Verbally they are not much better. A TV reporter talked about how something enveloped them and pronounced it enveloped him.

Idstarr, 1000 likes for you! The general public is one thing but when it comes to professionals, i expect their grammar and spelling to be better than mine, and that's not requiring a lot!

Many of us use our phones where apostrophes, commas and capital letters are left out. I'm really bad for that but never would I allow that in a professional setting. Let me add that I am never bothered by what anyone here at the KT writes. We shouldn't have to mind our p's and q's here. :)

Mostly I live by a "live and let live" code so I might berate myself for getting annoyed by this topic. It makes me feel better to know I'm not the only one.

Is it a little obsessive if i sit in front of the tv, going through the guide to check all the spelling errors? lol

Oh, by the way, this morning on the weather channel one of the weather casters was talking about the fires in CA. One segment she said it was moving at a rate of a football field a second. Next segment she said a football field a minute. She went back and forth all morning between a second and a minute. So, how fast are those fires moving???

Drives me nuts. NUTS.

There is NO excuse for this....Blaming auto-correct? Oh puhleeze...

Am I "grammer shaming"?? (A term I have never heard before, by the way...) Well, tough. They should be shamed.

And, for the record, I'm also a live and let live person, but this peeves me no end...

*Goes off for a glass of wine*

I haven't seen it in writing, but I hear it a lot on judge judy ... and I never understand it as they don't even sound alike ... people who confuse lend and borrow. "I borrowed him $500". Huh?

In the last few episodes of Grey's Anatomy, the doctors have mispronounced debride and debridement. Don't they have medical consultants to keep that sort of thing from happening?

This is what happens when everybody gets a passing grade.

I know that writing obits is one of the 'starter' jobs at a newspaper, but who writes, "He was predeceased in death by his parents."

Also, can't people just *die*? The flights of fancy avoiding that word are becoming more peculiar every day.

I try so hard to give the average person a pass when they make a mistake. Heaven knows I've gone back and re-read some of what I've written sometimes and holy cow I'm embarrassed.

So yeah, autocorrect will mess up to, too, and two. Or it's and its. (Although the apostrophe/possessive thing seems to confuse the hell out of almost everyone anymore....)

But why can't allegedly professional people understand the different between bring and take? It's endemic now! Nails on a chalkboard to me.

I'm getting old and persnickety. :)

I think Facebook is partially to blame, as well as autocorrect texting. I have noticed Facebook automatically inserting an ' before an s - like this: until the cow's come home. NO NO NO NO!

And it drives me crazy to see signage in someone's yard - special ordered, no doubt - that proudly states: The Smith's. ARG.

It must be my day to be harassed by the media. Just saw this: The defendant evoked his right...

rhizo - I think you left out a word in your comment - or maybe it was on purpose to see which jerk would point it out. :)

I agree. Poor spelling, grammar and editing in a newspaper drives me nuts. I don't point out what I think are mistakes because I could so easily be wrong. Above comment is the exception> :) I am so guilty of run-on sentences and truncated ones as well.

Oh, I forgot another one! Written articles or ads with the date as December 24th, 2017. Check the calendar. The date is December 24, 2017.

Enlighten me. I didn't know there was a program for 'speak to text'. Um, why not just *call*? it scary to actually speak to a person? Do people refuse to respond to voicemail? (Are we all deaf and need to read text?)

I'd much, much, much rather text than call people, with the exception of close family or people I want to talk with. For every day things, I like texting. I'm not a small talk person, and I like the efficiency and having a written record of dates, times, etc. for appointments and such.

I also dislike listening to voicemails. I'm glad my phone has a text translation, and although it's hilariously inaccurate at times, I can get the point much faster than listening to someone ramble on for 2 minutes.

A lot of people get anxiety about talking on the phone, chisue.

On an iPhone, if you are going to send a text message there is a little microphone next to the space bar. If you tap the microphone and start talking, it will type out what you are saying so that you don't have to type it out yourself. It's a lot easier than trying to type on a tiny little keyboard. I send texts because I hate to talk on the phone and I don't have to worry about waking somebody up, if they are asleep chances are the little ding they get when a message comes in, won't wake them. I also send grocery lists by text, that way my husband can check his phone while he's in the store if he's running the errands that day.

A lot of younger people in their early 30's didn't learn to spell at school, it was all about how words sounded. I remember my niece coming home from school and I was correcting her spelling with her. She said she copied the words from what the teacher wrote on the board. and one of the words was spelled wrong. I called the school and they told me the curriculum didn't focus on spelling words right. When I went to grade school in the 1960's the main focus was on spelling, grammar and phonics. That being said I have a male friend who went to school with me and he cannot spell at all. I don't know how he passed his classes. Reading his posts on Facebook hurts my head, even spell check can't help him. My same niece that I helped with her spelling is a self employed graphic artist. In the beginning I noticed she was making artwork using words like ssssleeep, or drrrreeam for artwork to hang in a child's room. I told her not to sell stuff like that because she is spelling the words wrong and not really good thing to teach a child. I know I use the wrong word sometimes when I type really fast and am not thinking but I always try to proofread and go back and fix my mistake.

My husband has phone anxiety but he will never admit it. :) I used to when I was younger but outgrew it. My friend had the worst case I have seen. She would drive hours to talk to someone in a store in person rather than call. It's very real and will likely increase as people rarely need to call anymore.

In addition to professional journalists, I think professional sign makers should also be able to use correct grammar and spelling. I enjoy watching for errors on billboards, road signs, etc. Many years ago there was an office building here with a legal firm on the top floor. Attached to the outside of the building, near the roof, was a nice metal sign in elegant script. It proclaimed "Doofus and Dumbdumb, Attorney's at Law." Attorney's what?

(Of course by now I don't remember the actual names.)

MDLN -- the 13-inch ceilings would make life in that home a bit uncomfortable, but I'm really interested in seeing the "eat-in kitchen island with a terrace." I've never seen a kitchen island that has a terrace.

Now you know why I don't talk very much on these sites. I'm afraid to be found out for my poor spelling and grammar. I am not a professional though.

I know many professionals who just don't have strong speech and grammar skills. They used to have their work proof read by someone younger and wiser. But English doesn't seem to be as well taught as before so there doesn't seem to be anyone younger and wiser.

Littlebug, learning lesson, please. So in another threat I wrote I ordered something on Nov. 23rd. Is that correct? Or should it just be November 23? Sometimes it's hard to figure things out when it's the second language. Doing well with they're and there, always struggling with then and than.

I can tell when it's a language issue rather than an I-don't-care issue....I would hope that nobody here is offended by what I said before....I do like when an effort is made to learn any language other than your native one. I applaud that.

Iris - it's very common to use November 23rd (or simply "the 23rd") when speaking, but when writing, it should be November 23. A calendar doesn't list the dates as 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. It lists 1, 2, and 3.

You are doing very well in using English as a second language. I think I've heard that it's one of the hardest languages to learn.

Of late, I have seen that error more often. I think its because the writer and/or editor does not know the difference between a brake and break. They may also have problems with there and their.

"A Moose" on the butter box? That is just painfully awful.

By accident, Littlebug gave the perfect example regarding dates. When using "the" with a date, we add the specifics....the 4th, the 1st, the 23rd, etc.

Lol, I admit it took me far too long to try to figure out what was grammatically incorrect about "a moose!" I should have looked at the picture.

Ok, I must not be thinking clearly this morning. What is the problem with the Challenge Butter ad?

It's an elk :). It took me a while to figure out what they meant. I thought they were talking about grammar!

Thank you Chi!

The town newspaper is currently running a letters to Santa column from area kids. Last night's column was from the third grade class of an area school. Nope, these kids aren't being taught the same things I remember from my grade school days. The grammar usage and spelling was appalling in most of the letters.

I understand the advantage of having something in writing, but texting seems like a lot of back and forth. Few people are concise and inclusive in the original message. For instance, I'd rather speak to the dentist's receptionist to set an appointment than text back and forth. If I don't want calls, I'll mute the phone.

My DH and a friend have emailed back and forth six times over the last three days to set up a lunch date next week. They could have accomplished this with one or two conversations.

I recently read statistics on a dozen of Chicago's inner city high schools. In some, ZERO seniors were 'prepared for college' in either math or English. In others, six percent tested 'college ready'. Yet...in all these schools, double-digit percentages of students were accepted to attend a college. Wha?

The butter thing was in the click bait just the other day. I place lazy identification information right up there with lazy news grammar and typos. All they needed to do was google 'Challenge butter animal' and the story of the elk would have come up within seconds.

But formal news presentations, where it is their job to get it right, are different from casual forum contributions. I'd rather people posting in forums not worry about petty grammar and spelling details as much. I know many times I am doing several other things at the same time as I am writing here, and I rarely bother to check everything in my posts prior to submitting.

The great thing about cell phones is you can use them for phone, texting, and email, whatever the preference. I don't begrudge people who prefer phone calls.

My current grammar pet peeve is use of the improper change to the word "impact". It is correct to say: greater impact, lesser impact, less impact than. I have heard the term "impactful" used and it is very annoying and quite illogical.

As for written grammar, I was taught that if a sentence needs a Oxford comma for clarity, rewrite the sentence.

Still learning along here. Just googled what an Oxford comma is.

Raye, that's one of the silliest 'rules' I've ever heard! I remember my 8th grade English teacher commenting on the 'Oxford comma' with her great sense of humor.

Common sense should tell us when we need to separate every word in a list with a comma.....or not!

Autocorrect is my worst enema.

I do wonder if being fluent in "southern" where we speak slower is why the extra comma is unnecessary. I had never heard of requiring a comma before a conjunction until several years ago. Do you put a comma before using "or"?

Examples:

It's a choice between using a comma, or a properly structured sentence?

It's a choice between using a comma or a properly structured sentence?

Re Oxford or serial commas:

http://video.newyorker.com/watch/the-serial-comma-killer

There was an example in law I heard ... no idea if true or not, but it's a good story. The law was written, "vehicles must stop at all red lights and stop signs." The fellow ran a stop sign and argued it was OK as the stop sign was yellow, not red. So since then, they've made all stop signs red. A comma would've made the meaning clear. The only reason I believe it is, I remember a yellow stop sign on one of the back country roads oh so many years ago when I was a wee one.

If you don't watch the video, she uses the example of:

They invited strippers, JFK and Stalin.

They invited strippers, JFK, and Stalin.

The former might mistake JFK and Stalin as the names of the strippers. The latter makes it clear.

I posted a joke on the smiles for today which I pulled off of a website. I must've made 20 corrections to it to get it to read correctly.

I was taught that the second comma in the above example would be incorrect. To my eye, it does not read any differently with the additional comma.

I made straight A's in grammar eons ago but I have probably forgotten 80 percent of it. And even though I excelled in the class how I detested diagramming sentences! (Do they even teach that anymore?) But having been a proofreader for many years it is really annoying to see all the misspellings and improper use of certain words on the TV news broadcasts. I would have thought way back when I was in school that anyone interested in a career in journalism would be required to at least have excellent spelling and grammar skills. I now know it isn't necessary at all. So except for the very low-paying job as a proofreader what did all that knowledge benefit me except to be a grouchy old proper grammar Nazi??

It's funny that there is conversation about whether or not the U.S needs to be bi-lingual when today's youth aren't even being taught English correctly. :-(

Interesting thread. I've been laughing out loud.

I have a few grammatical weaknesses and I welcome them being pointed out to me.

I've noticed that the iPad and iPhone algorithms for autocorrect and interpretive text are about the same whether one is finger typing or dictating (which uses's Apple's voice recognition software.

I often finger type and when my device corrects flubbed text, it does so as if it is using the voice recognition algorithm (even though the texted was typed. The previously mentioned "pancreas" for "Panera" autocorrection might be and example of this. The interpretive text auto-correction behaves as though it's reasoning (even with typed text), "well, it sounds like ...."

It bugs me when professionals (while on the job) repeatedly make errors. It used to be that news anchors or reporters (and many non professionals) would use the word, " incidences" instead of "incidents" or "occurrences."

These days I hear lots of professional public speaker leave the -ly off an adverb (thus, what, making their modifier an adjective?).

Example: "He did it perfect." On and on. It is grating.

Anyone ever read this book?

Indeed I did I loved it.