Terry, that's what bugs me. Working with others, implies a group (In my mind). Working together, implies 2 people doing a job. Working together with others is overkill.

Here's another one that bugs me. Your results will be grouped together with others. There's that darned "together' thrown in there again. Why not say Grouped with others? Why together.

Obviously grammar is bugging me tonite.

"The both of them" is a phrase that bugs me to no end. "Both" means two, so "both of them," or "the two of them" are correct.

Between and among. That is the one that annoys me. You share something between two people or share something among a group. I was at a gathering where papers were handed out and the host said to divide them up between yourselves. I wanted to be snarky and ask which two people she was referring to.

"Working together with others" is an awkward phrase to the ear. I would have omitted the word together.

Most, very, or more, unique. Unique means one of a kind. How can there be more than one, one of a kind? Or how can one one of a kind be more one of a kind than something else? I know MY grammar is clumsy LOL.

Utilize, versus just plain use.

Verbiage. So overused and sounds pretentious to me.

Whenever we were in a meeting and someone said, "I have these reports I'm going to pass out." I'd always want to say back, "NO! Please don't pass out!" In those days we had transparencies and the speaker would often say, "Look at this chart I'll throw up on the screen" and I'd want to say, "No! Please don't throw up on the screen!"

Adult, no it isn't a verb, it's a phase of life. Impact"fully", nope that's not the correct use of impact either, sadly I've heard that used on TV by someone with a PhD.

While it may also grate on the nerves, "impactful" is a valid word and an accepted usage, although one that rankles many.

"These ones" or "those ones". Seems it's being used more and more lately. And I want to wince every time I hear it, it sounds so uneducated.

Rusty

Stop complaining. Get yourself together! Work with others -- or otters; I don't care.

My students still struggle with affect and effect. Loose and lose. And thanks to spell check prosecute and persecute.

"My students still struggle with affect and effect"

That one is tricky......many folks struggle with that, often ignoring 'affect' entirely :-) And as I see frequently on these forums, a lot of folks struggle with there and their, which continues to surprise!!

LOL Elmer!

What gets me is PIN number, ATM machine, VIN number. Think about it.

Dr. Joe M. Smith, M.D. Arg! It's obvious that Dr. Smith's professional degree is not in English.

"My students still struggle with affect and effect."

There are fairly easy ways to remember the correct way to use those two words:

• a comes before e alphabetically...
• a comes before e - as in "something has to have been affected in order for there to be an effect of that action"
• a comes before e - as in the affect is the action and the effect is the end result

Littlebug, yes, that bugs me, too, but I understand why people do that. A person who earns a PhD can be called "doctor," as can someone who has earned a J.D. (Juris Doctor). I knew a guy with a PhD who, when making restaurant reservations, always gave his name as "Dr. So-and-so." He felt that it got him a better table as well as the ability to get a reservation when the restaurant might otherwise have said that no reservations were available at the time he requested. Pompous jerk.

So... putting the M.D. after Dr. Joe M. Smith at least lets everyone know that he is, indeed, a doctor.

Sure, Lindsey. I am retired from academia and spent my entire professional career working with Ph.D.s, D.A.s, and Ed.Ds. And you can bet your sweet bippy that most took every opportunity to call themselves Doctor. And indeed, many were pompous @sses.

As intelligent as doctors are though, they should know better than to use the title Dr. John M. Smith, Medical Doctor, or Dr. Sally Q. Jones, Doctor of Arts. But they don't.

How's your 'hot water heater' working?

Maui NewsNow ran a story yesterday, reporting that a woman and her daughter had been struck while crossing a street within a crosswalk. The reporter meant to indicate that the injuries were not serious, but what he said was, "They walked into an ambulance." (My DH was off and running on that!)

"Stop complaining. Get yourself together! Work with others -- or otters; I don't care."

Wow, where did that come from?

I am probably one of those "Grammar Nazis" that everyone likes to jump on. After 26 years in law, grammar and spelling errors just jump out at me. I try to SOB. But, if I have to read something three times and I still don't understand the message the poster is trying to convey, it irritates me to no end.

Angela, me too! I try to squelch my Grammar Nazi tendencies but sometimes it's hard.

My son and his wife were recently wed. Someone special ordered a large retro window frame with their name and wedding date painted on it. Very elaborate and well done. BUT, it said: "The Smith's." Set my teeth on edge.

Such errors jump out at me too, angela, also from a career reviewing written material. Even if I can understand the meaning, seeing things like when people use apostrophes for plurals or confuse there/their, lose/loose, affect/effect, principle/principal, and scores of others, don't make me crazy but I think reflect very poorly on the writers, more than they realize.

My concern is that if I see and hear incorrect things often enough, they start to seem correct. I can't tell you how many Judge Judy's I've see where people say:

I seen him

Me and her went

and get borrow and lend confused !?!

I don't understand how dinning room got started. I spell in dining room. :). I'm sure I make many mistakes myself though...

That said:

My pet peeve. (I know it won't change so I'm trying for acceptance.)

I will always mentally correct people when;

if I was

is said as opposed to;

if I were.

If (and wish) can never be with was because if means it didn't happen in real life. If never was. But sometimes I wish it were by just wishing for it. ;)

Oh, I left one out - "yesterday I was suppose to do .... but I didn't have a chance".

Monday in my composition class is correcting wordiness day due to the fact that there is a problem with wordiness which is due to fact that they utilize too many words when they are writing the essays which are assigned and have to complete because they have to. Got It? LOL

Scott, I can see that happening when students are told to write a 1,000-word essay and they really only need 750 words to say what they want to say. :-)

A young woman I have known for nearly 20 years is the daughter of friends of ours. She is married and the mother of two young school-age children. We are also "Facebook friends." This woman posts a lot of photos on FB, always with accompanying verbiage. Nine times out of 10, there will be a grammatical error, and she repeats the same errors, so apparently no one in her family or closest circle of friends ever corrects her. For example, she always writes defiantly when she really means definitely. Every time I see her posts, I wonder about her "helping" her kids with their homework.

Sure but the thing is sometimes you start writing about something and the thoughts begin to come and it's hard to put them together while still remembering all the different things we're supposed to do when writing to make the words and structure understandable for readers who often aren't paying that close attention anyway because they may be distracted and thinking about other things too like social media on their phones on those days when they've remembered to charge their phones. When people forget to charge their phones, there's no problem, so that's the real solution.

Elmer see Longman Handbook on grammar 37a and 37b for help with run on sentences. LOL

It was intentional, I'm sure you know.

Has American education gotten worse, or do we just see and hear more 'ordinary people' attempting to communicate? (Or "comoonicate', as some people pronounce it now, in the month of Feb-u-ary?)

Angela -- The 'otters' were just for fun. Elmer got it.

Possibly the education system is worse. And with the advent of the internet, more people are writing - typing - their thoughts for public consumption. What used to be put in private letters is now sent out for the world to see.

I can see how people get mixed up about dining room, dinning room. It might seem logical that you have dinner in the dinning room.

I disagree about "impactful" being a valid word. The main gripe is that impactful is illogical because the suffix –ful means full of, and impact is not a quantity and hence can’t fill anything. The problems with this complaint are (1) that –ful also means having the quality of, and that (2) impact bears the secondary sense the power to make an impression, and such power can be a quantity. Source "http://grammarist.com/words/impactful/";

I sometimes don't know whether I should blame people or autocorrect these days. I was texting a friend about lunch at panera's but it kept coming out pancreas.

Be glad it was only pancreas, I've heard of spell check making an innocent statement into a vulgarism. You should try reading some college essays, they're either scary or funny.

A book was published long before the days of the Internet. An autobiography of the opera singer Beverly Sills. The l was deleted from the word public.

My first job in state service was as a proofreader for the Legislature. You'd be amazed at how many bills are introduced each year for the sole purpose of amending pubic to public.

Dinning rooms are where people go to be noisy.

Lindsey, I think you're off a bit with the accepted Dr usage thing. I missed your comment earlier

It's either Dr. John Smith, or John Smith, MD. Not Dr John Smith, MD. That's redundant.

Or the dentist Dr. John Smith, or John Smith DDS. Not Dr John Smith DDS.

Or the academic Dr. John Smith, or John Smith PhD.

I too think using Dr. outside of a work context, like for travel reservations, for someone with a PhD, EdD, etc., is pretentious and wrong. But, they can do as they wish. We have a professor friend that does that. We also have family members with real medical doctorates who NEVER refer to themselves as Dr this or that outside of their occupational activities. That's a lot more classy in my mind. "You're Dr Bob XXXX? No, please just call me Bob".

A degree from law school is a JD but they're never called Dr. More typical in a mail address would be John Smith, Esq. Interestingly, there are advanced law degrees (that some take after law school) and they are a variation of LL.M, Masters in (subject studied), like LL.M Taxation, or International Law, etc. So after the Juris Doctor degree comes a Masters Degree.

The one exception is chiropractors, who seem to call themselves Dr John Smith DC. They're not real doctors anyway and they're few so for me, they can call themselves what they want.

Maybe this will help with correct title designations: http://emilypost.com/advice/official-forms-of-address/

I still use my "Emily Post" from decades ago and find it useful. I would guess that they're rarely given as graduation presents anymore.

How does eveyone feel about the use of "exact same"?

'Exact same' is redundant. 'Exactly the same as' would be correct.

Lie and lay are tricky. I lie down on a bed. I lay / am laying a cloth on the table. (Now I lay me down to sleep. Lay must have an object.) I already laid the cloth on the table.

I think the past of lie is lay but not sure: Last night I lay down to sleep. ? Or laid ? This was driving me crazy as I had lain? down and could not sleep. I'm too tired to look it up.

I hear people commonly say that they "feel bad" and I am thinking, BADLY the word is BADLY !

Many of my students confuse adjectives with adverbs. Oh I could go on and on. And then there is the idiom my bad.

I always wondered what to someone with a PhD in nursing...Dr Nurse? Nurse doctor?

A PhD in nursing would be the same as the listing for University Professor. If you have obtained a PhD, no matter the subject, the correct form is Dr. "name". To those that don't agree with anyone other than a physician using Dr., it takes years of work and dedication to complete a PhD so I feel the distinction is deserved.