Funny/annoying grammatical mistakes and odd neologisms

I make typos more and more, or write, for example, "there" instead of "their." But I'd expect a top news organization to be more careful. Here are three sloppy high-school-student-like errors I noticed on the ABC news mobile site within five minutes.

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The habits aren't surprising. It may be surprising that they are related to your immune system, but they are not "surprising habits."

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From the article, I take it they mean "Russia doubts the IAEA..." or "Russians have doubts concerning..."

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She made pink ribbons synonymous with breast cancer awareness, or she made pink ribbons ubiquitous, she didn't make them ubiquitous with breast cancer awareness.
 
Some media favorites:
Someone who went missing when they actually disappeared
Something or someone in close proximity
My bad (cringe)
The very best of...
 
All of these posts are funny and stimulating. Speaking (or writing) or media errors, I guess it is not an error but newspaper writing drives me crazy. I cannot believe the writers that put 40-45 words in a sentence. It's like they are running out of ink printing commas and periods. I'm not sure there are rules about this but by the time I get half way through the sentence, I've lost the thought. Many times I go back and ask myself, "what are they saying"? Maybe they are saving typing space but this drives me nuts. Sometimes a sentence becomes a paragraph because it's so long. Anyone notice this?
 
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JOHNNIE36 said:
.........Anyone notice this?
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I have noticed this and it seems like it is getting worse every year, though it could be a result of my having more time to read, both on the internet and in print, given my retired state and general drift to becoming a curmudgeon over the last four years of retirement, although that not withstanding, the overall level of journalistic quality has nosedived with the onslaught of Craigslist, free alternative internet sources and the general demise of advertising revenues for print publications.
 
JOHNNIE36 said:
All of these posts are funny and stimulating. Speaking (or writing) or media errors, I guess it is not an error but newspaper writing drives me crazy. I cannot believe the writers that put 40-45 words in a sentence. It's like they are running out of ink printing commas and periods. I'm not sure there are rules about this but by the time I get half way through the sentence, I've lost the thought. Many times I go back and ask myself, "what are they saying"? Maybe they are saving typing space but this drives me nuts. Sometimes a sentence becomes a paragraph because it's so long. Anyone notice this?
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I notice long sentences more and more lately. I think media staffs have been cut so much that the remaining senior writers don't have time for rewrite or thoughtfully pondering their sentence structure, and the replacements that have been hired are making peanuts and really don't have the writing skills of a T-Al or the time to decide between ubiquitous or synonymous before that article has to be slapped up on the paper's website (my long sentence, like Travelover's above I believe, is on purpose :) )
 
mickeyd said:
DW uses "six of one, half dozen of another" several times a week. In a conversation yesterday, she must have used it half dozen times. Other than that, she's perfect.
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That was a very common expression while I was growing up. Long ago, just for fun, I started saying "half of one, six dozen of the other" and I'm not at all sure that anyone has ever noticed.
 
braumeister said:
That was a very common expression while I was growing up. Long ago, just for fun, I started saying "half of one, six dozen of the other" and I'm not at all sure that anyone has ever noticed.
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A few times I've said "It's not rocket surgery," but I don't think anyone noticed, and if they did, they probably thought I just made a mistake.
 
TromboneAl said:
A few times I've said "It's not rocket surgery," but I don't think anyone noticed, and if they did, they probably thought I just made a mistake.
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I always use that one, too. Same reaction. People hear what they expect to hear.
 
braumeister said:
People hear what they expect to hear.
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Yes, that's very true. I think that's why most people don't even notice the kinds of errors I displayed above.

I do it, too. I record my piano lessons, and when I listen back, I've noticed that sometimes what I remember hearing is different from what the teacher actually said.
 
Are you guys suggesting that 'Rocket Surgery' is somehow incorrect?

Wow..is MY face red.:blush:
 
Another example:
"But Obama also conceded there was much more work to do, adding "I don't think the country is stronger yet then it was when the economy was still booming and we didn't have the ". . .

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/02/boehner-to-obama-are-you-kidding-me/?iref=obinsite

Either the president made a glaring grammatical error or he was misquoted by CNN Congressional Producer Deirdre Walsh.

Where I went to school that would have come back with a big red circle around it, even outside of English class.

Maybe they were thinking about rocket surgery or brain science.
 
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Rustward said:
Another example:
"But Obama also conceded there was much more work to do, adding "I don't think the country is stronger yet then it was when the economy was still booming and we didn't have the ". . .
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You mean the "then" instead of "than?" If Obama was speaking, there's no way to know whether he said "then" or "than," so I assume the reporter just wrote the wrong one.
 
misanman said:
The one that bugs me is when people use "myself" instead of "me".
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I'm sure they just do it to avoid having to know whether they should use "I" or "me."

When someone says something like "Tom and me went to the store" I want to ask whether they would ever say "Me went to the store." People say "He asked Tom and I for some help" but would never say "He asked I for some help."

In elementary school I was taught to just eliminate the "Tom and" part to figure out which to use, but I found that that takes too long. If you're in the middle of a sentence, there isn't enough time to reword it in your head.

I find that it's quicker to just think about whether I'm dealing with the subject (e.g. Tom and I are going to do something) or the object (e.g. Something is going to be done to Tom and Me).

But the order of the words (whether you say "Me and Tom" or "Tom and me") isn't rocket surgery, so I don't know why anyone gets that wrong ("Me and Tom went to the store").

Of course, these are all arbitrary conventions...
 
TromboneAl said:
You mean the "then" instead of "than?" If Obama was speaking, there's no way to know whether he said "then" or "than," so I assume the reporter just wrote the wrong one.
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It is most likely the reporter got it wrong.

So many people write this way that it makes me wonder if they know the difference between then and than. It seems like most of the time when the wrong word is used, "then" is used where "than" should have been used.

When they speak, are they speaking "then" or "than"? Likely "then". That would likely be what they are thinking , also, and they would probably write "then" where they should write "than".

You're/your is also common. It seems like the people who get this wrong tend to use "your" where they should use "you're".

Big red circles.
 
mickeyd said:
DW uses "six of one, half dozen of another" several times a week. In a conversation yesterday, she must have used it half dozen times. Other than that, she's perfect.
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Are you sure it wasn't six times?

TromboneAl said:
A few times I've said "It's not rocket surgery," but I don't think anyone noticed, and if they did, they probably thought I just made a mistake.
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Brain scientist doesn't have the same ring to it...
 
TromboneAl said:
But the order of the words (whether you say "Me and Tom" or "Tom and me") isn't rocket surgery, so I don't know why anyone gets that wrong ("Me and Tom went to the store").

Of course, these are all arbitrary conventions...
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Weeeellll....it's not arbitrary if Tom is a rocket surgeon. And my friend Tom is a rocket surgeon!
 
He lowered himself from the horse gingerly. Gingerly is not an adverb, it is an adjective. Should be "He lowered himself from the horse in a gingerly manner".
 
John Galt III said:
He lowered himself from the horse gingerly. Gingerly is not an adverb, it is an adjective.
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Perhaps in this case it is a proper name. The error could be simply one of capitalization, as you show correctly in your second sentence above.

Note: Unlike the song, this was not a horse with no name. :)
 
REWahoo said:
I think you mispelled grammer...:cool:
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OK, this is hilarious!

Inspired by your riposte, I did a google search on grammar versus grammer which turned some pretty funny sites, but the best one of all was Facebook offering to connect you with people who spell grammar as grammer!

People who spell Grammar as Grammer | Facebook
Community. Want to like or comment on this page? Want to interact with People who spell Grammar as Grammer? You need to join Facebook first.....

Incredible!

Oh, and the ad assigner (or whatever that kind of software is called) already found the page which proudly displays an ad for the book English Grammar for Dummies!

Audrey
 
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I probably told this story, but I was involved in creating an educational computer game called "The Grammar Examiner."

When getting ready to ship, we discovered that one of the review blurbs on the box had the word spelled as "grammer.". We solved it with a sticker.
 
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