Or, more probably, just rant to you, because I know that most of my glorious friends and readers would never make such silly mistakes. I should say before this starts that this post was inspired by Hank Green in this video here entitled Stop Embarrassing Yourself. I will address some of the things he did, and also some additional pet peeves of mine. Let's begin!
Affect and effect. Stop saying "The difference between them is that affect is a verb and effect is a noun." Because that will just confuse people and they still won't know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help them god. They can BOTH be verbs and they can BOTH be nouns. To "effect" (verb) something means to bring it about. Something's "affect" (noun) is how that thing expresses itself. For example: That dude has a strange affect because he consistently talks to himself.
Punctuation goes inside quotations. It just does (most of the time). We are not in the UK, so let's stop punctuating our quotes like we are. Here is the exception: If you are asking someone a question about a common saying. For example: Have you ever heard the saying "All's well that ends well"? All other question marks go inside the quotations. For example: Did Mary say, "I'll go with you?"
Semicolons are not commas. Or periods. They are semicolons, goddammit, and it probably hurts their feelings that you lump them in with other punctuation marks! Use them in these two instances: when you are using a conjunctive adverb AKA a bumped up version of a coordinating conjunction ish (like however, therefore, moreover, etc.) and when you are writing two sentences that are SO related that they simply cannot be separated by a period. Bottom line: the part that comes after the semicolon must always always ALWAYS be a full sentence. No fragments here, folks. Subject, verb, predicate. Do it.
There is a difference between i.e. and e.g. E.g. means "exempli gratia," and you use it when you are giving an example. So: She has many kinds of shirts, e.g. button downs. I.e. means "in essence," so use it when you are clarifying something. Think of it as being able to be replaced by "that is." So: That shirt is a poopy-looking color, i.e. it is brown.
And just some general word misuse, and I misuse these too simply because it's so common, but just figure I'd share... The word "over" cannot replace "more than." Saying, "The stadium can hold over 40,000 people" doesn't make sense. Over is a preposition used to mean above. That's it. The word "hopefully" doesn't mean "I hope." It means "in a hopeful manner." So saying, "Hopefully I'll get into a good college" doesn't make sense either. What you mean to say is, "It is hoped that I will get into a good college." But that's awkward sounding, so we don't say it. "Further" is used for things that are immeasurable, and "farther" is used for measurable distances. "Fewer" is used when you can count whatever it is you're talking about, "less" is for things that cannot be counted.
I think that's it...I'm not even going to get into the whole "its it's" or "their they're there" dilemmas, because that's so middle school it's not even forgivable. Good....hope you enjoyed this. It just makes me so angry that I have to express it!!!
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