Planetarion Forums - View Single Post - Grammar/spelling: what really annoys you?

Nodrog · 24 May 2006, 23:40

It annoys me when people complain about grammatical 'rules' which dont matter. Less/fewer is a good example because it makes no difference whatsoever. There is no possible situation in which your meaning would be obscured because you said 'less' instead of 'fewer', so its really just an excuse for people who know a bit more about grammar to feel superior to those who dont. "Who/whom" is another example of this, as is splitting infinitives, not using apostraphes in words like "can't", and the infamous "you and I".

The only time 'rules' matter is when disobeying them actually creates confusion or ambiguity of meaning. Abuse of punctuation is a good example of this as is riteing all ur psts in AOL speek. Prescriptive grammar is generally silly.

24 May 2006, 23:40	#29
Nodrog Registered User Join Date: Jun 2000 Posts: 8,476	Re: Grammar/spelling: what really annoys you? It annoys me when people complain about grammatical 'rules' which dont matter. Less/fewer is a good example because it makes no difference whatsoever. There is no possible situation in which your meaning would be obscured because you said 'less' instead of 'fewer', so its really just an excuse for people who know a bit more about grammar to feel superior to those who dont. "Who/whom" is another example of this, as is splitting infinitives, not using apostraphes in words like "can't", and the infamous "you and I". The only time 'rules' matter is when disobeying them actually creates confusion or ambiguity of meaning. Abuse of punctuation is a good example of this as is riteing all ur psts in AOL speek. Prescriptive grammar is generally silly. Last edited by Nodrog; 24 May 2006 at 23:51.