I don't get too crazy over people just writing to me, or like this thread-although sometimes the misspellings do make me wonder, LOL! Some people just don't have the spelling gene. As I get older, I seem to make more spelling errors. I'm seeing & hearing something now that I'm pretty certain I learned differently. People are always saying something like "my sister brought Justin & I cake for dinner". Am I getting senile? Saw an ad for a lawyer recently I was going off about to everyone. Something like "bring you're legal issues to us". You're on national TV, surely someone looked at that ad before approving it! Not sure I would ever want to use that legal service.

Linda, I know what you mean!

Proof reading is a lost art. Read any article on the web, even at legitimate news organizations, and it will have misspelled words and bad grammar.

Sometimes when I see a lot of mistakes in a post on a forum, rather than a newspaper or magazine, I wonder if English is their second language. That could be the reason for so many errors.

Oh, and my pet peeves... when people get then and than mixed up, and of course, your and you're.

Sally

This reminds me of the time my husband's aunt asked for recipes for a cookbook which her OEA class was producing for a local organization's fundraiser. I was too lazy to write one down, so I took the cookbook with my favorite recipe to work, to copy on the Xerox machine (many years ago), and gave her the copy.

One of the students made a mistake when transcribing the recipe, and after the cookbook was distributed, I received a phone call from an acquaintance, who wanted to know if my recipe was correct. An ingredient had been omitted, and she knew it couldn't be right. Names of those contributing the recipes were listed, so I am immortalized as having left out an ingredient (and it wasn't a 'secret' recipe). ;)

When I mentioned it to Aunt J., she insisted that I, not her student, must have made the mistake, forgetting that I had given her a Xerox copy.

@ sally2: I think proofreading is a job category that no longer exists in many arenas! Copy editors positions have reportedly eliminated from many newsrooms - & it shows.

But when it comes to personal recipes, writings, I'm definitely forgiving of poor spelling/grammar/abbreviations. I can condescendingly attribute all those things to ignorance = J

Love Chas' DW's shirt! I told my niece I would buy her this one if they would let her wear it to work (her workplace allows t-shirts)

When I write out a recipe, which is seldom, I spell out Tablespoon, teaspoon, and cup. I capitalize Tablespoon and write teaspoon with a lower case t to draw attention to the two. We have a famous family story. Daddy decided to make a pie crust and didn't understand the difference between T and t. It was quite salty!

And I want the ingredients in a recipe listed in order of use!

The Sisters of Notre Dame taught me grammar and spelling, and they taught me well. Any mistooks i make iz my own and dun deliberate.

I actually used to be grammar police! Got paid for it and everything. ;)

There's a big difference between "written speech" like we have here, where people are typing away, often tired, and have not just their own internal errors to contend with (if you're not paying direct attention to the word you're on--and if you're a fast typist you might be thinking three words ahead of your fingers--the sound of the word you're supposed to be typing may supersede the one you meant. It's just this thing that happens, as well as dropped syllables and other such heresies), but also autocorrect and other machine induced idiocies.

Nancy, you're 100% right. My sister brought Justin & I cake for dinner is flat out wrong. You wouldn't say My sister brought I a cake. But we don't have way overqualified schoolteachers anymore. They all have better jobs. The language is changing with this imperfect new rule that says if there's an "and" and a pronoun, you switch the case. Thus, your example, as well as Johnny and me are going to the store, and He split the cake between you and I, which are equally wrong. At some point, however, it will be a firmed up part of the language and the way everyone speaks, at which point it will just be weird rather than demonstrably wrong. Sigh.

(BTW, my sentence structures are personal style. I would not use creative punctuation and three dimensional sentences for formal documents.)

Well, there is incorrect grammar, and misspelled words and errors in forming contractions, but then there are "stupidisms" as I call them......things like Swivel sticks, a sorse for a certain item, troweling the web, a ringer washer, people who are diluted in their thinking, lighting a candle opera, change leak fence, cheyenne pepper, death knoll, ferrel cats, goddey colors, suttle differences, pedistool sink, pinching shears....and cudos, kudo's, koo does etc etc!
Proves to me that people don't read.

I believe I've encountered some of those people with diluted thinking.

@ lindac - those kind of errors can still be chalked up to ignorance, IMO.

(proud daughter of an English major)

When I was a child we had a neighbor who called an afghan "an African". Even my mother had to laugh when the neighbor decided to throw an African over her lap!

lindac,

I have seen multiple ads in the region for "fool-blooded" dogs. I am always tempted to go in person and see what a fool-blooded dog actually looks like!

cooper, I like "pure bread" dogs best. I've never seen any "fool blooded" dogs YET. HAHA! That's crazy and sad!

I have seen ads for dogs with a petigee.

I'm glad to know I'm not totally crazy, I was starting to think maybe all my English teachers were misguided. Must be some regional things, I've never seen ads for Fool-blooded dogs, or pure bread either, but there are tons of ads for people selling or looking for chester drawers. First time I saw one of those ads, I thought they were searching for a man, Chester Drawers, then saw ads selling them & finally worked it out.

Nancy, that's funny! When I was a little kid, I called it a "Chester Drawers" when I didn't know any better. OH and how about rot iron or rod iron, I've seen both.

Well, at least rod iron makes sense. :) The smith works rods from the foundry which will then be wrought. I haven't heard most of these in real life (as opposed to in humor articles). The one that I have heard and makes me cringe is, "It's a doggy dog world." I don't know if this predates Snoop Doggy Dog or not. I wonder if the people who say that think it has something to do with Snoop...

Well many make sense....sort of.! LOL!
another is passed mustard...
Then there is this one....which is so wrong in so many ways I copied and saved it....
"I scene where they said to use vinegar and water half and
half deluded ....To get the shampoo build up off your hair...i love the smell
of vinegar"

Passed Mustard

Good one wintercat! My dad used to say "doesn't cut the mustard" all the time, I used to think that was a different way of saying didn't pass muster. Looked it up one time, & found that Dad was using it correctly. Being cooks, you probably all know it, but apparently years ago in mustard making, they kept it in a large vat & let it form a thick skin on top to protect it. A special thin bladed knife was used to cut just under the skin to get to the mustard. Because of the acid the knife would get dull & rusty pretty fast if they didn't take care of it, thus something "doesn't cut the mustard".

Nancy, I found this one too :

WHEN MUSTARD was one of the main crops in East Anglia, it was cut by hand with scythes, in the same way as corn. The crop could grow up to six feet high and this was very arduous work, requiring extremely sharp tools. When blunt they "would not cut the mustard". All this and everything else you could ever want to know about mustard can be found at the Mustard Museum in Norwich.

I love these expressions. Being an English teacher......

Just ran across another - "wa la" instead of "voila"

Another one I see a lot is "prolly " for "probably".

I think of 'prolly' as a colloquialism, like 'tho' or 'kinda' I often use 'probly', 'tho', 'coulda', & 'kinda' in my informal writing (like comments on a forum, for instance).

Linda, I had to look at that for half a minute to figure out what it was supposed to be! I kept thinking in terms of "please pass the mustard!"

One that had me stumped for a long time was the interjection Bbstx reminded me of: walla. As in Walla Walla. I could possibly get Voilà from "wa la", but "walla" was just baffling!

Carolb, you have a point about the written speech like we have in a forum. If a person says "prolly" it's reasonable to write it, same as "dontcha" or "dunno", even though it hasn't been codified as a word. Then it comes down to communication. I could probably get "prolly" from context, though it's not something I hear. Easier than some of the other ones mentioned, for sure! "Probly" is pretty obvious. ;)

One I read about (but didn't see in use myself) that made me laugh but was quite intelligible was about a man selling a dog. For sale: chi wah wah.

Then there's the port in Ventura County. If you're writing up directions, you'd better include why-KNEE-me. As in how to pronounce Port Hueneme, which is certainly not said the way it's spelled. :)

When I see the written word "prolly", I wonder if they are trying to be funny or if they are illiterate. I think we need to invent a new word, "pro'bly". HA!

When people write "prolly" it's not because they think that is a word and don't know that "probably" is the proper term. They are prolly makin' a statement about sloppy speaking. I mean it's not rock science to know what is really meant.
So I will go back to my sudo camaflauge chip-n-dale sofa and try to find someone to do some pluming repair. I only found one ad that peeked my interest.

I see many posts advertising a "one-person sofa' and it's an armchair. Geesh!

Dinning room table.

What makes me grind my teeth is everyone sells a "book shelf", with 5 shelves. Call it what it is.....a bookcase!

I see people writing out the word "prolly" all the time in just normal threads, just writing along and then BAM the word "prolly" is in there. I think they are trying to be funny. To me, it's a sore toe! HA! I once knew a guy that said "prolaby" and he wasn't being funny, that's just how he always said it. GAH!

At least the misuse of "reticent" has died down. :)

I just googled "prolly." According to one site, it first appeared in print in the 1920s as dialect for probably. It also appeared in Edna Ferber's Giant. From what I could tell, it lay dormant until it became shorthand for probably in text messages. For some reason, I thought it was British English slang, but I didn't find that.

bbstx, perhaps you're thinking of "brolly" which is an umbrella to us!

How about this; "my head literally exploded". HAHA! I see/hear the misuse of the word "literally" all the time.

"Prolly" bugs me. It doesn't take much longer to write probably. If they can form full words in the rest of the sentence why not that one? Granted, I've only seen it a couple of times, mostly in the GW forums.

arkansas girl, that has become so common that they had to add it to the dictionary! (Dictionaries, according to their mission, are supposed to describe the language, not enforce it.)

Jasdip, I always figured it was because that was they way they pronounced it.

Literally (in its original meaning) right now on an ad on the TV, I heard someone declare he was "leader of the pact". :) I'm not sure if that was this kind of error or some kind of pun, though...

What about that allergy medicine commercial where the woman says she's allergic to "dusk mites"....LOL!

Prolly makes me feel young, like I actually know slang.

However, I blame Pioneer Woman, starting this recipe debacle.

75 photographs and descriptions of every single hand movement only encouraged more to abandon fairly traditional and easy to understand recipe writing. I'm not talking about Fanny Farmer's originals, just the modern understood, or it seemed, way of recipe writing.

And now every...mostly....recipe blog spouts philosophical ideas about chopping onions along with the basic measurements, ingredients and pan size!

Wow! I always scroll down to the actual recipe. What is there to say about chopping onions? Whether to brunoise, rough chop, or process?

For myself, I write standard recipes which are brief, have standard abbreviations, and barely anything said about method. Generally, when I'm writing it out for friends, they're not very experienced cooks. The few who know their ways around kitchens already know and just ask how much of a particular ingredient or time and temperature, and figure (correctly) that they already know everything else. For the non-cooks, I'll include excruciating detail, including brand names or descriptions of some ingredients (like what the pineapple should look and smell like, or which brand of shortening I use and how to measure). If I don't give them all that, there's no point in giving the recipe at all. I have posted a couple of these, rather than rewriting them, partly for ease, and partly thinking that reserving detail from someone who might be stopping by isn't nice. But if I have a brief version, I'll post that instead, since our active members know how to cook. :)

In other words, it's a know your audience thing.

If I come across a recipe that isn't easy to work from, I edit it for my own use. If I find it confusing, I just go find another recipe.

So what happened to "me", "I", and "people"? "For myself" (pillog), instead of "As for me", or, "Dinner was shared with Janie and myself", instead of "...Janie and me". Or even the teeth grating "Sharon and myself went to dinner" to be so humble as to not use "I". And so even the government has big highway signs for restricted multiple use lanes that say "Lane for 3 persons" or, restaurants' signs saying "Maximum seating for 144 persons" with the all those lost, lost "people" waiting. I am so ready to join the grammar police. My children (now mid-life adults) cringe when they say something that is not grammatically correct in front of me and know it when they say it. They go over their shared recipes carefully to be sure Momma Grammar will OK it.

"No one there....just myself"....AARGH!! In that case you can be sure that myself is no one!

And then there's "sineage"....what the hell is that?? Is that different from "signs"?

Nancy, there are regional differences, and culture group differences, in how things are said. "For myself" is centuries old. In my own way of speaking, "As for me" would be said in direct contrast to something specific which others have put forth, whereas "for myself" is more or less a short form of "speaking for myself". Subtle difference.

I totally agree that it's simpler to use a regular pronoun in the other examples you gave, but there are some places that use reflexive pronouns. Unfortunately, bad teaching has proscribed the use of "I" for many people. They're taught that they shouldn't say I, I, I all the time, so instead of varying their sentence structures, and using I when appropriate, they twist themselves up to avoid it, so that might be another source of these irritating constructions.

"Persons" is a legal usage in your examples. I think it's meant to denote individuals or something, since "people" is a group noun.

Signage is a collective noun which usually refers to a system of signs rather than to merely to the signs themselves. So the display manager will discuss signage with the graphic designer. They create a system of signs that are meant to work together to make the shopping experience better for the customers. "Signs" are what the clerks have to stay after hours to put up. The overlap is when the display manager asks the floor manager if she received the signage for the Autumn promotions. It is correct in that the box holds the physical instantiation of the system of signage. Signs would also be correct, because the box is full of signs.

I totally get your .AARGH!!, Linda, but I think it's normal for the speaker not to count himself in the people there. I remember when I went to school and there was no one there. That's the way I've always said it. (They had called a holiday but a few didn't get the word...) Perhaps it's directional? Because the act of my going there implied that I wasn't someone there yet? Whereas, if I were already inside, it would be more accurate to say, "There's no one here but me." Which should probably be "I", but that sounds funny.

What you would mean is "there is no one there but for me..." in that case me makes more sense.
Sinage SHOULD mean the system and planning....but in most uses it simply means the box of signs....One plans the sinage but places the signs....and there in lies the rub!

Hm.... I would never say "there is no one there but for me..." That reads like old poetry to me. I might use it in very formal, very particular writing, but never in speech. I agree that that is what is meant by "there was no one there."

Agreed on the signage. You put that beautifully: One plans the signage but places the signs. It's probably word creep. As in my example above, the manager says, "The signage is in that box," meaning the system. The clerk's job is to put up signs. The clerk then goes to the salvage store and buys a mixed box of old signs and says to her son, "I got you this signage for your workshop in the garage." The son admires all the school election posters and says, "Whoa! Great signage."

Said with slightly sponge brained surfer breath, it sounds more like a slang neologism than a regular word meaning something else, using the derivation that gives us such terms as "boobage", as in Look at the boobage on that hottie.

Wile we're on the topic, I don't get "Male Toilets" and "Female Toilets", which I guess was originally some non-thinker's idea of PC terms to replace "Gents' Toilets" and "Ladies' toilets". Toilets do not have gender, though you could possibly make the case for urinals being masculine. But why not "Men's" and "Women's"?

First time I've ever heard of male and female toilets. Googling for more info I came across Urinary Segregation. Weirder and weirder.

I'd say the larger proportion of toilets here now are marked "Male Toilets" and "Female Toilets"., if they don't have cutesy names like "Pointers" and "Setters" or "Blokes" and "Sheilas" etc. Drives me nuts.

I too hate cutesy names for toilets. I went to an Italian restaurant once that had the toilets marked "Rome" and "Venus." I got it, but I was a bit apprehensive about it. DH would have been totally clueless. He's well educated but he just doesn't get "cute."

The next time I went, they had also installed on the doors the universal silhouette for males and females. Maybe they had too many Romes wandering into Venus.

In the US we don't use the word "toilet" unless we are talking of paper, cleaner or water. We simply call it a "room". As in "Can you please tell me where the ladies' room is?"...or if you are in K through 12 school....the "girls room" or the "boys room"...no apostrophe. ;-)
And in some "classy" stores or nightclubs, it may be called "the ladies' lounge".
Gotta know the language when all we really want is to find a toilet so we can "powder our nose".

Personally I really like the cookbooks put out by churches. Yes some do have mistakes, found one today for banana bread, they did not include the amount of bananas to put in it. However they are not the only ones that make mistakes. Some years ago I bought a cookbook that had recipes from a famous bakery in Indianapolis, Roselyn's. I was reading the black raspberry pie recipe and it was going along just fine, similar to the way I would make mine and then it said to use 1/2 cup of cornstarch. Yes, they are juicy. That is way too much to thicken a pie. I emailed them and told them I believed they had made a mistake and that it should be half of that amount. They agreed, said they would be correcting that in future cookbooks. I don't know if they did or not. They sent me a coupon for a percentage off of some baked goods in the grocery, I did not use it.

Sue