Here are five of my pet peeves from student writing in recent years.
1.) Mistakenly writing “defiantly” instead of “definitely.” Bill Gates is partly to blame for this. When you misspell “definitely” and right-click in Microsoft Word to get a list of possible spellings, for some reason the word “defiantly” consistently pops up at the top of the pick-list. This leads to an overabundance of adolescent defiance in student-written sentences. For example, “I will defiantly not make that mistake again!”
2.) Misspelling “lose” as “loose.” To lose is the opposite of to win. Loose, on the other hand, is the opposite of tight. Their spellings are not interchangeable. Just remember -- when you lose something, lose an “o.”
3.) Spelling “all right” as one word: “alright.” What’s wrong with this? It’s “alwrong.”
4.) Using “over” instead of “more than” in terms of number. My opposition to this usage is a remnant from my newspaper days and the guidance of the authoritative Associated Press Stylebook. “Over” indicates a spatial relationship, as in “My hand is over the table,” whereas “more than” indicates number. “We have more than 20 desks in the classroom.” By this guidance, you would never write, “We have over 20 desks in the classroom.” Having worked up my dander about this issue, the latest guidance from the AP Stylebook apparently now allows “over” in such situations (http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/244240/ap-removes-distinction-between-over-and-more-than/). I suppose this just proves the evolutionary nature of language. (Next time we’ll cover “less than” vs. “fewer than”).
5.) The last pet peeve mystifies me. For some unfathomable reason, students consistently use the plural “women” in place of singular “woman.” As in the sentence, “A women put on her dress.” In high school writing assignments, girls seem to make this mistake as often as boys do. But students never reverse “men” and “man.” Alas, I have no rational explanation for this.
© 2014 Bob Dial. All rights reserved.
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