Who on earth thought of that word to substitute the perfectly okay ‘holidays’? Instead of people saying that they are off on their holidays now they state that they’re off on their ‘holibobs’.
And it makes me shudder!
Amazeballs is another one.
Amazeballs.
And simples.
Really?
Even thinking of these is making my teeth grind!
We have a beautiful language. We barely use a handful of the words available to us yet we feel the need to dumb it down and create non-words just to try to sound ‘cool’. Except they’re not cool. They’re just stupid.
Like text speak.
Ugh.
Or the need to substitute the word ‘think’ with ‘fink’, ‘maybe’ with ‘mebbe’ or ‘little’ with ‘lil’.
And inserting the word ‘babes’ or ‘hun’ in the middle of it all.
In every. Single. Sentence.
Don’t do it.
And I know for the most part the people who do choose to write this way are far from dumb. In fact, many of them are so frightfully intelligent and they ought to be proud but why oh why do they choose to write such pap as ‘I fink imma gonna go get a lil bit off my hair cut of todaaaay coz dats wot I wanna do innit babes?’ and think that makes them sound… how do they think it makes them sound? Cool? Smart? Fun? You sound stoopid, dammit.
And whilst I’m on the subject:
Who’s – An abbreviation of ‘who is’: Who’s going out this evening?
Whose – To whom something or someone belongs: Whose shoes are these?
Off – Not on: I fell off my chair.
Of – Of something: A piece of pie.
Your – Belonging to you: These are your shoes.
You’re – An abbreviation of ‘you are’: You’re not using the correct word!
There – A place: It’s over there.
Their – Belonging to them: This is their car.
They’re – An abbreviation of ‘they are’: They’re not in the room.
Oh, and one last thing.
If you are going to try to make yourself sound intelligent by inserting the words per se in your sentence please note that the correct spelling is ‘per se’ and not ‘per say’. Likewise when you write the words en route, please do not write ‘on route’. That is incorrect. It reminds me of Del-Boy and mangetout except he makes it funny.
I’d like to say that is all but I could actually go on.
What do you think? Pedantic or proper? Am I alone and simply turning into a grumpy old woman or do I have a point? What grammar crimes bug you?
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I cannot stand it either!! I really hate text talk and the way people put lol in everything….even my 13 year old daughter and 11 year old son know not to text talk me when they send me texts as it really bugs me!
You absolutely DO have a point.
Text speak drives me insane too. I am guilty of doing the “hun” thing a fair bit (though I tend to spell it correctly with “hon” as an abbreviation to “honey” which I don’t think is quite so dreadful though I do take your point… hon :p).
My 8 year old daughter has been back at school for just 3 days, and already we’ve had grammatical slips galore that would have had my English Teacher come Grammar Tyrant Aunty Audrey turning in her grave. The “today I done….” instead of “I did” has me squawking in horror. She didn’t do it the entire summer holiday but just 3 days with her friends and I’ve had to correct her several times.
Another bug-bear of mine is the increasing use of “excited for *insert event* – so “I’m so excited for the weekend”. NO NO NO!! You’re excited ABOUT the weekend (unless the weekend has suddenly become a person). You can be excited FOR a person – “I am excited for my sister who’s wedding it is this weekend”. It drives me loopy.
There are dozens of others that I encounter on a daily basis and I do think that Twitter has to shoulder some of the blame simply because it is so darn hard fitting in a nicely constructed, grammatically correct sentence before you run out of characters
.
I agree. I think the limited amount of space in text messages and Twiter updates has resulted in the dumbing down of our language. Knowing how to use grammar correctly is essential in making ourselves correctly understood.
I must admit I do use text speak sometimes, especially on Twitter. After all its hard to get your point across in 140 characters sometimes.
I have a few “friends” who really bug me with their grammar and spelling and I just want to scream at them and correct them all the time! I also have trouble deciphering their messages. Please speak ENGLISH!!
And like Amy, I am already having to correct the children with the way they talk!