One of my pet peeves is how journalists and those who publish the news, no longer consider proof-reading to be important. Rarely does one read an article of news that doesn't have misspellings, repeated words, or words left out, etc.. This takes the cake, however:
Are you talking about "favourite," or am I missing something? Favourite is the British spelling of favorite. It's not a typo. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/favourite Although, I do agree that people have horrible spelling and grammar. Just look at the state's writing scores.
The portion in red seems to be misplaced. The voice of Princess Fiona in the animated Shrek films may have inadvertently offended Peruvians. They suffered decades of violence from a Maoist guerrilla insurgency by touring there on Friday with a bag emblazoned with one of Mao Zedong's favourite political slogans. Reads more correctly as something like this: The voice of Princess Fiona in the animated Shrek films may have inadvertently offended Peruvians by touring there on Friday with a bag emblazoned with one of Mao Zedong's favourite political slogans. They suffered decades of violence from a Maoist guerrilla insurgency
no, i would say that the sentence either has one hell of a dangling participle, or it's missing a substantial portion of two sentences in between. something like: "They suffered decades of violence from a Maoist guerrilla insurgency, and miss diaz insulted them by touring there on Friday with a bag emblazoned with one of Mao Zedong's favourite political slogans." edit: wayne's idea of the line of text being dropped from one line to the next is a good thought, too
I actually read that and didn't notice. I wasn't really concentrating until I read it again- - yea, idiotic.
I agree, it seems like nobody knows any more that an apostrophe in a pronoun always represents missing letters, not possessives. It's means it is, not belonging to it - that would be its. Who's means who is; if you want to say belonging to whom, that would be whose. And that leads me to another common error - whom or who? It's not that complicated. Who is subjective, just like he, she, they. Whom is objective, like him, her, them. Try a little word substitution. Reconstruct the sentence with "he" or "him" and that will tell you whether to use "who" or "whom". There is nothing more annoying to me than reading a post where someone consistently uses "whom" whether the proper word is "who" or "whom". I have more patience with people who always use "who" for some reason, than I do with those who use "whom" when the correct word is "who" - that somehow seems pretentious to me.
2 of my 3 kids are in middle school now. When they were in kindergarten, first and second grade, the 'trend' in 'education' was to allow phonetic spelling (supposedly to encourage them and to help their self-esteem). I was corrected for making my child re-write the words she misspelled. I pointed out that GENUINE self-esteem comes from doing something hard and doing it right. I think part of the problem was that one of her early teachers really, truly could not spell... I sat down each week with the newsletter that came home and pulled out my red pen to correct it... I didn't have the courage to send it in (who knows what kind of retribution my child would've faced if I insulted the teacher)...but it made me feel better (and I still make her rewrite her misspelled words)... Now, the 'educators' see the error of their ways, so they are doing better. I've been told that our middle school kids have just 'fallen through the cracks'...<sigh> Journalism will be REAL messed up ten or so years from now!
For several weeks, WRAL.COM was running a banner ad for a divorce lawyer. It read something like: "Start the end of a MARRAIGE off right". Yep, in pretty graphics and all! I didn't send anything in to correct them, and it stayed like that for at least a week, maybe two. They've corrected it now, though (whether "they" is WRAL or the advertiser, I don't know or care. It's still funny stuff). Another peeve of mine: "prolly" instead of probably. I know some people now use it as a IM abbreviation, but I think that most people that use the word think that's really how it's spelled. Here's a test to try. If you make less than 100%, consult a third-grader. http://www.better-english.com/easier/theyre.htm
One of my biggest pet peeves... Spell check does not equal grammar check! Eye halve a spelling chequer. It came with my pea sea. It plainly marques four my revue, Miss steaks eye kin knot sea. Eye strike a key and type a word, And weight four it two say, Weather eye am wrong oar write, It shows me strait a weigh. As soon as a mist ache is maid, It nose bee fore two long, And eye can put the error rite, Its rare lea ever wrong. Eye have run this poem threw it, I am shore your pleased two no, Its letter perfect awl the weigh, My chequer tolled me sew.
Really cool website. You can go on from there, to other exercises. UGH! Number 17 got on my nerves. IBM is an entity. It is a singular not a plural :? . If that's how they say it in Britian, they're wrong!!! Frogger <had to use my test words, teeheehee>
