My intent is for this thread to be light-hearted and not insulting, but I want to talk about common spelling and grammar pet peeves that we all may have. I just wrote this comment on a story:
When you don’t win, you “lose”. When you’re not winning, you’re “losing”. Also, when something is less tight, it’s “loose”. When you make something less tight, you’re “loosening” it. There is no word “loosing”.
I see “loosing” all the time. Personally, I was a “hooked on Phonics” kid, so I see that word and my brain goes into apoplexy.
As a hip hop head, I have to drop the classic Souls of Mischief lines: When you don’t know where you’re going… that when you lost; when you don’t win… that when you lost.
“Loosing” is a word, it’s just got a different meaning than the one you’d expect if you’re coming from the “less tight” definition of “loose”. “Loosing” means “to let go” or “to untie”.
As for me, my pet peeve is “hence why”. That’s not a valid combination of words! Except, it is now, because so many people use it, and English isn’t particularly known for prescriptivism.
“Hence” is supposed to be used in a similar fashion to “thus”, “therefore”, or “that’s why”. That last definition is particularly useful to demonstrate the point. “It’s winter, hence why there’s snow on the ground” would be the equivalent of "It’s winter, that’s why why there’s snow on the ground. It should just be “It’s winter, hence the snow on the ground.”
“Hence why” is an abomination, hence why I refuse to use it!
I’ve never seen or heard of “loosing” so I’m going to trust you or maybe it might be one of them foreign words they use in the world but we don’t use in the states.
To me “hence” is old-fashioned and possibly pretentious, a word a professor would use when lecturing. But then, I probably wouldn’t use “thus” either.
What I am glad to see is discussion of our primary language! (I’m assuming it’s yours @RobinHood70 ) it’s always struck me odd that people don’t understand the language they speak!
Yes, English is indeed my primary language. At this point, my French would get me around with some difficulty, but that’s the only other language I would consider myself as having any real fluency in.
As for “loose”/“loosing”, it’s also not common to hear anymore in that sense. Actually, it just occurs to me that “loose” and “loosen” are two different verbs, and it’s “loose” as a verb that you don’t hear much. Like “hence” or “thus”, I think it’s becoming dated. Because I’m strange, I have this image in my head of Monty Burns saying “Loose the hounds” now.
People who misspell rogue as rouge and vice versa. One is a crooked person or else someone or something that’s gone out of control. The other is a women’s cosmetic. Some comments about how “he’s gone rouge!” are unintentionally hilarious.
People who spell hypocrisy as hippocracy. Mainly because the latter, if it is a word at all, means “a society ruled by horses.”
Mine are “Coach” as in a person that coaches folks and “couch” which is a piece of furniture.
Along with the classic “too”, “to”, and “two.”
EDIT:
recommendation: Google lists of homophones (Words that sound alike but are different) to distinguish them [i.e. than/then, hear/here] as well as homonyms (words that are spelled the same but their meaning changes depending on the context) i.e. I saw a bear in the forest VS. I bear the pain from the sunburn.
One I see on GSS every so often is “I want fuck”, instead of “I want to fuck”. I’ve seen it in enough stories by enough authors who are generally good writers that I’m curious if it’s a regionalism.
I spelled conscious “conscience” in a high-school paper and my English teacher wrote this whole sarcastic paragraph that said, “I don’t know what this is. You’ll have to explain conscience to me.”
So I went up to her after class and I explained what a consciousness was and she NEVER ONCE told me I’d just spelled the word wrong.
