Things that Gets Under my Skin – Literally!

Anyone who knows me knows that I love to rant. I don’t classify myself as a complainer. I am a ranter. There is a difference. A complainer is made miserable by that about which he or she complains, and the complaint is made in an attempt to make others share in that misery. A ranter finds humor (and sometimes delight) in that about which he or she rants. I’m a ranter, and what follows is a list of some of the things about which I love to rant.

I realize that by posting this, I’m opening myself up to being corrected by many of my readers. If you find a mistake in my post, please let me know!

Literally?

Why do people not understand what “literally” means? Literally means that you are not speaking metaphorically or figuratively. Therefore, it makes no sense to say, “He was literally on cloud nine.” It also doesn’t make sense to say, “The explosion was so huge that it literally blew them to kingdom come!”

For some reason, many people use “literally” as a way to emphasize something. Don’t do that, because it makes you seem ignorant . . . literally!

I’ll Be Around About

I work for a large technology company, and the vernacular in my company is filled with buzz words. One of those is “around”, which is used interchangeably with “about”. In other words, people will say, “Does anyone have any questions around what we just spoke about?”

“Around” doesn’t mean “about”.

Look, listen!

All of the talking heads on the new channels are guilty of this one. If you want someone to listen to what you have to say, don’t say “look”. Say “listen”.

“Look, the democrats know that they need to get as many votes as they can.” What am I looking at? I was so busy looking that I didn’t hear what you said.

Your wrong. It’s you’re.

If you want to use an abbreviation for “you are”, it’s “you’re”, not “your”. I see this all the time, even in professional publications.

I’ve had it! Comma!

The proper use of a comma eludes most people. A comma is not interchangeable with a period. In other words, it’s not correct to write the following.

“Thanks for telling me about that Jim, you’re right as rain.”

If you are starting a new sentence, you need a period and an initial capital. By the way, it’s even more problematic to write this.

“Thanks for telling me around that Jim, your literally as right as rain.”

Trailing Capitals

Proper nouns should be capitalized, but you should not capitalize the word after a proper noun. In other words, the following is not correct.

“Jim is editing his Facebook Post because he’s going to the Iron Man 2 Movie.”

Capitalize the proper noun, but don’t give the following word the same respect. It doesn’t deserve it.

This One is Particuly Bothersome

If you’d like to express that something is true to an exceptional degree, you should say that it is “particularly true”. It is not “particuly true”. The laziness that pervades our culture is particularly evident in the pronunciation of particularly.

There is Hundreds of These

We love contractions. That’s fine, but if a contraction is used incorrectly out of laziness, it’s worth a rant. Using a contraction meaning “is” when referring to a plural form of a word is particuly particularly annoying. For example, the following is not correct.

“There’s billions of stars in the sky.”

I know it takes a little extra effort, but the correct usage would be as follows.

“There are billions of stars in the sky.”

“Yeah, no, you’re right, right?”

If you want to refute a statement or an idea, it’s perfectly fine to say “no”. There’s no reason to preface “no” with “yeah”. Consider the following exchange.

“You have an iPhone and you don’t think it’s evil, do you?”, he said.

“Yeah, no, I love my iPhone.”, she said.

So, I Hate This One

Don’t start a sentence with the word “so”.

“So, I was going to the market to buy some fish.”

Interestingly, the people who do this are often the same ones who save time by using “there’s” instead of “there are” and “particuly” instead of “particularly”. Leave off the “so” and spend the time you save correcting some of your other speech patterns.

Poor Prepositions

The grammatical rule “don’t end a sentence with a preposition” has stuck so persistently in people’s minds that it has now morphed itself into “leave off the preposition.” The following is incorrect.

“He couldn’t picture the lady he was told.”

If you want to avoid ending the sentence in a preposition, say this.

“He couldn’t picture the lady about which he was told.”

However, it is perfectly correct to say this.

“He couldn’t picture the lady he was told about.”

There are plenty of others!

If you are also annoyed by these annoyances, let me know. I’ve got plenty of others to rant about!

Jim