<p>They, their, and them are NOT gender-neutral substitutes for he, she, his, her, or him. </p>
<p>“Could of” instead of “could have”</p>
<p>Using “I” when “me” is correct. People do this to sound polite and educated. Fail.</p>
<p>It sets my teeth on edge when a server comes up to a party of women or which contains women and say ‘what do you guys want?’ or some variant thereof. I’m afraid this is now a ‘gender neutral’ word.</p>
<p>Saying “her” or “him” when “she” or “he” is correct. I have seen very well “educated” people do this. argh!</p>
<p>I like “hypocracy.”</p>
<p>As in: “Alaska was a hypocracy until yesterday, when Palin retired.”</p>
<p>Kei</p>
<p>Are Strunk and White still living? There’s certainly fodder for a new book here.
They could have some real renumeration today. </p>
<p>It would even help if a few people read the old one. :)</p>
<p>We could also use a modernday Norm Crosby.</p>
<p>One I’ve seen lately that surprised me is “duel” when “dual” is meant. It cracks me up when people are talking about the sport of track and write “duel meet.” It makes me imagine two officals pulling out their starting pistols and shooting at each other from 100 meters away.</p>
<p>Our business manager circulated a memo to my department, asking “Please bare with us . . .” Uh, no thanks.</p>
<p>I’m surprised no one has mentioned this:</p>
<p>It seems like a majority of people seem to think that tongue is spelled tounge.</p>
<p>I go to THE hospital, graduated from THE university… I’m an American, skipping the word “the” is Canadian and British usage as far as I can tell and sounds wrong to my ears. There is probably some usage rule about general and specific places- a university and a hospital are specific places, church and college are conceptual, not referring to an actual building or place. Idioms can make incorrect grammar acceptable usage.</p>
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<p>I’ve actually seen “turned up missing”. </p>
<p>this is not a misspelling but it is definitely a bee in MY bonnet: Any sentence that starts with, “To be honest…”, or “To be frank…”, or “To be perfectly honest…”
If someone needs to stress how honest they are being, then you can bet that it’s a rare occurance!</p>
<p>And once again, people— it’s “Hear, hear”.</p>
<p>I have to admit that I used to think the phrase was “for all intensive purposes.”</p>
<p>Oh Pizzagirl! Say it isn’t so!</p>
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Hear, hear!<br>
On that note, it also grates on my nerves when people say “I graduated high school in 1985”. Shouldn’t it read "I graduated FROM high school?</p>
<p>I insist that my local newspaper can’t get the prespositions “in” or “at” correctly. Now I could be wrong but I was born IN Sacramento California - as opposed to “I was born AT Sacramento, California”.
But then, I was not an English major.</p>
<p>It bothers me when people use “myself” instead of “I” or “me” trying to sound intelligent.</p>
<p>Who, moi? :)</p>
<p>I hate when people use fancy French phrases, as if they were born in France or something :-).</p>
<p>mousegray–your comment about people using the phrases “to be honest” or “to be frank” reminded me of the line “The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.” Apparently it’s Ralph Waldo Emerson–I had always thought it was Mark Twain.</p>
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<p>Aren’t all elective officials required to take the hypocritcal oath?</p>
<p>How about “Personally, I feel/think…” What other way is there? Impersonally?</p>
<p>Beware! 
I have found a definition for hypocracy: it means “not enough rules and regulations; too little government.”
hypo=under, below normal (as in hypothermia) and cracy=rules, government (as in autocracy).
So…hypocrats are those who advocate and/or practice too little government.:)</p>
<p>Thus are neologisms coined.</p>