Writing that really pisses me off

I don't call people to task for their spelling or grammar. It seems needlessly nit-picky to me, and irrelevant as long as communication is unimpaired. Besides, in a world of email and texting, it's impossible.

But I do have a couple of pet peeves. There are no such words as "irregardless" nor "orientate". (Ooo, those two piss me off!)

The phrase is "toe the line", not "tow the line". One "makes contact", not "contacts" - it's not a verb, whether Merriam-Webster thinks so or not. And finally, the correct plural of "octopus" is NOT "octopi" - it's a greek word, not latin, and the correct plural of "pus" is equally "poda" or "puses".

It's a shame, I think, that we are losing rigor in language. Besides the loss of appreciation of the wonderfully subtle humor available in poetry and the beauty of a well-stated concept or argument, it leads to a loss of precision in thinking itself - anathema not only to people who specialize in words and literature, but also to technical people like myself, who work in fields requiring the accurate communication of ideas.

Anybody have any I haven't heard of?

While I'm certainly far, far, far away from saying that popular usage equates with correct lingustics, I would like to note that any real hard-line language prescriptivist ought to be using 'thou' a lot more often.

For far more thought on the language wars than I could ever hope to summarize, please see David Foster Wallace's essay in Harper's, here.

Speaking of, "thou", I think one should use, "one", alot more often instead of, "you". I think one could use this word, 'one', more often when one refers to instructing other people on what they could do.

I use thou all the time. I'm afraid 'one' sounds much to 'Royal Family' for me.

Bring back 'verily' 'forsooth' and 'poontang'

Not my point. I don't advocate a return to Chacerian english; I'm simply saying that sloppiness in expression is indicative of sloppiness of thought. The examples I used fall into two categories: Things said by people who wish to appear better-educated than they actually are ("octopi"), and things distorted beyond their meaning ("towing" the line is not "toeing" the line).

Ongoing evolution of language is to be encouraged.

Aren't you going to nail me for ending the sentence with a preposition?

I was more picking up on your refusal of 'contact' to become a verb, despite its wide usage as such, and its publication in at least one dictionary as such. Doesn't that constitute evolution of the language?

That doesn't mean that we can whittle down to only one version of every simple homonym (their are to many reasons not to), but not allowing words to expand to different parts of speech is decidedly old-school prescriptivist.

You missed the part where I did!

This thread can be quite useful to me being a teacher of English and all that... I like it.

My biggest, as you all know, is misuse of the word irony.

Also, anytime you use the verb "where" in a question, following it with "at" is redundant.

BOAB should of posted in this thread by now.

I am rather surprised that no one has mentioned grocer's apostrophe's.