Ooohh yes. 'Could care less' is one of my most hated common errors. How can you get that wrong? Do people even think before they say it? "Could care less...oh I COULD care less!". I mean what the heck?
As someone who often corrects spelling and grammar (and rarely, punctuation), I find it strange that certain people have a sense of pride in their lack of lingual skill. While I can accept that it is difficult to learn English as a second language (many seem to have problems as their first, after all), it is quite another matter entirely to ignore, refuse or even become angry when offered help. The main reason I can find for this is laziness, i.e. unwillingness to better one's own skills. I believe lazy people deserve whatever they get.
Ooohh yes. 'Could care less' is one of my most hated common errors. How can you get that wrong? Do people even think before they say it? "Could care less...oh I COULD care less!". I mean what the heck?
I couldn't care less. -> I care so little, it's not even possible to care less.
I could care less. -> I care too much, this topic isn't really that important. So, I could care less without having to endour any negative consequences.
Doesn't it work somewhat like this? I don't see why the second one should be regarded as a mistake in every situation. Also, I don't understand people who get upset about mistakes.
As for mistakes like their/there/they're.. I guess they just happen because you kind of imagine yourself talking and then convert word by word into letters and some words just sound the same. In contexts where mistakes are allowed, I always catch myself mixing up "dass" and "das" in German which is my first language. While chatting I don't even bother to correct myself if I spot myself misusing them, as it would just unnecessarily distract from the topic. (Is it correct to use 'spot' in this context btw? My English teacher said it wasn't) So making those mistakes doesn't necessarily mean the author doesn't know the difference.
Edit: I just realized that last sentence of my post could be logically incorrect. Is it? I'm not sure because I seem to be referring to people in general in the first part of the sentence and to the author in the second one.. Trying not to make mistakes is really troublesome..
Affect is also a noun, but it is never used correctly. Likewise, affective is an actual word, but people almost always would mean effective when using the former.
While chatting I don't even bother to correct myself if I spot myself misusing them, as it would just unnecessarily distract from the topic. (Is it correct to use 'spot' in this context btw? My English teacher said it wasn't) So making those mistakes doesn't necessarily mean the author doesn't know the difference.
Edit: I just realized that last sentence of my post could be logically incorrect. Is it? I'm not sure because I seem to be referring to people in general in the first part of the sentence and to the author in the second one.. Trying not to make mistakes is really troublesome..
Re the first question: "Spot" works fine there. So does "catch", "find", "notice", and "see".
Re the second: I'm pretty sure it's ok to construct a sentence like that. I would have said "So someone making those mistakes doesn't necessarily not know the difference"... Both sentences have double negatives but mine are closer together so your sentence probably gets the message across faster.
mmbossman wrote:
mr_roberts_z wrote:
Warp wrote:
Question: Is this contraction correct?
"The rest of it is not difficult." -> "The rest of it's not difficult."
A bit less obvious:
Wrong: "I would do it if it was possible, but it isn't."
Right: "I would do it if it were possible, but it isn't."
Ok, perhaps not *wrong* per se, but quite informal at least.
1) The progressive tense of the verb to die is dying, not "dieing". (Look it up in a dictionary if you don't believe me.) The same goes for to lie -> lying.
Yes, that can be a little annoying sometimes. But I think that writing it the correct way (dying) is also annoying, because it makes no sense. It's more intuitive to write "dieing".
There are several annoying things in the English language that make no sense, but it (American, not English) is still the best language. Finnish is the language that makes most sense.
Warp wrote:
Wrong: "I would do it if it was possible, but it isn't."
I think this sounds best, so I would probably write like that even if it was wrong.
English spelling doesn't make much sense because it's a historical spelling and as a result isn't up to date with the way words are pronounced anymore. Forms like 'sitted' and spellings like 'dieing' are disallowed to keep well educated people in power. Short forms like 'sat' in spoken language are used to reduce slips of the ear and to convey meaning faster and with lesser effort for the speaker.
