Wrongly used words - a pet hate

I had a drunken weekend in York once.
Some of our crowd may still be banned from a Chinese restaurant there.
and a chip shop...
and a bar or two...
and a taxi firm...

good weekend

Passed through, for sure. Cotherstone produces a celebrated cheese, I believe.

What is OIC?

Positive. It's a transitive verb.

Suspicious indeed. I watch the BBC news every night too, perhaps that's why I haven't noticed.

They wouldn't sully the Queen's English by randomly redeciding which syllables to emphasize.

No and they seem to be less likely to pick and choose which facts to report than the U.S. news. Plus the actually have reporters in places like Zimbabwe and Myanmar.

Think about what it sounds like.

Oh, I see.

you mean Burma?

Marvellous. My Dad and generations of his family before him hail from Thirsk. A short ride away.

So they were always Thirsky? Explains a lot, Max.

You leave me with little choice here, Lindal.

Cover your left eye with the red card. Now look at the chart. What's the lowest line you can read?...

Unfortunately the one containing that tortured gag you made a couple of posts back

My all-time HUGE pet peeve, living in Texas, is the phrase "I'll have him to call you". Huh? Have him "to" call me? WTF does that mean? Why don't you just have him call me?

And what is this "fixin' to"??

Neighbor: I'm fixin' to go to the store.
Me: You are "going to the store".
Neighbor: That's what I said...I'm fixin' to go to the store.

/me blinks

... And why do certain people assume that punctuation is optional? I don't mean expert skill with the ol' apostrophe, but there's no reason not to use a full stop, period. ...

...Anyway.....the South. It hurts sometimes to listen to people speak down here. I grew up in the northeast.....western Mass to be exact. An area of the country where it is said people have perfect diction. Who knows. I never had any kind of accent. Those Boston accents don't appear until you get to Worcester and points east.
...

Oh chill. It's the AMERICANS that screw up most of the words shown in this thread. I live in Texas. Let's not pick on any particular nationality or group for this. Everyone botches grammar occasionally.

And it's just a fun little thread that actually is educational in the process.

Pet peeve, directed AT English native speakers and writers: misuse of apostrophes...

Tha's a rum do, dew tha's oonly a discussion farum on th' internet, not a blinkin Toimes Editorial, bor! Peop'l doon wanna git a-worryin tew much 'bout ponctiation, do the?

I don't think Dick van Dyke could speak Norfolk!

Thank you. You saved me the time of composing virtually the same post.

I agree with Phil; if English is your native language and you don't know how to spell or form a coherent sentence you do look uneducated or *gasp* stupid. When online I'll often overlook spelling, since I know some folks just don't have the knack for it, but proper punctuation and capitalization actually make what you write easier for others to read. You may be saving yourself (a tiny amount of) time by omitting them, but you're making everyone else work harder to comprehend what you're saying.

American colleges have reported that increasing numbers of freshmen don't even have basic writing skills, and essentially have to attend remedial English courses just to be able to cope with the rest of their courses. Many companies have to send their employees to communication courses these days just so folks can express themselves in an intelligible way in emails. There just isn't any good excuse for this, folks.

You shouldn't be able to graduate from high school if you don't know the difference between a plural and a possessive. That one detail on its own might seem minor- but if you don't understand something so fundamental to the language as that, what else haven't you learned?