stats" instead of "sats" which is short for blood oxygen saturation level. Phew! I feel much better now. lol Ok. I'm off my soapbox now.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/07/2015 08:30PM by touchshopper.

This, in an e-mail from a scheduler. No further comment necessary:

"Large BONUS here for the first experience auditor to apply! Experienced Auditos who have worked on audits with Sassie."

I learn something new every day, but not everyday!
I've learned to never trust spell-check or my phone's auto-fill feature.

OMG. This from guidelines on a restaurant shop:

"1 Desert (Per Person)"

Thankfully the reimbursement includes a drink. But I think I'd need more than one beer to wash down a Sahara or Gobi.

The confusion between "dessert" and "desert" seems omnipresent lately. But, surely guidelines for a restaurant shop should be correct?

I learn something new every day, but not everyday!
I've learned to never trust spell-check or my phone's auto-fill feature.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/08/2015 12:44AM by BirdyC.

My servers will often say the SAL in salmon. I hold back my smirk but come on people... You work in the food business.
I also went on a date with a guy years ago who order the mer-LOT. I about died. I know he obviously didn't know any better, but when I worked as a server, it used to crack me up inside too! Can I teach a food pronunciation class?

Doing what I can to enhance the life of my family! I LOVE what I do

@ShopSouthTexas wrote:

My servers will often say the SAL in salmon. I hold back my smirk but come on people... You work in the food business.
I also went on a date with a guy years ago who order the mer-LOT. I about died. I know he obviously didn't know any better, but when I worked as a server, it used to crack me up inside too! Can I teach a food pronunciation class?

You should probably start with (and yes, I have heard it pronounced this way) people who say buff-et instead of buffet. *sigh*

I don't know if this has been mentioned before but usually it is someone is on a forum being a bully. They are trying to call someone a "loser" and invariably will say "looser". It makes them look like a real idiot if they can't even spell their insult.

Shopping across Indiana but mostly around Indianapolis.

Get used to it folks. Our schools have been dumbed down to the point where Paul Simon's line in "Kodachrome" is more appropriate every day.
Now, many schools no longer teach cursive writing. Imagine what it will be like 30 or 40 years down the road when some of today's students are trying to read old letters or diaries!

@oilerpro wrote:

Get used to it folks. Our schools have been dumbed down to the point where Paul Simon's line in "Kodachrome" is more appropriate every day.
Now, many schools no longer teach cursive writing. Imagine what it will be like 30 or 40 years down the road when some of today's students are trying to read old letters or diaries!

It will be like trying to decipher hieroglyphics.

Or maybe not. Perhaps they'll be offering a course in advanced texting and have required phys ed classes in thumb exercises.

Why do people say, "... me and him have...." Or, whatever other bastardizations of third-, second-, and first-person pronoun usage they write or say. This one sets my teeth on edge. Doesn't anyone remember the rules taught in elementary school?

1) You (the person reading or writing) go last.

2) If you can't decide whether you need "I" or "me" or "him/her" or "she/he," you read the sentence with the other person left out, and see what makes sense.

Why does this seem to be so difficult? I can see not being meticulous in informal speech, but these should be correct in formal speech and in any writing!

I learn something new every day, but not everyday!
I've learned to never trust spell-check or my phone's auto-fill feature.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/11/2015 07:24PM by BirdyC.

@touchshopper wrote:

This is probably a regional thing, but I never heard it when I lived in New York. People here interchange the words "leave" and "let" quite often. Instead of "Just let it be.", you hear "Just leave it be." Instead of "Please leave a message.", you hear "Please let a message." It drives me crazy. I also hear "Would you like some of these ones?" or "those ones", instead of "Would you like some of these?" or "those". One other that drives me to distraction is people who put an ad in Craigslist to sell their "dinning suit" instead of "dining suite". Or how about people advertising "rod iron tables" instead of "wrought iron tables"? It's like fingernails on a blackboard.

Here is a Craigslist comic that I think is great, and it fits right in with the grammar subject.
Grammarly does the weekly your writing in review report. Which I have had issues with in the past but I figured out that if you copy and paste that counts against you also for any errors. There is a lot of copy and pasting when replying.

[www.the-whiteboard.com]

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/11/2015 06:06PM by 2stepps.

@BirdyC wrote:

@christinereed wrote:

The ultimate is when you read the guidelines from a company warning you that you must submit a perfect report, but the guidelines have grammatical and usage errors.

I think this bothers me more than any other issue I encounter in mystery shopping! I just hate it when I see assignments and guidelines that are laden with errors. I've posted here before about instructions that, in writing, say exactly the opposite of what they mean. Such as the bank-shop guidelines that state to arrive "within 30 minutes of closing." What they really mean is to NOT arrive within 30 minutes of closing.

And then there are the instructions that are so poorly written I can't figure out what the heck they mean. It's pretty ironic to be required to have great writing skills when the MSC's can't get their own materials properly written. Not to mention their (often) poorly written websites.

One company is notorious for that, "call the location during standard business hours to verify the time the store opens or closes. DO NOT go before it opens or closes."

@Delizzy wrote:

Yep. That spool checker really snows what use wants to say.

The spelling and grammar checker tells me that I am good to go with that sentence.

Delizzy

Ding, ding, ding that's two points because we had to contact you.

Grammarly did catch the snows and use but missed spool.

@Summit Scheduling wrote:

I get resumes where people say they are "detailed orientated"

Maybe they mean that they take a shower every day and really pay attention to the underarms.

@oilerpro wrote:

Or maybe not. Perhaps they'll be offering a course in advanced texting and have required phys ed classes in thumb exercises.

Also! we are raising a generation of people that will all be stoop-shouldered from looking down at the phones or tablets.

Hmm! seems like you triggered something.

@2stepps wrote:

Here is a Craigslist comic that I think is great, and it fits right in with the grammar subject.
Grammarly does the weekly your writing in review report. Which I have had issues with in the past but I figured out that if you copy and paste that counts against you also for any errors. There is a lot of copy and pasting when replying.

[www.the-whiteboard.com]

That comic would have been hilarious had it not been full of grammar, punctuation, and spelling mistakes!

It was still pretty funny, though....

I learn something new every day, but not everyday!
I've learned to never trust spell-check or my phone's auto-fill feature.

Interesting, didn't think about cursive.

Live your life in such a way that when your feet hit the floor in the morning; the devil shudders...And yells OH #%*+! SHE'S AWAKE!

Spellcheck makes me nuts when I need to say Dads' and not Dad's

Sorry but I think the following sentence should read...Dad's attitude toward mystery shopping will be the death of me.

The other sentence should read: I had to drive Dads' car because mine was in the shop.

BirdyC...help me out here please!

Live your life in such a way that when your feet hit the floor in the morning; the devil shudders...And yells OH #%*+! SHE'S AWAKE!

If you use dads', you are talking about more than one dad: The moms at the party were tidy, but the dads' table was a mess.

Your other sentence only works as written if you have two dads who share one car that they are loaning to you.

ETA: Or are they "lending" it to you? We need a ruling, BirdyC!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/12/2015 10:54PM by Threemom.

@Threemom wrote:

If you use dads', you are talking about more than one dad: The moms at the party were tidy, but the dads' table was a mess.

Your other sentence only works as written if you have two dads who share one car that they are loaning to you.

ETA: Or are they "lending" it to you? We need a ruling, BirdyC!

LOL! Well, as Threemom says, if you are talking about one dad, regardless of the rest of the sentence, any possessive should be "Dad's" or "dad's," depending on what context the word is being used in. Anyway, apostrophe s.

As to lend or loan. I think it should be loan, but either might be correct. I'm not really sure! Need to look that one up....

I learn something new every day, but not everyday!
I've learned to never trust spell-check or my phone's auto-fill feature.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/13/2015 01:31AM by BirdyC.

My 10-year old neighbor asked her dad to read what someone had written in cursive because she could not! It might as well have been written in a foreign language.

@Shopperfest wrote:

My 10-year old neighbor asked her dad to read what someone had written in cursive because she could not! It might as well have been written in a foreign language.

Our elementary school has discontinued the teaching of cursive.

Stands to reason that if you never learn to write it, you won't know how to read it, either.

Whatever happening to the "3 Rs" -- wasn't that "readin', ritin', rithmetic"?

That one I find particular quirk very annoying.

Why would anyone say "I had some sells today." instead of I had some sales today. And then they turn around and do the reverse, and say "I want to sale this on Ebay" .

Aye Yi Yi !!

@ShopSouthTexas wrote:

Another great one "For Sell" instead of "For Sale!"

Oh Gawd, way too many to list.

But a few of my favs are when people don't know how to spell common words that sound alike.

I have seen people mention "their waste" when they were referring to their own mid-section or "heals" when they were talking about feet.

Another other fun one is people who take an old phrase and rework it into something truly funny. One of my favorites is actually one that a family member likes to say, frequently. She butchers the commonly used phrase " Stuck in my craw". Her version is that it is "Stuck in her crawl" ... I cringe every time she says it.

@BirdyC wrote:

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I'm having a hard time understanding you.

Leet Speak Translator.
[www.robertecker.com]

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