Why do quotes say...

[mayerling]

WROTE BY instead of WRITTEN BY?

The past participle, used in this case in the passive voice, is 'written', not 'wrote'.

 

[JewelFreak]

Oh, gack, I haven't seen that. Illiteracy.

I wonder when "drug" became an accepted past tense for dragged. It used to be a sort of backwoods colloquialism (no, whoever has used it all their lives & is a graduate of Harvard, I'm not talking about you personally). As in, "we drug the carpet to the driveway." Seem to hear it more often than used correctly.

--- Laurie

 

[Jennifer W]

I have been wanting to ask this question all day too. I only just noticed it - is it new? It's irritating.

 

[mayerling]

I have been wanting to ask this question all day too. I only just noticed it - is it new? It's irritating.

I'm not sure how new it is. I noticed it a few days ago and it was annoying, but I thought I could get past it. I was wrong.

 

[Jennifer W]

Aaargh! Don't quote me! LOL.
Nope, I can't get past it either.

 

[Aoife]

It's been driving me crazy for a while. I noticed it last fall, and had this urge to write in a correction every time I use the quote feature.

 

[yiska]

Wow I hadn't noticed that... how embarrassing! I really hope it's a typo and not a genuine mistake.

 

[Circe]

Oh, dear. Oh, dear, oh dear, oh dear.

As I say all too often: this is why we need more English majors.

 

[Missy]

I never noticed this but now that I do it is going to drive me crazy
Now it's all I can see in the quotes! Darn...maybe admin can change this...I hope!

 

[Ella]

We are aware of the problem and it bothers us too. Unfortunately it is a common mistake for non-native speakers, which some of our web developers are. We are working on fixing the problem.

 

[Missy]

Thanks Ella. Sorry to add to your workload.

 

[mayerling]

I was actually surprised to find out (a few years ago) that it's a mistake native speakers make as well. FI and his family hardly ever use the past participle. They'll say things like "they should have WENT", "they should have WROTE", etc. It used to drive me crazy at first, but I got used to it. Also, at first I used to think it was a slip of the tongue; I discovered it wasn't.

 

[Trekkie]

I was actually surprised to find out (a few years ago) that it's a mistake native speakers make as well. FI and his family hardly ever use the past participle. They'll say things like "they should have WENT", "they should have WROTE", etc. It used to drive me crazy at first, but I got used to it. Also, at first I used to think it was a slip of the tongue; I discovered it wasn't.

You think that's bad?

For years I dated a guy who used to say "I hadn't to of went that way" and "I hadn't to of done that".

It drove me up the effing wall!

He was English speaking, or at least, as English speaking as a Cape coloured guy can be. At first I put it down to dialect but eventually I couldn't take it anymore so I dumped him.

Today that's one of the reasons I'll never do drugs again. Drugs = me dating idiots.

 

[mayerling]

I suppose that it's possible to be a native speaker without always using standardised forms, so I guess that's what FI does. Though I've never lived in his area which means it's possible it's a California thing.

 

[Jennifer W]

Before she retired, my mother was a teacher. At the beginning of every class she taught, the kids had to chant "I did, I have done, I went, I have gone, I wrote, I have written....etc" because you hear a lot of Scottish people saying 'I done' or I've went' or 'I've wrote.'

My mother says she chose to retire when she began to want to do the same thing in the staff room each morning.

It's like nails on a blackboard for me, and I blame my mother.

 

[AGBF]

That's just part of the software. I am glad Ella thinks it can be changed, but it's been here forever. Now if we're going to talk about errors made by living people, we can really get a thread going! My favorite for the past ten years or so is the use of the nonexistent word, "snuck".

Since when has anyone, "snuck" anywhere? When people spoke correctly, someone "sneaked".

Deb/AGBF


Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend

 

[MichelleCarmen]

I was actually surprised to find out (a few years ago) that it's a mistake native speakers make as well. FI and his family hardly ever use the past participle. They'll say things like "they should have WENT", "they should have WROTE", etc. It used to drive me crazy at first, but I got used to it. Also, at first I used to think it was a slip of the tongue; I discovered it wasn't.

What is a "past principle?"
What does "colloquialism" mean?
Ahhh, these kinds of posts make me paranoid because they remind me how terrible my grammar is!

One that bugs me is when a person states, "I graduated college," rather than, "I graduated from college." Since my grammer IS so bad, that is the only mess up I recognize, so it irritates me more than other mistakes. I don't even know if there should be commas before those above quotes...but I did graduate FROM college, so maybe that was worth some of the tuition costs.