Merged spelling/grammar threads

[Bleys]

Its and it's bugs me, and so do the whingers. I don't quite know what whinging is....

From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) :

Whinge \Whinge\, v. i.
To whine. [Scot.] --Burns.

 

[Dinkeldog]

tact vs. tack

 

[Morrus]

Mine is "I could care less". No, the correct phrase is "I couldn't care less". If you think about what you're actually saying, you'll see why the latter is correct.

But it isn't the fact that you can work it out if you think about it; it's the fact that it is a well-known and popular phrase in the English language, used so often (and for so long) that you really should have heard it enough times by now to get it right. "I could care less" just sounds stupid, to me, as opposed to "its/it's", a mistake I can understand.

 

[Umbran]

Mine is "I could care less"

I understand your grief here. But there's one major plausible reason why we say it the way we do. There's some reason to believe that the phrasehas been contracted from, "As if I could care less?" As a whole sentence, we don't use it properly, but as a sentence fragment it might make more sense.

 

[Morrus]

I understand your grief here. But there's one major plausible reason why we say it the way we do. There's some reason to believe that the phrasehas been contracted from, "As if I could care less?" As a whole sentence, we don't use it properly, but as a sentence fragment it might make more sense.

But that makes no more sense! "As if I could care less?" is just as nonsensical as "I could care less".

Also, even if it did make sense, it seems a bit like an "explanation after the fact" to me. If "I couldn't care less" didn't exist, I might be convinced, but to me it seems much more likely that people are getting it wrong, and that the wrong version seems to be spreading and gaining popularity.

 

[Buttercup]

My peeve is the disappearing past participle. As in, "I have went." What? It's I have gone. I've seen this in actual published D20 products, and it bugs the hell out of me.

Past participles are vanishing all over the place, but the went/gone mixup is the one that irritates me most.

 

[Morrus]

My peeve is the disappearing past participle. As in, "I have went." What? It's I have gone. I've seen this in actual published D20 products, and it bugs the hell out of me.

I can't say that I've ever seen anything like that, but if I did I imagine it would irritate me immensely!

 

[Piratecat]

Re: [OT, grammar] sputter... gah... ARRRGH!

For the love of all that is holy, and for my beloved mother tongue, English, please, please, please learn and love the differences in these words and use them properly! Homophones are our friends!

Felix is right. We don't discriminate against homophones here. Honest.

 

[Ravellion]

Its and it's bugs me, and so do the whingers. I don't quite know what whinging is....

Don't whinge just because your English isn't the Queen's English. It is pronounced differently than 'whine', it is spelled differently, but it pretty much means the same thing.

Rav

 

[Teflon Billy]

...For the sake of completeness, I'd like to add "for all intensive purposes" to the list...

Thank you! I was about to post this one, but thought I would read the thread first and see if anyone had beaten me to it.

it's INTENTS AND PURPOSES you halfwits! Not "Intensive Purposes".

*whew*