Verbing nouns

[distracts]

I verb and adjectivise everything. It's because I am a youngun and watched too much Buffy growing up.

 

[ksinger]

Misused words that make my teeth itch:

DisorienTAted, instead of disoriented.

Insure vs. ensure.
Insure is the business of insurance ... I insure my car.
Ensure is to make something certain ... I drive Jonny to school to ensure he gets there.
This mistake is so common I even see it on professional published articles.

Your vs. you're.
Your is about what belongs to you ... Is this your coat?
You're is short for "you are" ... If you don't hurry you're going to be late.


Than vs. then.
Then is about time ... I arrived first, then Jane showed up.
Than is about comparing things ... I'm taller than John.

I confess I am not capable of getting lain, lay, laid etc. right.
I gave up on those.

Well, I hate to break it to you, but disorienTAted is perfectly acceptable British English. I confess it grates on my ears too, but if you put yourself in their shoes for a moment you would think hearing the American "disoriented" probably makes their ears bleed in return.

Your vs you're only bothers me if I know the person's writing well enough to know that misuse of one or the other stems from what is obviously a mental error, or if it is a simple typo. I find it an easy typo to make, especially if I'm typing quickly. I generally try to proof one last time before I post and I generally find one or two of the your/you're errors in my typing that need correction, and I promise you, I do know the difference quite well. But occasionally one will slip through and I am constantly annoyed by my own lazy typing. But then my typing has been getting worse for any number of reasons in recent years.

The lay/lie thing is one of MY pet peeves. You lay something on a table, you do NOT "lay down" for a nap. You LIE down for a nap.

This is still a go-to site for me and has been for over 10 years. All the goodness of the site is also available in book form. Whatever your pet peeve is, it's almost certainly there. Lay/lie/lain/laid is there....

Paul Brian's Common Errors In English Usage
http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html

 

[kenny]

Ksinger thanks for that great link.
I'm going to bookmark it!

 

[Dancing Fire]

Worse vs worst?..

 

[Snowdrop13]

Uuurgh I hate ALL these things. Got really upset during the Olympics where "to medal" suddenly came into active use regularly, yuck.

Also don't like " should of" in place of "should have".........

"He was sat" appears to be acceptable even on our BBC news bulletins, horrible.

(I am getting old BTW, said "in my day" to someone at work recently even to my own horror....)

 

[ksinger]

Misused words that make my teeth itch:

DisorienTAted, instead of disoriented.

Insure vs. ensure.
Insure is the business of insurance ... I insure my car.
Ensure is to make something certain ... I drive Jonny to school to ensure he gets there.
This mistake is so common I even see it on professional published articles.

Your vs. you're.
Your is about what belongs to you ... Is this your coat?
You're is short for "you are" ... If you don't hurry you're going to be late.


Than vs. then.
Then is about time ... I arrived first, then Jane showed up.
Than is about comparing things ... I'm taller than John.

I confess I am not capable of getting lain, lay, laid etc. right.
I gave up on those.

Seriously Kenny, I'm concerned for your state of mind and health! They have advice books and instructional films to help these problems! Don't go through life in this sorry state, please!

 

[kenny]

LOL.

Usually I notice double meanings ... but not this time.
You got me.

 

[Trekkie]

Uuurgh I hate ALL these things. Got really upset during the Olympics where "to medal" suddenly came into active use regularly, yuck.

Also don't like " should of" in place of "should have".........

"He was sat" appears to be acceptable even on our BBC news bulletins, horrible.

(I am getting old BTW, said "in my day" to someone at work recently even to my own horror....)

I once dated a guy who used to say, "I hadn't to of gone that way"

WTF was I thinking?! Needless to say it did not last very long!

 

[ksinger]

Uuurgh I hate ALL these things. Got really upset during the Olympics where "to medal" suddenly came into active use regularly, yuck.

Also don't like " should of" in place of "should have".........

"He was sat" appears to be acceptable even on our BBC news bulletins, horrible.

(I am getting old BTW, said "in my day" to someone at work recently even to my own horror....)

I once dated a guy who used to say, "I hadn't to of gone that way"

WTF was I thinking?! Needless to say it did not last very long!

Well, I can't speak to where you are, but around these heer pahrts (twangy diph-and-triphthong-ish Oklahoma), "should have" (the spoken version) sounds exactly like "should of" or even "should-uh". So I suspect you're grousing about the way people often write it? Yeah, that would annoy me too.

 

[JewelFreak]

I verb and adjectivise everything. It's because I am a youngun and watched too much Buffy growing up.

I LOVED Buffy!

Another thing that makes my head ache: regularizing irregular past tenses. E.G., shined for shone (his flashlight shined in the dark); wreaked for wrought (the bad weather wreaked disaster). It sounds like baby talk!

--- Laurie