"i literally died laughing!"

i'm encouraged by the interest in this thread. let's keep it going..

i was just taking a crap and reading "reason" magazine when i noticed a writer begin a sentence with the phrase "needless to say..." fuck, i hate that.

I literally read the Bible figuratively

Maybe instead of shunning these "misuses", we should welcome them. They are the english language literally evolving. The word "literally" is used as in place of "figuratively" so often today that it's impossible to make the general populace stop using it in that way. Even if they do know they're not using the English language correctly, they don't care; it's a habit.

But then, that's easy for me to say: I'm 14 (had me birthday a few weeks back)

Who, i wuz gittin tired ove talcing dat wayh. dat feelz mucho better.

To me, the severity of a grammatical error is proportional to how much time it makes you furrow your brow in frustration or confusion.

For example, something that nobody except a grammar teacher will even notice, like dangling prepositions (something the English language is greatly inclined towards), barely even count as errors at all

A sentence like "We was at the ballroom" which will make most people stop for a moment and think "wait... that's not right" is a moderate to severe error, depending on context.

The worst errors are those in which the language is so mangled that people can't even understand what you are trying to say.

[Philboid Studge]

i was just taking a crap and ...

Speaking of needless to say!

[Philboid Studge]

I love this joke:

On the first day of school, a kid in high school asks the English teacher, "Where's the bathroom at?"

Teacher says, "Johnny, you mustn't end a sentence with a preposition."

Johnny says, "Okay. Where's the bathroom at, bitch?"

winston churchill once said:

"ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which i will not put."

i love that quote!! the point being, of course, that the "preposition rule" should be abandoned if it makes the language awkward and cumbersome. actually, i read somewhere (dictionary.com, maybe) that the "preposition rule" is actually total bullshit, invented by pretentious english teachers a hundred years ago.

interesting...

Philboid Studge wrote

I love this joke:

On the first day of school, a kid in high school asks the English teacher, "Where's the bathroom at?"

Teacher says, "Johnny, you mustn't end a sentence with a preposition."

Johnny says, "Okay. Where's the bathroom at, bitch?"

when i heard that joke, it was a cowboy and a harvard professor both taking a leak. the cowboy says "where ya from?" and the prof says "i'm from a place where we don't end sentences with a preposition." and the cowboy says "ok, where ya from, asshole?"

but, i must say i like your version better. the social commentary and racial undertones really bring the joke to a new level. :lol:

Philboid Studge wrote

Speaking of needless to say!

hey, at least is topped short of describing the crap.. opting instead to go for a hitchcockesque romp thru your own stinky imagination.

How about this for redundancy?

"Where the ATM machine at?"

My father used to take mailings from school, correct them, and send them back.

St. Teabag wrote

ending a sentance with at is almost always redundent anyway. Let me say again that ity is redundent. There is a redundancy that we do not need. In fact, we could do without it.

could you direct me to the department of redundancy department?.

People on the internet switch around homonyms a lot.

to - too - two
your - you're
there - their - they're

It's almost a good thing that these errors exist, because I can immediately gauge if somebody is a douche. :cool:

Also, in speech, "excetera". WTF? A lot of people who do know how to say it correctly seem to use it a lot and really emphasis the ETcetera, just to show that they know. :o

Not as annoying (or common) is RPMs and the like. Redundancy. :|

Also in speech people say "acrost". WTF? :mad:

Another spoken error is forte. People usually put the emphasis on the second syllable when it belongs on the first, and, furthermore, there is no second syllable. :D

For a lot of science terms that end in "-a" and are made plural by changing them to "-ae", these are to be pronounced "EE", not "A". This one is abused so much I'd say it is correct in some common usages like "vertebrae", but for the most part this rule receives popular misuse. :rolleyes:

Oh, and people that refer to abbreviations as acronyms. WTF? They just don’t know what an acronym is. :P

There are so many more, but I this is all I can think of right now.

Language does, of course, evolve, and it is good that it does. But when words are corrupted that go against their etymology or, worse yet, are in conflict with their original meaning (as in literally) these changes should be seen as injurious to a language and actively avoided. :(

Mispronunciations of foreign words, especially of fairly phonetic languages like Spanish, are hilarious as well. :D

And people that end every paragraph with smileys. I don't even know where to begin with them. :):):)

[Tenspace]

Oh, and people that refer to abbreviations as acronyms. WTF? They just don’t know what an acronym is.

Acronyms are pronounceable, initialisms like WTF aren't. :D:D:D

Ten

My two cents (and my first post here) - the misuse of 'Impact"
Example, a weather man that says "a storm impacted a community"
I do not doubt that the storm had an impact, but "Impacted"? makes it closer to saying the are constipated in that town.