You know who everyone loves? The guy who constantly corrects everyone’s grammar. I hope that this list helps you become That Guy and, in the process, make tons and tons of new friends.
Here are a few examples:
* Try and. The correct phrase is “try to.” It really does make sense logically — the trying is part of the action. I don’t try and say goodbye and I choke, I try to say goodbye and I choke. (I also try i walk away and I stumble.)
* Anxious versus eager. You can be anxious about something, but not anxious to do something. That’s eagerness. Anxious suggests a sense of nervousness or fear.
* e.g. versus i.e. These two are used interchangeably, but actually have different meanings (and different correct usages).
e.g. stands for the Latin phrases “exempli gratia” — meaning “for example.” It can be followed by any number of examples from any size set of possible examples.
i.e. stands for the Latin phrase “id est” — meaning “that is.” It should be followed by all of the applicable examples, leaving none behind.
* Collide. For things to collide, they both have to be in motion. You can’t have a head-on collision with a pole — unless you’re talking about driving your car into someone named Kowalski. (That’s a big fat HI-YO for you right there. Aww yeah!)
Thanks for the lesson! I had no idea you could not collide with a stationary object. Now we could take this to a higher level by saying that everything on Earth is moving, at an astonishing speed, because the Earth is revolving around the Sun. What then? Does that nullify this analogy?
e.g. and i.e. look like very early versions of txting.
<—————–does not care
Obnoxiously proving the obnoxious grammer trolls wrong in 3, 2, 1…
Re:Collide
For things to collide only one needs to be in motion. To measure the forces on an object, that object is taken as the frame of reference and everything else is taken as being in relative velocity to that object. To say that an object isnt moving can never be correct, it is just not moving relative to whatever your perspective is. Remember that the planet itself is moving, and therefor everything on it must be also.
The human brain percieves the earth as being still, because we are moving at the same speed that it is. At the same time, anything that is moving with the same velocity of the ground around it is also percieved to be motionless. Everything is always in motion, and can only be considered not to be moving when talking about relative motion, and then the relative part should be defined.
🙂
Then there was a colleague of mine, many years ago, who *swore* that the light pole jumped out at her while she was minding her own business. She also swore that she never drank before driving, though.
This is almost comical – the corrections mentioned are so blindingly obvious that my ESL students wouldn’t make them. The ‘errors’ are actually colloquialisms, merely an example of how young people (or otherwise ignorant folk) simply are lazy to learn the rules of the language, and just use it however they wish.
This can be annoying to ignorant, bigoted, and educated people who believe that they know better.
On the issue of collision – I would say that (to me, personally, from my language background and useage) a car and tree may collide, but I would rather say a car hit the tree. The tree is not ACTIVE. It is not so much a question of motion. The East and the West may collide on political issues, but I can hardly see the continents move!
Apologising for not reading before I posted my previous comment (and having no apparent option to edit) I would like to add that ignorance of the language is not something necessarily evil, and that being lazy to learn preset rules, and finding new ways to use language is actually the entire process through which language is developed.
Even people who studied all the rules do this, and people most widely educated will probably have the largest number of possible options to employ at any given time innit.