Words, Phrases, and Misspellings We Hate

[Weather Report]

And let's get rid of those unnecessary silent Gs, Ks, Ms, and that PH garbage.

Kan you now grab a nife, sit down, and play a nome filanthropist properly.

 

[Gilladian]

Spelling mistakes drive me bonkers, but that's mostly a pet peeve - I realize that most of them are typos and I forgive them. What I hate is when people use the wrong word and don't EVER realize it.

Led is the past tense of the verb "lead". Lead is a metal, and doesn't go anywhere. Lose/loose is another one. I've seen people use them in exactly the opposite meaning.

But the mistake I see all the time that drives me really bonkers, because it causes actual problems, is in the writing of instructions. People will MEAN to say "do this, not that", with long explanations of how to do/not do things. And then they leave the word NOT out of the sentence. I see this DAILY, both here and on the jewelry/craft forums where I hang out a lot. Please people, when you're giving instructions that can cause someone to waste a huge hunk of very expensive silver wire, reread your instructions! Just once!

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

(snip) My second one is the notorious 'rouge.' Every time I see it in the context of a D&D discussion, I wonder how gamers can see 'rogue' printed a zillion times in their game books and still misspell it. (snip)

I actually advocate, without a hint of irony, that anyone who uses rouge instead of rogue should be banned from ENWorld. It's just such a silly mistake.

Another that just popped up in my mind -- "could of" instead of "could've" or "could have." Common speech and internet communications are full of malapropisms and mondegreens like this, though.

Funnily enough, my Facebook friends who enjoy this particular malapropism are also the ones who can't use an apostrophe (see next quote) or think that literally means figuratively. It's like they're monolingual in their second or third language.

It's. As a possessive.

My blood pressure is rising just thinking about it.

Even worse, what about when an apostrophe is used before the letter S to create a plural? Arghhh....

Finally, parley and parlay. The WotC writers only recently got this one right in the past couple of months. Clearly they had been conditioned by the actors on The Wire to think that parley was spelt parlay because that's how it's pronounced on The Wire.

Generally speaking, these sorts of things don't bother me too much except when they appear in a book I have paid for. In the days of d20 glut, one of the early signifiers that a product was going to suck was finding superfluous apostrophes on the first couple of pages.

 

[Asmo]

Savage Wombat wagered in the gish thread that if I started a thread about my grammatical pet peeves, I'd get plenty of sympathy hate. So I am.

My first one is a recent development: character option 'bloat.' I'm sorry, but bloat is a female problem. Options are icing on the game cake!

My second one is the notorious 'rouge.' Every time I see it in the context of a D&D discussion, I wonder how gamers can see 'rogue' printed a zillion times in their game books and still misspell it. But I try not to get all grammar nazi about it, because it's also a testament to how asinine the English language is.

'Rogue' is an exception to a completely unnecessary exception. Normally G makes its own sound; except when it's followed by an E, in which case it makes the J sound. (Talk about violation of niche protection! And some of us complain when one character class or other inches into the precious personal space of another. G and its minion E outright beat J up, and take its place whenever they please!) But wait! When U gets between G and E, G has to stick to its own sound. So we end up with a five letter word with one vowel too many, because English can't be bothered to keep its grammar any saner than the 3.0 Epic Level Handbook.

Actually, it's no wonder that so many gamers misspell rouge. Er, rogue.

My third one isn't D&D specific, but it comes up plenty in D&D: redundant letters, mid-word apostrophes, and ambiguous vowels. Examples include Drizzt Do'Urden, Baatezu, and Tanar'ri. Basically, too many writers of fantasy fiction think that turning English's schizophrenic nature up to 11 makes their fiction more exotic-sounding and imaginative; but I'm tired of it. It doesn't sound cool anymore, it just takes me out of the fiction when a part of my brain gets sidetracked trying to decide how best to mentally pronounce things.

When I first got my Planescape boxed CS, I thought the weird fiendish nomenclature was neat and gave the D&D multiverse a unique air. But after years of being inundated with equally bizarre names, and learning why 2e didn't leave well enough alone with 'demons' and 'devils,' I've switched to the latter.

My fourth and fifth aren't game-related at all, but are nevertheless worthy of discussion:

'I could care less.' No, I don't think that doesn't mean what you think it means; I know it doesn't mean what you think it means. Who's with me?

'A near miss.' Ever since I was introduced the hilarity that is George Carlin, it's bugged me every time I hear this. Although Umbran suggested the possible 'miss that nearly hit' origin of the phrase, which I guess I can dig.

What are yours?

"Here, here"!

 

[MoxieFu]

Then and Than are not interchangeable words.

Also people very often use the word Ambivalent when they mean Indifferent. Those two words are not synonyms.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

"Here, here"!

Where?

 

[jonesy]

Also people very often use the word Ambivalent when they mean Indifferent. Those two words are not synonyms.

In a way they could be, if you consider them both neutral states of mind. In the first you're not sure which way you feel about something and in the second you just don't care.

 

[Henry]

Another just occurred to me tonight while skimming a reality TV show:

"Take it to the next level." I am developing an irrational dislike of this vapid, essentially meaningless phrase that people overuse because they think it makes them sound both trendy and "professional." UGH! I've seen its popularity rise in the past ten years, and I hope it leaves public usage soon.

However, in an RPG context, it's perfectly fine.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Finally, parley and parlay. The WotC writers only recently got this one right in the past couple of months. Clearly they had been conditioned by the actors on The Wire to think that parley was spelt parlay because that's how it's pronounced on The Wire.

I have to admit that until this thread, I thought that 'parlay' was just the way that Jack Sparrow says it.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Another just occurred to me tonight while skimming a reality TV show:

"Take it to the next level." I am developing an irrational dislike of this vapid, essentially meaningless phrase that people overuse because they think it makes them sound both trendy and "professional." UGH! I've seen its popularity rise in the past ten years, and I hope it leaves public usage soon.

Oooh, good one.

I'm not a fan of any trend-lines, particularly 'In it to win it!'