<p>Hayden – What I can’t stand is finger-quotes.</p>
<p>I was prompted to post in this thread after reading some other threads here on CC where I repeatedly see the words below misused (the ‘breaks’ one I see a lot in automotive blogs/forums). </p>
<p>“There”, “Their”, and “They’re”. It seems that very few people use these words correctly anymore. </p>
<p>“Loose” in place of “lose”. I see this one all the time and I’m convinced most people simply have no idea how to spell “lose”.</p>
<p>“Breaks” in place of “brakes”. Another one that so many people have no idea of. </p>
<p>People seem to have become very lazy regarding spelling with the advent of email and texting. It doesn’t help that so many school systems went to a ‘whole language’ model where proper spelling and grammar are considered insignificant.</p>
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<p>I’ve seen “greatful” used more than once I’m sorry to say.</p>
<p>My homeowners association newsletter mentioned losing money on something and called it a “right-off”. I wonder who “rote” that. (sorry, I couldn’t resist :))</p>
<p>I’m not quite ready to give up on principle/principal but I’ve now discovered that lots of people seem to use hangars in their closets. May that’s where they park their parkas? :(</p>
<p>I blame spell-checkers. They give you a suggestion but no help on deciding if it is the right one.</p>
<p>My mother in law complains of “constipation on the windows” caused by “humistidy” in her “condomium”.</p>
<p>Come on, violadad, you made that one up! </p>
<p>But speaking of medical malapropisms… one making the rounds is “fireballs of the eucharist”. I’ll leave it to you clever types to figure out what they really mean (it’s a female problem).</p>
<p>And as for excessive use of quotation marks— what’s with all those hand written store signs with them, especially in my local produce mart: “Plums”, “Tomatoes”, etc.</p>
<p>Fireballs of the eucharist = comets of communion?</p>
<p>I can’t figure it out…</p>
<p>I’ve got fibrosis (do sufferers feel that that they have fireballs?) but eucharist? What on earth is that?</p>
<p>I couldn’t figure out the fireballs, but assume Eucharist* is uterus.</p>
<p><em>spell-check</em>* insists I capitalize this.</p>
<p>**apparently this needs a dash or two words, I disagree!</p>
<p>mousegray, you don’t my wife’s mother. Besides, I’m not so cunning a linquist to have so phrased it. </p>
<p>As for fireballs of the eucharist, that and other arcane maladies are explained here [SALON</a> Departments: Verbivore](<a href=“http://www.salon.com/06/departments/verb.html]SALON”>http://www.salon.com/06/departments/verb.html)</p>
<p>I won’t have guessed it in a thousand years, but it makes sense when seeing the explanation.</p>
<p>violadad: yes, we should have. Maybe “fireballs of the Eucharist” was coined by somebody who thinks that Virgil was a virgin. It has that quasi-religious connotation.
Malapropisms and spoonerisms are a whole other, and apparently bottomless, category of verbal gaffes.</p>
<p>Mousegray – Because they aren’t really tomatoes, plums, etc., but an attempt by aliens to fool us into taking their eggs home with us. We leave them in the vegetable drawer until they are too disgusting to eat and then…ah-ha!..they are released into the wild.</p>
<p>Or something like that.</p>
<p>It also bothers me when people can’t seem to write without inserting something in parenthesis. I don’t mind it occasionally, but some people do it almost every sentence. (they should just write it in a new sentence.)</p>
<p>^^^ Isn’t it supposed to be parentheses (there are 2- so the word is plural)
:D</p>
<p>I am usually nervous about posting in threads like these. I may have been an English major, but I studied Old and Middle English grammar, not modern! Actually, being an English major doesn’t teach you much about the language. That’s what Linguistics is for.</p>
<p>I will admit I am one of those unfortunate souls driven to notify someone when something is off. My mother is, too. We got a kick out of finding someone in produce to explain why “Banana’s” wasn’t really helping. I also avoid the “15 items or less” line out of sheer grammatical peevishness. :)</p>
<p>I also avoid businesses whose advertisements include some egregious error or another. Usually it’s the apostrophe thing. Sometimes it’s the quotation marks. </p>
<p>On that note, y’all might be interested in The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks or Cake Wrecks.</p>
<p>Here is a list our organization’s media guru circulated during a recent presentation:</p>
<p>The Ten Rules of Good Writing’</p>
<ol>
<li>Don’t use no double negatives.</li>
<li>Make sure verbs agrees with subjects.</li>
<li>Computer spell-check won’t ketch all errors.</li>
<li>Use apostrophe’s correctly.</li>
<li>About them sentence fragments.</li>
<li>Avoid cliches like the plague.</li>
<li>Be more or less specific.</li>
<li>Don’t use commas, that are not necessary.</li>
<li>Be careful to use the write homonym.</li>
<li>Proofread you writing.</li>
</ol>
<p>^^Priceless!!</p>
<p>Yep, it’s “fibroids of the uterus”.</p>
<p>And I’m definitely guilty of the parenthetical thought and will avoid in the future (if I remember).</p>
<p>As for quotation marks and produce, Novelisto, you have quite the imagination! You’re not entirely off though—most of the signs are written by non-native English speakers, so maybe it’s a reference to newly learned words.</p>