I've reached breaking point. I can't stand it any more! Why can't people learn to write their native language correctly? It's not that hard! I'm sure teachers have been complaining about this forever, but it has only been with the advent of the world-wide web and the essentially unrestricted ability of the populace to get published therein that the common person (meaning people without experience in journalism or literature) has been able to write and put it somewhere where a great number of other people can read it, without having to filter their work through any sort of review, editing, or publishing process. And I believe it's steadily leading to the degradation of the language. People who don't know the difference between two words use them interchangeably, and eventually everyone starts to accept them as being interchangeable. The nuances and idiosyncrasies of our language are slowly changing or disappearing altogether and it's largely due to ignorance. The past-tense of "dream" used to be "dreamt." Now it's "dreamed," just like every other past-tense in the language ends in "ed." How about "knelt"? Everyone accepts "kneeled" these days without batting an eye. As soon as "feeled" replaces "felt," I'm just going to shoot myself.
And a few of my linguistic pet peeves:
complement vs. compliment: They can both be a verb or a noun, but they NEVER mean the same thing. To complement something (verb) means to complete it or match it somehow, whereas a (full) complement (noun) means a having a complete set of something. Compliment, on the other hand, means to say something nice about someone (verb), or the nice thing you said (noun). They're different, and dumbasses who don't know the difference shouldn't be allowed to use them in writing.
Ensure vs. insure: This is perhaps one of the most egregious examples, wherein they used to be completely separate words, and now they're largely accepted in lieu of each other. Or rather, "insure" can now be used in place of "ensure," but most people don't use "ensure" to mean "insure." To "ensure" something means to make sure of it. To "insure" something means to set aside or establish some sort of compensation in case it breaks or falls through, etc. Every time I see documentation that says "We'd done blah to insure the proper functioning of blah," I want to call up the company and tell them it's NOT working right, and I expect my insurance payment to be mailed promptly.
Affect vs. effect: These are probably the most misused words I know, and yet they're TOTALLY DIFFERENT! For the most part, "effect" is a noun, and "affect" is a verb. "Cause and effect" vs. "You can see how your actions affect others." Effect can be a verb, though, and affect can be a noun, but when effect is a verb, it means to bring something into existence, and when affect is a noun, it refers specifically to an effect having to do with someone's emotions. Here's the usage note from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: "Affect and effect have no senses in common. As a verb affect is most commonly used in the sense of “to influence” (how smoking affects health). Effect means “to bring about or execute”: "layoffs designed to effect savings." Thus the sentence "These measures may affect savings" could imply that the measures may reduce savings that have already been realized, whereas "These measures may effect savings" implies that the measures will cause new savings to come about." There, I think that says it.
And what about punctuation? Specifically, apostrophes. I'm not going to bemoan the improper use of "its" and "it's", because most people know when they're using them wrong, and they're just too lazy to care, and I think that's a battle that is already lost. English will always respect the difference between the two (meaning that the ambivalence of the public will never cause the two to become interchangeable in proper usage), but people will always be too lazy to care. I'm fine with that. I'm just upset about people's IGNORANCE of the language causing the language to get dumbed down.
No, I'd rather talk about the use of apostrophes for possessive forms. Get this: even if a word ends in "s", you still put "'s" after it to make it possessive, whether it's a proper noun or not. If you're talking about a ball that belongs to James, you're talking about James's ball, not James' ball. If you're talking about seats on a bus, they're the bus's seats, not the bus' seats. It's not that hard. There are only two times you add just an apostrophe and not an s: Plural nouns (e.g., the cars' engines), and if the singular noun ends in "s" and is followed immediately in the sentence by a word that starts with "s" or "sh" (e.g., the witness' statement, the boss' secretary, or the octopus' suckers). Now, I can forgive misuse of apostrophes under the last rule, because it's obscure and doesn't really add anything to the language, but the rest are EASY TO REMEMBER, and there's really no excuse for making a mistake. If you do, you're either too lazy or too ignorant to know better, and if you're old enough to figure out how to start a blog, you should have already had enough English classes in public schooling to get this right.
Oh, and don't use apostrophes to pluralize nouns. No matter how badly you want to, resist the temptation. If you're talking about several of them, then you're talking about apostrophes, not apostrophe's.
Alright, I think I'm done. I can come up with tons more examples, but I'm satisfied with my rant. It has served the purpose of venting on the subject.
And I'm spent. Toodles.
