It’s hard not to with a prompt like this: “Misused and/or mispronounced word or words that make you CRAZY.” (Yes, Rachael, I edited-out my typo.)
I came up with this whole challenge idea AND developed the prompts within a span of a few minutes, i.e., I didn’t give any of it an excessive amount of thought beyond, “This could be fun.”
No one is perfect, right? Everyone makes mistakes.
When it comes to words, however, there’s a HUGE difference between a typo and a blatant and/or repeated misuse of a word or phrase. In my opinion.
My next two examples are usually encountered on the job. While I am working, not on every job.
I see that last one misused in myriad situations. Professionally, in books, publications, news broadcasts, etc. I fear it may be going the way of criteria, i.e., adopted even though it is wrong. Simply because that’s how most people use the word.
Just because everyone is doing something doesn’t make it right.
I’m looking forward to reading what fellow BBBs shared.
See how other BBBC 2016 participants
interpreted today’s prompt.
How did the other brave, bold bloggers respond and/or interpret this daily challenge? See for yourself!
- Richard of Richard’s Page
- Rachael (aka Fuzzy) of Fuzzygalore.com
- Steve of Scooter In The Sticks
- Mark of Markneustadt.com
- David of Life on Two Wheels
If there’s no link in the above list, that blogger hadn’t yet posted at the time of my writing. I’ll do an update as soon as I can. You can always use the link to each blogger’s home page in the list provided below.
This Year’s Brave, Bold Bloggers…
Be sure to visit their blogs to see how each interpreted this challenge.
In addition to the common things like they’re/there/their and my irrational hatred of irregardless, the thing that drives me the craziest is “rather then”. NO! It’s rather THAN!
I like french fries rather then vegetables.
Huh? You like french fries and then vegetables? What are you talking about?! I know many supposedly educated people that whip this out. College graduates no less!
Irregardless of your stanse on grammer and speling, I’d like to think your lazy rather then dumb. Hahaha.
LOL, Mark.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say they like one food rather than another. Better than, perhaps, but not rather than. Is that something common to your neck of the woods, perhaps?
I shy away from correcting others because, well, no one enjoys being pilloried. I strive to be respectful, to treat others as I want to be treated. That said: If I may, ToadMama, I’d like to toss in the following.
1. February is pronounced with a ROO, not with a YOU: It’s FebRUary.
2. “I could care less!” Oh, so you DO give a damn? Because if you really don’t care, then you couldN’T care less.
3. A fairly recent trend, especially—surprisingly—from thoughtful media sources is “everyone isn’t…” constructions when “not everyone is…” constructions are obviously what’s needed: “Everyone isn’t a bigot.” “Everyone isn’t racist.” Such constructions suggest that no one now is ever a bigot and that no one now is ever racist, and well, with this political season well-underway, we know that ain’t* true. Correct constructions would be “not everyone is a bigot” and “not everyone is racist”, indicating clearly that though bigots and racists exist, not all of us can be categorized so, and—therefore—hope exists for the human race.
4. Possessive / plural / contraction confusion, such as “its” and “it’s”.
5. Then vs. than.
6. Prostrate vs. prostate. Um, they’re different, though one could construct a coherent sentence that employs both.
7. I’d bitch about the “nucular” family, but that’s old news, an age-old complaint.
I’ve said my piece, and now I wish I’d commented anonymously or at least pseudonymously (assuming that “Ry Austin” is not already an example of the latter 😉 ) because I’m certain that what I’ve written here is just rife with flaws and misusages, and surely the voice in my head mispronounced one thing or another during composition.
*Yeah, I know, ain’t ain’t a word, and you ain’t supposed to use it. But ain’t can add just the right color to a phrase (it also ain’t very kosher to begin sentences with conjunctions).
Ry, I don’t correct people either. Especially if it’s in a public venue. And, sadly, most people who use certain words incorrectly will keep right on using them. Not everyone cares about speech and language. I do, every now and then, forget and let “I could care less” slip. But I regret it immediately afterward.
The whole its and it’s thing makes me crazy, too. But even I slip on that one sometimes. Not because I don’t know better, but because I am in a rush, being careless, and/or using my stupid phone.
PROSTRATE. I forgot that one. My Dad had prostate cancer several years back, and he will forever say “prostrate.” There’s just no convincing him otherwise. He’s sort of like Sipowicz on NYPD Blue with that one.
It’s amazing how many people can’t say nuclear. Or, to give Fuzzy some credit, won’t.
Nothing like a rant about word use to make you paranoid that you’ve screwed up! LOL.
And I start sentences with conjunctions often. Not because it’s correct formal writing, because I typically use conversational writing, especially here on my blog, which has slightly different, loser rules. Ain’t that right?
Fuzzy may read that previous paragraph and call me a “looser,” but at least I crack myself up. ’nuff said.
I sure hope that I didn’t come across all ass-y. I’m regularly terrified at that possibility. Really, I’m much more laid-back than I might seem from some of my comments. I’d hate to be regarded as ass-y Ry just making another ass-y comment. 🙂
Words are simultaneously captivating and confounding; and using them to communicate, innately risky: By nature, they’re all variables. Not only do we have to navigate abstract nouns, which–essentially–are indefinable, but we each inevitably have different relationships with the same word.
For example: Though you, Fuzzy, Mark, and I might generally agree on a meaning for “beautiful”, specifically we’re all speaking different languages because we’ve each had different experiences with “beautiful”. Or (conjunction), if not different languages, different dialects at least.
Yet (another conjunction, but for some reason more acceptable than “but” as a first word) language remains alluring, continues to attract our attentions and command our efforts. Hell, it’s a wonder we’re able to communicate at all.
WORDS:
“There is no gift for words: there is the love for words, which is a need, an emptiness, a suffering, an uneasy attention one pays to them because they seem to hold the secret of life.”
from On Being a Writer by Jean-Paul Sartre
“There were words they had never heard before, but there is something more than exact meaning in words. Words have a life of their own. They have relations to each other. Words are building stones with which dreams may be built.”
paraphrased from Beyond Desire by Sherwood Anderson
“I have always been a plodder, a person who anguishes and struggles over each sentence, and even on my best days I do no more than inch along, crawling on my belly like a man lost in the desert. The smallest word is surrounded by acres of silence for me, and even after I manage to get that word down on the page, it seems to sit there like a mirage, a speck of doubt glimmering in the sand. Language has never been easily accessible to me. I’m shut off from my own thoughts, trapped in a no-man’s-land between feeling and articulation, and no matter how hard I try to express myself, I can rarely come up with more than a confused stammer. Words and things for me are constantly breaking apart, flying off in a hundred different directions. I spend most of my time picking up the pieces and gluing them back together, stumbling around, hunting through garbage dumps and trash bins, wondering if I’ve fit the wrong pieces next to each other.”
a paraphrased piece of Peter Aaron’s writing from Leviathan by Paul Auster
You didn’t come off assy at all. I enjoyed the Leviathan piece.
oh, dear. I… am just going to keep my trap shut here. I are have grammer probalems all of em times 😆
okay, maybe just one… “lose” vs. “loose”
:-p
Tap, tap, tap, tap…
Pretty soon Apple will start to auto correct grammar. Maybe I should start using Siri to write. Then I could always shift the blame for bad spelling and grammar.
That’s a scary thought!
Omg YES to all of this, even all the comments…and especially: “Just because everyone is doing something doesn’t make it right.”