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The other day, RPadholic smartguy posted a comment about social media making the world dumber because it ignores poor spelling and punctuation. In this particular case, Texas Rangers pitcher and chief misogyny officer Matt Garza was guilty of a common Internet mistake — using “there” instead of “their.” Garza meant to menacingly tweet, “Some people can’t shut their woman up!” but instead wrote, “Some people can’t shut there woman up!”
All of us have misused there/their/they’re, its/it’s, and your/you’re. Smartguy is absolutely right though — the Internet is making it worse. Instead of lamenting the fact, let’s celebrate it! What are some of your favorite Internet grammar and usage errors? Here are some of mine.
- Could Care Less: This is one I used to mess up frequently, until RPadholic N8R schooled me in the comments section of a G4tv story. People use this phrase when they’re trying to say that they don’t give a dman. What they should say is couldn’t care less.
- All Intensive Purposes: This is one of my favorites. I see this one a lot on ESPN.com and various boxing forums. I rarely see it on comics, gaming, and tech blogs. My theory is that nerds that like sports are smarter people than sports fans that don’t like geeky things. Anyway, it should be all intents and purposes. A Doghouseboxing reader completely butchered the phrase and wrote, “All in tents and porpoises.” That gave me a three-day headache.
- Mute Point: What’s that? I can’t hear you. You must be making a mute point. Bwahahahahaha!!! No, imbecile, (Don Keefer™) it’s a moot point.
- Nip it in the Butt: I don’t understand why people get this one wrong. It’s nip it in the bud. If you equate a problem with a flower, then you nip it in the bud before it can bloom into something larger. Saying that you want to nip it in the butt is another way of saying you like to bite ass, which only makes sense if you’re Marv Albert.
Anyway, those are my favorite Internet grammar and usage errors. Kindly leave some of yours in the comments section!
A few of my hated:
b = be
ur = you are or your
n = and
azz = ass
Then there are the idiots who can’t use then and than or too and to.
The best one ever is “your an idiot”. No explanation necessary.
That is a classic! “Your an Idiot” and “All Intensive Purposes” are the names of my next two bands.
Ha! Funny u started this post. Ive been watching CM Punks Grammar Slam on YouTube. He rants about peoples bad grammar that he receives via twitter and mail.
I used to take stuff like this for granite, until my dumbass realized that I actually took it granted.
I’d like to add the dumbasses who use “I payed my bill” or “I got payed”. Idiots.
Gah! Totally forgot about one of my favorites: pre madonna. I love responding to that one with, “No, he’s a post madonna.” *sigh* Prima donna is such a lovely term.
The current stoopid spelling outrage that seems to have gone viral and infuriates me most is the use of “loose” for “lose” as in “he’s a total looser.” This abuse of language has thoroughly infected the net and is seen in all variations of the word. The misguided principle behind it seems to have jumped to other similarly constructed words that contain a single “o” but are pronounced as if there were two identical vowels instead, when followed by a consonant; just a few days ago a knuckle-dragging troll offered to “proove” some inane proposition or other. As I said before, this is just stoopid.