I Hate That

Tuesday, January 6, 2009
I have very few pet peeves. I consider myself to be a fairly tolerant person and can deal with just about anyone's idiosyncrasies and annoyances. But there are a few things that COMPLETELY annoy me to the point of cringing.

Spelling
I'd never win a spelling bee. Come on, have you heard the words those kids are required to spell? Impossible. But spelling is definitely one of my strong points. I can correctly spell all commonly spoken words and plenty that are not. BUT (notice all caps) I cannot tolerate misspellings. Typos are one thing, but flat out misspelled words in a professional (and sometimes personal) setting are inexcusable. Some common ones that I've seen are separate and accommodate. For some reason, most people like to spell separate or separation with two e's, seperate. It doesn't even look right. One way to remember is that it's root is from the Latin word para (can't remember what it means but it's easy to see that there are two a's there). Accommodate is easy...two c's, two m's. Period.

For a list of commonly missspelled words and tips to remember the correct spellings, click here.

Grammar
I don't even know where to start here. There are way too many to write so I'll choose the absolute one that bothers me most. It eats me up inside when someone says, "I should have went" (to the store, etc). I hear this at least five times per day, sometimes from people to whom I am speaking directly and other times from overhearing a conversation. Either way, it drives me mad. The correct way to state this is "I should have GONE...". So, if you say this, please don't say it to me.

1 comment

Anonymous said...

One good way to remember how to spell separate...is that there is 'a rat' in 'sep-arat-e'