As a companion piece to BoF's Punctuation thread, I thought I'd air one of my own grammatic pet peeves: the use of the word "firstly".

First, the words "first", "second", and "third" (all the way through "last") are already adverbs. Look in any English language dictionary in the known universe and you'll see the abbreviation adv. following such words. They don't need the "ly" ending common to many other adverbs. When I was in school, shortly after King Philip's War, my seventh grade English teacher went of at great length about the ludicrousness of the word "firstly". Miss Dougherty (the formidable English teacher in question) argued that adding an "ly" to what was already an adverb was totally superfluous. "One could just as easily add an 'ly' to the adverb 'once' - and it would be just as meaningless," she'd say. "But one doesn't say 'oncely' - or 'nowly' or 'thenly' or 'nextly'. Why one earth should one say 'firstly' or 'lastly'?" Good question. And you can bet that none of her alumni were guity of such an egregious verbal redundancy.

Sadly (or sadlily?), the use of "firstly" has become so common among those wishing to sound "educated" or something that it is now considered an acceptable synonym for, um... "first". As I see "firstly" used here a lot, I was wondering where people had picked this up. Has it recently been taught as being correct grammar rather than an ersatz word used by those trying (and failing) to sound urbane? Or is it just another slang usage that has officially entered the language?

Feel free to address this - or raise any grammatic (or even grammatical) pet peeves of your own.

I made the "fisrtly" mistake early in my acacademic career and the professor red inked my paper.

Language does change with usage.

The New Oxford American Dictionary, 2005 lists "firstly" as an acceptable form.

Having been taught that way, I still prefer to leave the "ly" off.

Likerwise, proved was once the acceptable past participle of prove, not proven. The New Oxford American Dictionary now lists either as correct, with "proved" listed first.

I have some sort of mental block against seeing "timely" as an adverb. It's also an adjective, of course, but sometimes it's used as an adverb, especially in legal writing: "The plaintiff timely filed his response..." It just looks wrong to me, but the dictionaries say otherwise.

"Anyways" drives me nuts. Seems to be more commonly used by people from Michigan, at least vs. Chicago. Hate it.

Irregardless is also one that seems to pop it's ugly head quite a bit. It is, simply, regardless... there is no need to add the ir. I also hate hearing conversate used instead of converse - this seems to pop up in corporate environments.

I'm right there with entspeak on "irregardless". Regardless of its common usage, it isn't a word!!

One of my biggest pet peeves is the use of "that" to describe a person, e.g. "People that live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones." People are "who"s, as in "People who live in glass houses..."

Oh, and "as per"; yeesh, just say "per" and be done with it. Same goes for "so as to"...why use 3 words when one will do?

Also, the misuse of "affect" (influence) and "effect" (a result) and "ensure" (make sure) and "insure" (buy insurance)

Which brings up another... "and also" REDUNDANT!

Other misc. annoyances: "pouring" over a document (should be "poring"), "phase" for "faze", "reign" (rule) for "rein" (restrain, as in reins on a bridle), "their" (possessive) for "there" (location)


This is the downside of tech writing for a living!

I hate ugly words that I have to look up, only to become thoroughly disenchanted with them.

For example:

refulgent instead of gleaming -- refulgent sounds like a form of scat

badinage instead of playful banter -- isn't badinage a receptacle for badiness?

insocient instead of carefree -- insocient looks so anti-social

adumbrate instead of sketch out -- adumbrate, isn't that part of the spinal column?

minatory instead of menacing -- why should I care about a little lavatory?

But, you never know when some news announcer will pick up on one of these bedizenments and make it part of pop culture.

The same Miss Dougherty who declared war on "firstly" also argued that adjectives ending in "ly" should have an additional "ly" appended in adverb form (though the first "y" would become an "i"). One shouldn't say "She danced lovely", but "She danced lovelily". Oddly, the dictionaries seem to accept "lovelily" (and "homelily" and "comelily" and "unseemlily"), but not "timelily". Go figure. To me, though, "lovelily" always sounded like some poetic anatomical euphemism, so I tend to go with a synonym: "She danced beautifully." In your example, I think I'd avoid the awkward "timely" as an adverb and just go with something like "The plaintiff filed his response in a timely fashion."

Daffy, you'll love this. I was working on some news items for tomorrow's radio show news and cut and pasted the following line from a BBC article into my Microsoft Word™ browser, "Several people were arrested by the security forces who moved in almost as soon as activists started gathering." Word's grammar checker errantly advised me to change the 'who' to 'that'. Maybe this is why so many people screw it up?
~ ~ ~
I'm not sure if this is a grammar pet peeve or simply social politeness, but it drives me up the wall when people have failed to hear something I said and instead of saying 'excuse me?' 'what?' or 'pardon?' I get either a 'haaaaah?' or 'do what now?' I hate 'haaah' and 'do what now'. It hurts my ears.

The program probably got confused – as it always will in that situation. This is why computers will never truly be able to compete with the human brain. A computer can't distinguish the grammatical difference between the physical forces that exist in the universe – such as gravity – and the security forces who moved in – a group of people.




I usually say, "Que?"

According to this site, the use of "that" when referring to a group or class of people is appropriate. "Who" is also acceptable.

Yes, the "that" in the example sentence refers back to the word "type" which is an object, so it works in that sense even though "type" refers to people. It does not say, however, that the use of "that" works for a group of people. It says it works for a class or type of people.

As a michigander I know what you mean carlitos-- We say it all the time.

Some of my pet peeves:

It drives me up a wall when I hear people substitute the word "actor" for "actress". Why are people doing this? I don't get it.

The incorrect use of "they" or "their" in an attempt to be gender neutral. Also, unlike the romance languages, English is able to convey the gender of the subject (who owns an object) through the use of "his" or "her", but this distinction is lost when we replace "his" or "her" with "their".

Just a few pet peeves, I am sure more will come to mind.

I was taught that using "their" for a singular possessive is gramatically incorrect. Anyways, is this still the case?

Good to see you posting, haleyanne!!

Amlord

It is absolutely incorrect! And like I said it drives me nuts.

Classes are over so I finally have some time to get back to my favorite board

[quote name='hayleyanne' date='Jun 15 2006, 09:22 AM' post='189656']
It drives me up a wall when I hear people substitute the word "actor" for "actress". Why are people doing this? I don't get it.[/quote]

As an actor, I believe I can answer this one.

It is now more accepted professionally to refer to both men and women as actors. Or perhaps, I should say this is becoming the professional trend. It's a PC thing. If you refer to a woman as an actor, you won't offend. If you refer to a woman as an actress, you might. The awards shows still use "actress", obviously... but how else would you refer to the categories? Best and best supporting female actor?
[/quote]

I'm always gender-specific when I refer to those who act - I call them "waiters" and "waitresses"

Sorry - at least I didn't say 'thespian'

I haven't waited tables in almost 10 years, thank you very much. In particular, over the last few years my primary income has come from acting.

Thespian is such a strange word, don't you think? It just sounds strange.

Oh, and in terms of the award shows, I just realized that the announcers now say, "Best female in a leading role" even though the category is called "Best Actress"... the same goes for the Best Supporting Actress category.

Something that drives me up the wall is the phrase "exact same." Exact and same mean the same thing. Used together, one of them is redundant.

ANSWERING TELEPHONE: "Hello, department of redundancy department."

In the great state of Massachusetts they drop the "er" off of hamburger and frankfurter and it absolutely drives me nuts. I was asked if I wanted to stop at this next exit to get a hamburg...I'm not sure where this originates from or why people keep saying it but I can stand it.

CP

When did exact and same come to mean the same thing? They don't mean the same thing at all. You can't say something was exact and have it mean that it was the same as something else. Exact describes the similarity. The problem is the use of the adjective "exact" rather than the adverb "exactly". "Exact same" is not grammatically correct, nor is "same exact". The proper phrase is "exactly the same."

Good point, but I don't think I've ever heard anyone say it that way. Keep in mind that Texas is peculiar.

It you say two things are the "same," isn't saying that they are "exactly the same" adding unnecessary words?

It adds emphasis. One could also describe things as being "precisely the same". It makes the language more colorful and it is grammatically correct.

Ooh - I just came across something else (in another forum) that really grates on my nerves: when adjectives are turned back into nouns. Specifically, when "iced tea" becomes "ice-tea" and "bleached blonde" becomes "bleach-blonde". In speech, one can hardly tell the difference (sort of like using "would of" instead of "would have"), but when I see them in writing, I go crazy.

On one of the first papers I wrote in college, I used to word "feel" as a substitute for "think." The professor must have emptied his red pen on this one. The word "feel" in this context grates on my nerves to this day.

I just checked The Random House Thesaurus, 1987. "Feel" is not listed as a synonym for "think."

I assume this is a thread that bashes grammatical errors or incorrect usage of the English language. I have a few examples that I would like to mention.

"First of all"
I cannot stand it, written or spoken, when people use the term "First of all" and only have one thing to say.

Many people on AD use the statement, "In my opinion" or "I think". If you are wrting it, it is obviously your opinion are you thought about it. Those statements are understood, unnecessary, and detract from the message. I try to convey my messages with efficient wording.

And last, undefined pronouns, me and my wife have this argument all the time and it goes like this:
Wife: Honey, grab that for me.
Me: What's that?
Wife: That, right there.
Me: What's that? And where is there?

Itt iz alsoe impoortant to menshon that they're is a gr8 deel of pressure not too maike ne mistakes when kreating a poste in a thred lyke this.

The actor/actress thing is interesting. Why isn't there a writress? We're all simply writers. Or a thinktress? What's so dang special about prancing around onstage?

Maybe it has to do with the ending, the o and r. No, there's waiter and waitress, steward and stewardess. I guess if you're sitting down, thinking and writing, then nobody cares what gender you are. But if you're moving around in real time and entertaining or serving, then by gosh it makes a big difference.

I can see that, sort of.

One of the questions that wait staff asks these days falls flat: "How's everything tasting?" Do you really want to know? It's a greasy spoon for crissake. The hash browns are limped and full of trans fats, the eggs are cold and broken, the toast drips with cheap margarine, so will you get me some hot sauce to smother all this crap before it attacks?

But they're just trying to be nice, so I let it go. Besides, the joint gives out free coffee now and then to regulars, and with enough fake cream and sugar from a 1940s vintage glass dispenser in there, you can get it down. You can see the cook and cookess back in the kitchen, working their tails off for minimum wage, and the crowd gets bigger, the orders pile up, the wait staff carries more platters on an arm than seems humanly possible . . . leave a big tip. It's a tough life.

I like a simple, "How's tricks, Dicks?" Even though my name ain't Dicks. It's close enough, and I don't do tricks. But that doesn't matter. It's a code phrase, a saying that fits in with the anachronistic greasy spoon, makes me want to turn the collar up and slouch the hat. The sound of a sax comes up, long and moaning tones from a drizzle-shined street in a city that doesn't know your name.

Phew! No, it's just a little mountain greasy spoon that's been here forever. Don't ask me how things taste. Give a code phrase, something that reminds me why I'm here and not there. Let me know you've been there too, maybe read the same book or listened to the same radio show. Nobody comes up here for the food.

Anyway, that's what I think about that there in my own opinion

This bugs the heck out of me, and nearly everyone, from the posters at to the politicians and the media do it.

Troop.

As in "a troop died today", or "20,000 troops"

A "troop" is not a single person. A troop is defined as:

Two or more platoons!! That's a whole lotta bodies. When did the meaning of "troop" become synonymous with "soldier" or "trooper"?

OK, I feel better now.

Heh, 'troop' may not be grammatically correct, but it has been part of the military vernacular since waaaay before my time. You are correct in your assertion, but calling out to a soldier - "come here, troop!" is widely used. But saying "a troop died today" does sound rather stupid. So I suppose I half agree with you.......

This person does a nice job of explaining this click here.

AAAAAUUUUGGGGGHHHH!!! Algebra!! No one told me there'd be ALGEBRA!!

That is a good explanation, but I still hate it when someone arbitrarily changes the laws of grammar. "2 troops died today" does sound really stupid.

I guess I'm just a stubborn old fart set in my grammatical ways.

Calling soldiers troops depersonalizes things. If we said more than 3000 soldieres have died in Iraq, rather than 3000 troops, Bush's poll numbers would be even more dismal.

A very good point. "Troops" is a much more benign word than "soldier". "Soldier" denotes a human being, while "troop" is much more ambiguous. Words are powerful things. Just like the whole "surge/escalation" thing.

I read through this and I didn't see one that has bugged me for a long time, although I may have missed it.

"I could care less" as opposed to "I couldn't care less"

"I could care less" isn't necessarily "wrong", however, when most people say that, they really mean "I couldn't care less".

This isn't just something I see in an AOL or Myspace chatroom, I have seen this numerous times in magazines, newspapers, recent books by well known authors, and a ton of tv shows. I can't believe these editors don't pick up on it! I literally get chills down my spine every time I hear this.

Agreed! Editors ought to know better and so should pro writers, but often they get sloppy in the heat of writing, meeting deadlines, and then there's something that happens during publishing. I'm sure it has something to do with supernatural creatures. Where'd that comma fault come from? It wasn't there a minute ago.

"I could care less" can work with a little extra sarcasm: "I could care less, but it seems unlikely at the moment." Eh, maybe not. So, agreed!

When I come across these mistakes in print, it makes me feel better to mark them up with red pencil. Actually, it makes things all right in the world, a euphoria of sorts. ("An euphoria" sounds stupid to me.) Markup symbols in red pencil get me high! Oh, wow man.

The reason the term troops is used is because soldiers is an Army-specific term (and many non-Army personnel will get pretty ticked when referred to as a soldier). If we wanted to use a more specific word, we could say servicemen/women...otherwise it'd be rather lengthy - 3000 marines, soldiers, airmen/women, and seamen/women sure would take a long time to say/write! But I agree that 'troops' is far too impersonal sounding!

There are a slew of grammar-related pet-peeves of mine, but I'll just list my top two. One of the ones that drives me batty is "an historic". Since when is historic pronounced with a silent 'h'? The American 'punctuation inside the quotation' rule drives me bonkers, too. The British certainly have it right, in my opinion. Unless it is part of the quotation itself, it makes no sense to place the punctuation inside quotation marks. I refuse to abide by this rule because it is a pretty horrible rule if you ask me.

I agree with those especially "an historic". In general I'm against I before E most of the time. I mean what kind of "rule" is that?

I spend a fair amount of time on "tech" boards like Slashdot and such. Spelling is atrocious. To the point where I wonder if spelling is even important anymore. Do we really need 3 different theres? Maybe we don't. While I find it jarring to read gross misspellings and intentionally l337 typos like teh and ne way - I might just be old. My thumbs do T9 just fine, but I'm slower than my Sys Admin by a shot... of course I actually spell my words correctly... when I can.

I'm sick of people referring to the Democratic Party as the Democrat Party. Please try to get it right.

Some things make me cringe. Using a singular verb with the conditional “if” is one of them. Fifty or so years after the fact, I still see Miss Lacy with her yard stick drilling into a bunch of junior high school brats the rule that plural verbs are used with the conditional. Miss Lacy never actually hit anyone with her yardstick - just her desk, the chalk board, or one of our desks, but we were never sure she wouldn’t hit one of us.

Capital Community College has put together an excellent guide to English grammar. The first link is to their homepage and search engine.

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/index.htm

This second link is to the use of conditional verbs.

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/conditional.htm

Here are some examples they give.




I'm not sure this rule makes any sense, but I do know it's proper form.

Here's where style guides come in handy, as long as they don't contradict themselves and are constructed well. I like Chicago.

Regarding style and spelling, better pay attention if you're looking to get published for pay. If it's just posting on the Web, nobody cares. Well, they might if the subject is about writing or English.

Guess I should complain about something. Let's see, okay, it strikes me as anachronistic to continue these two spellings: prologue and epilogue. The ending and meaningless two letters of both words can be safely dropped, and usually are in business writing. Literature keeps these spellings though, even while agents complain that writers have to get modern. Aren't we way past the year 1066? That's when French started to join with Anglo Saxon to make English. But I guess the French spellings are classier than the shorter versions.

While I'm on this, what's up with novel titles? You have this book and it's classfied as fiction, yet right after the title comes this obvious thing: * A Novel * You mean there are other kinds of fiction? Sure, there's the novella, the short story and maybe poetry, but that really should be true. Meanwhile, I've got this fiction book that runs somewhere between 280 and 400 or so pages. You don't have to tell me what it is.

What if other things were to be labeled like this?

Chevrolet
* A Horseless Carriage *

Bic
* A Writing Implement *

Diploma
* A Credential *

Political Speech
* A Pack of Lies *

The last one might be a good reminder as we enter yet another season.

It bugs me when someone writes about "something you eluded to earlier." Eluding is getting away, you can't "elude to" somthing.

allusion = an indirect reference
elusion = an escape
illusion = an erroneous perception

allusive = making reference
elusive = hard to get hold of, slippery
illusive = not real, fake (but you probably want "illusory")

allusory = allusive
elusory = not a word (maybe you want "elusive"?)
illusory = fake, not real

allude = to make indirect reference
elude = to get away
illude = not a word

I blame the schwa...

Oooh, something that bothers me a lot is the "hyper correction" of "you and me."

For instance, people often say (or write) something like "Sam was with Chris and I." But this is incorrect, because the use of the preposition "with" renders what follows an object. "Chris and I" is subjective (as in, it is used as a subject), and is hence incorrect used after a preposition. The correct form would be "Chris and me", because that is the objective case (as in, it's the object of a sentence).

Exactly. If they wanted to use I, they would have to say, "Chris and I were with Sam."

Sundry word-related annoyances:

• Idiots who insist on mixing up "pacific" with "specific". This is just simple ignorance - nobody would sanely put a list of options on a form and then ask that the user "please pacify" when they mean "please specify". They don't go sailing on the Specific Ocean, either, so why the confusion?
• Idiots who pronounce "nucleus" and it's derivatives - especially "nuclear" as if there is a vowel between the C and the L. In this I include the current US President. If you can't even say the name of the weapon correctly, you certainly shouldn't have access to the codes that allow you to use it.
• The use of text-speak e.g. "I want 2 go 2 c my m8s 2moro". It's been over a decade since SMS messages charged by the character - there is no need for them any more. And the time you save typing these dunder-headed abbreviations instead of their full spellings is not saved, it is merely externalised to the poor reader, who has to parse it all back into English. This might be forgiveable in an actual SMS message, but there is no excuse for it in emails and certainly not on publicly accessible boards like (thankfully it is largely absent here), where only one person "saves time" but potentially thousands of others all take twice as long to read it.
• I realise I'm pushing water uphill on an American site, but in British English "different" takes only "from" and not "than". I still have to check myself and bite my tongue when I read it.
• The peculiar British urban habit, especially among speakers with Afro-Caribbean heritage, of pronouncing "ask" as "ahks". It not a really major irritant, but I've never been able to work out where it comes from - is it a carry-over from Jamaican Patois? Is it African in origin (like all those -isha name endings)? Or is it a newly evolved form?
• Lastly, my own writing irritates me because I'm forever putting (what seem to be) pertinent asides in parentheses, which is fine when I'm being conversational and chatty, but breaks up the flow when I'm trying to make a point. Clearly I'm not the greatest sub-editor when it comes to my own prose.

It may be more spoken than written, but "simular," rather than "similar" reminds me I live in Hicksville and that the votes of those damned "goat ropers," as Aquilla reminded us, count as much as mine.

And what is wrong with that? Should yours count more than other's for some reason?

Aquilla brought that up in another thread and I was joking around with him about it.


You probably missed that. As the saying goes scubatim, "I can smell what you stepped in"

The real point was the semi-illiterate substitution of "simular" for "similar."

Oh, and for the record, I'll admit to being one of those "elitists" that Pat Buchanan and others on the right so hate.

Hm, I don't know if this is the same thing as using "ax" instead of "ask," which is common in Black English Vernacular in the US. I am going to assume it is, and offer a bit of an explanation. According to the Oxford English Dictionary online, the Old English form of the verb is "acsian" or "axian", and it was shortened to "ax." This version was used until the 16th century in literary form, and continued to be used in the midland and southern dialects of English. Hence, it has been posited by some linguists that the African versions of "ask" are actually derived from older English dialects, and it was simply not replaced by the standard English "ask."

Aha! That makes sense of it at last! So it's just a relic of older formations, rather than a new thing. And I daresay that in the UK it comes out as "ahks" rather than "ax" because of the habit in British English, especially in the South (where more Afro-Caribbeans live) of lengthening the sound of "a" as a vowel.

Thank you, kimpossible. That's one I can tick off my list

I spend a lot of time in broadcast and TV forums. and it drives me nuts when even professionals refer to a show as having been "broadcasted". The past and future tense of broadcast is broadcast.

Another is "loose" instead of "lose", I even saw a Chyron on last nights NBC evening news spelled that way.

And now we're in pundit (not pundint) season, "concencus of opinion"