Why not have a list of common mistakes in written English for people to refer to instead of having to correct them all the time?
I'll start it off:

THEIR: (possessive) e.g. THEIR children
THERE: (place) e.g. It's over THERE
THEY'RE: (abbreviation) e.g. THEY'RE going home=THEY ARE going home

YOUR: (possessive) e.g. YOUR car
YOU'RE: (abbreviation) e.g. YOU'RE late=YOU ARE late

TOO: =also/as well e.g. I'm tired TOO
TO: (place) e.g. I'm going TO work
TWO: =2


So add all your pet grammar peeves (English ones would be best but you can add rules for other languages if you like) :)

"Ya'll"
Ew.

Comma splices are the bane of my existence.

TEH THE

How the f**k can you possible manage to mangle a word with only three f**king letters in it?!

You beat me to it. That one really bugs me.

A simple guide to the use of the apostrophe.

It can get a bit confusing as it indicates possession or it can denote an abbreviation.

There are some words that can either have a possessive meaning or be an abbreviation. It's not uncommon for these to be confused.

In all of these cases though, abbreviation gets the apostrophe.

ITS means belonging to it
IT'S is an abbreviation of it is

WHOSE means belonging to whom
WHO'S means who is

Etcetera.

(Which, incidentally, is only ever abbreviated to etc, never ect. ECT is an abbreviation of Electro-Convulsive Therapy, which is something quite different).

I don't think we have any street vendors of fruit and veg here, so the last part is probably unnecessary, but it is worth saying that the apostrophe is never used before an s to indicate plurality.

There is one banana.
There are two bananas.
This skin is the banana's.

Not
Six banana's for 2.

I'm guilty of this quite frequently, not out of ignorance but out of trying to type to fast and not checking what I've typed properly.

My pet grammar hate is people not using capital letters properly for example. I have no idea why it bothers me so much.

In relation to Doggylive's confession, I just went looking for an auto-correct plug-in for Firefox.

There isn't one, but it got me thinking.

If I can just bend this thread slightly off course for a moment, what do people feel about spell-checkers and auto-correction in terms of general levels of spelling accuracy?

For me, I think it's a help. As I'm sure most of you know by now I'm dyslexic. One of the effects of this is that even if I know the correct spelling of a word (and usually I do) I may persistently spell it wrongly as a result of whatever synaptic mechanism is misfiring.

When I see the underlining to indicate a spelling mistake I then manually try to correct it so that the line goes away instead of asking the computer to suggest a spelling to me.

Eventually this results in me correcting my perception of the spelling and I stop making the mistake.

I think they're good and bad. Mainly because when I'm writing I do make some mistakes which it will correct me on, but there are times when I spell things a certain way it will automatically change it on me even though the way I had it was correct. For the life of me I cannot figure out how to make it stop!

I think spell checks are good as long as they don't make you lazy. There's always the temptation to not try to spell correctly as you know the spell check will pick it up.

I've got a spell checker add-on and it doesn't pick up certain words like viking for instance, it underlines it but when I right-click to find out why it's spelt wrong, viking isn't even there, just words like, liking, diking, miking, piking and hiking. Strange.

Is that in MS Word?

I'm going from memory here, but in versions 2003 and lower you go to Tools -> Autocorrect.

You should then have a list of words that it will automatically alter and you can edit this list - add or remove words to suit you and your typing style.

If you have 2007, then your best bet is to sacrifice a goat to which ever god you worship and ask for intercession (or click the Windows logo, go to Word Options and then have a poke around - like so much of 2007, "it's in there somewhere").

Try United States English Dictionary 2.0.0.6


EDIT: If you have an older version of WORD, try this ->

Trashcan gets reject by the spell checker because it wants to use Trash can.

Trash can gets rejected by the grammar checker because it thinks it is trashcan.

They fixed this in 2007 (maybe even 2003). You can fix it by addin trashcan to the custom dictionary)

I know. It is spell "Y'all". Duh! Also, nobody uses it correctly.

Y'all = single person whose is not important enough to name.

All Y'all = a group of such folks.

It's bane. Come on, haven't you read Batman comics?

Here comes my rant: If you're going to talk about spelling, may I correct you that it is spellED y'all. Secondly, I didn't know there was a primer on usage; it's not taught but it is learned. Third, I have never heard y'all used to refer to a single person, only to a group.

*relaxing a little* Besides, it's a friendly thing, not a rigid one.

Actually, I haven't. But I'll fix it.

Ah, I've been thinking of starting this thread myself. One that I see EVERYWHERE recently is "should of" or "would of" It's SHOULD HAVE OR WOULD HAVE!!!! Of course, this comes from imbeciles hearing the spoken contractions should've and would've (pronounced most often as shood uf and wood uf) and then typing what they hear. I don't know why, but this one makes me want to reach through the computer and choke someone. A moment's thought would tell you it's wrong.

"Did she empty the dishwasher"?
"She should've" (She should have)
"She should of" (?????)

I dont see what your so upset about. If your trying to make a point be a bit nicer with out so many caps. People make a lot of mistakes with there grammer, but their is nothing you can do about it, two many people make these mistakes. I do have to agree with you though, to many people drive me mad with they're spelling and i would just love it if we could at least get too or three people to wise up, but alas they wont.

It really suck teh d**k. Good luck with you're campaign though.

I kid... I kid...

Thank you. I'm certainly no grammarian, but that mistake drives me nuts. How can people actually think that it makes sense?

What part of SARCASTIC did you miss?

weird vs wierd
axed vs asked

I can almost forgive the second, for it is not picked up by the spell checker.