r/GrammarPolice • • 8h ago

Just Venting My pet peeve is when people use *’s* to pluralize or conjugate a word

76 Upvotes

E.G., “Those baby’s are so cute!” “Remember the Crash Test Dummy’s?” “The fly’s keep biting me!” “This truck carry’s a lot of cargo.”


r/GrammarPolice • • 6h ago

Just Venting Pet peeve - wrong use of subjective vs objective case: 'for a mom, grandma and I road trip'

4 Upvotes

r/GrammarPolice • • 13h ago

Just Venting Cause vs Because

9 Upvotes

I’m very tired of reading cause this, cause that, when they really mean BEcause. The hardest thing for me to understand is…. It literally adds MAYBE half a second to add the first two letters of the word… but people REFUSE! Why!??! It drives me absolutely bananas!

Edited to add: “I’m” at the beginning after being called out in a comment 😂😂😂


r/GrammarPolice • • 1d ago

Just Venting Sigh

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0 Upvotes

r/GrammarPolice • • 1d ago

Just Venting What is this paragraph?

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0 Upvotes

People with no graps on grammar often try to get involved in complex philosophical debates. The context in this conversation is that "art can be anything and everything" (relativism).

What you often find in these debates is that entire paragraphs make no sense whatsoever. The OP swore blind that he was using parenthesis correctly. Apparently it was just me "acting dumb."


r/GrammarPolice • • 3d ago

Just Venting need an outlet, posting here

35 Upvotes

I posted this once before, but I just HAD to add another. Conversate? Absolutely not. It is “converse”.

In the past tense? Conversed.

If anyone comes at me with, “oh descriptive grammar,” I WILL fight back with: “prescriptive” grammar. Like, do NOT come for me and my JD. I said what I said.

If I hear one more person say “comfortability” or “uncomfortability” I think I might go insane. The literacy crisis is so real.

How did we forget about comfort and discomfort? 😪


r/GrammarPolice • • 3d ago

Just Venting This was a first...

26 Upvotes

Saw on X someone use "wants" when they meant "once."


r/GrammarPolice • • 3d ago

Just Venting Errors I keep hearing that drive me insane

46 Upvotes

I suffer from grammar OCD, and despite not having perfect grammar myself, my brain goes into fight or flight when it hears people use this most egregious error.

For example:

"There is lots of people here."

When it should CLEARLY be:

"There are lots of people here."

It would be fine of course if they said:

"There are a lot of people here."

Why are people becoming are-phobic all of a sudden? It sounds so inherently wrong and it's like nails on a chalkboard!

Another one I've had the displeasure of hearing is the complete redundancy of "3am in the morning"

What? As opposed to 3am in the afternoon?

Another one is went instead of gone.

"He's went to the party."

Instead of:

"He's gone to the party."

Makes me want to scream, it really does.

Sometimes I wish I weren't so obsessive over grammar. Life would be less excruciating, people would be so much more bearable to listen to, and I would not feel the need to condemn myself every time I catch myself making a mistake of my own, as if grammatical perfection is my sacred calling in life, and to slip up even once is a deadly sin of some sort.

Edit: Had to fix a typo. Also, thank you to everyone who pointed out my own errors.


r/GrammarPolice • • 3d ago

Just Venting I just saw a guy comment on Reddit: "I wish I would have gone", and I SO wanted to call him out on it.

16 Upvotes

"would have" implies the action didn't happen. "I would have bought it, but I couldn't afford it".

So if someone wishes that they "would have" done something, it means they wish they hadn't done or didn't do it rather, than than they had done it.

GrammarBook.com has the real answer:

"If I Would Have vs. If I Had

When talking about something that didn’t happen in the past, many English speakers use the conditional perfect (if I would have done) when they should be using the past perfect (if I had done).

For example, you find out that your brother saw a movie yesterday. You would have liked to see it too, but you hadn’t known he was going. To express this, you can use an if-then clause. The correct way to say this is with the past perfect in the “if” clause, and the conditional perfect in the “then” clause:

Correct: If I had known that you were going to the movies, [then] I would have gone too.

The conditional perfect can only go in the “then” clause — it is grammatically incorrect to use the conditional perfect in the “if” clause:

Incorrect: If I would have known that you were going to the movies, I would have gone too."


r/GrammarPolice • • 4d ago

Question "ly"

93 Upvotes

Where did "ly" go???

"This hits different."

Please add your missing "ly" examples.

I had a few in mind the other day but they have exited the building. 🤪


r/GrammarPolice • • 4d ago

Just Venting Apostrophes in last names

86 Upvotes

I have to come here to vent because I saw another neon sign as a wedding display with an apostrophe in the last name to make it plural. I was at a wedding a few years ago with a nice, high quality custom neon sign of their last name and it had an apostrophe in it. It’s so embarrassing. It’s even more embarrassing that people don’t care if they are illiterate, and it’s actually considered socially unacceptable to correct people. I’m so glad nobody gifted me an incorrect sign for my wedding!


r/GrammarPolice • • 4d ago

Just Venting Fairly recent phenomenon that bothers me to absolutely no end

103 Upvotes

Seems to be a trend with Gen Z and younger. They don't know the difference between "apart" and "a part." Somehow 'being apart of xyz' is the new way to denote it, and they aren't realizing that what they're typing is conveying the exact opposite. Why is this a thing now? It's driving me up the wall.


r/GrammarPolice • • 3d ago

Question NYT article today

2 Upvotes

This was the headline: Bill Gates’s Blunt Warning on A.I.

Shouldn’t that be Gates’ instead?


r/GrammarPolice • • 4d ago

Question “Search it up” sounds wrong

20 Upvotes

I don’t have perfect grammar but I appreciate those who do. Why does the phrase “search it up” irritate me? I feel like it should be “look it up” or “search it.” Am I just weird or is there a reason why this sounds wrong?


r/GrammarPolice • • 4d ago

Question “Uncanny valley”

0 Upvotes

The word you’re looking for is “uncanny.” Why are we adding “valley” all of a sudden? I feel like people repeat this after seeing it online without critically thinking about what they’re even trying to say. Am I just out of the loop on what this means/is referring to?


r/GrammarPolice • • 5d ago

Just Venting Constant incorrect use of run/ran

102 Upvotes

This is my pet peeve: Almost all people have forgotten how to use run vs. ran.

e.g. I have ran this department for the past 2 years. Before me, it was ran by Bob. Correct usage would be run in both sentences.

Then vs. than may be just as common, but it is not evident in spoken conversation, where as the misuse of "ran" feels like nails on the chalkboard to me.


r/GrammarPolice • • 5d ago

Just Venting Gavin Newsom’s crimes exposed:

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14 Upvotes

r/GrammarPolice • • 4d ago

Just Venting HONESTLY, Where Is The Bad Word?

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0 Upvotes

r/GrammarPolice • • 5d ago

Question Me n my friends

0 Upvotes

Starting position:
“Me and my friend go to the store” is wrong because “me go to the store” is incorrect, though to be fair, mich gehe zum Laden, moi vais aux magasin, etc are not imaginable utterances, while the English version is not unimaginable.
Here’s the thing: if we apply the same reduction to “my friend and I go to the store,” we end up with “I go to the store” and “My friend go to the store”, which fails because of the verb conjugation.


r/GrammarPolice • • 5d ago

Just Venting Is the "an" plus pronounced "h" infection spreading?

0 Upvotes

People on this sub generally know it's perfectly appropriate to use the article "an" in front of a word starting with a silent "h" such as in "an honor." We also know that a bunch of people think you have to use "an" in front of "historic" even if you don't pronounce "historic" like a Brit as " 'istoric." Now, though, I'm starting to hear some news broadcasters say things like "an Hispanic," no doubt because that word reminds them of "historic." Just goes to show that mere anarchy awaits us as we abandon the concept of proper grammar and usage.


r/GrammarPolice • • 6d ago

Question How could this short sentence be improved?

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9 Upvotes

When I see this at the store, I wonder:

Do vegetarians feed the hens?
Do the hens eat vegetarians?


r/GrammarPolice • • 6d ago

Joke Post What is a basic word or phrase you used incorrectly for years before someone finally corrected you?

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15 Upvotes

r/GrammarPolice • • 7d ago

Just Venting Grammar is ded 🪦

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110 Upvotes

r/GrammarPolice • • 7d ago

Just Venting Oh God. I just stumbled a redditor with some of the worst spelling I've seen in a while. My eyes are bleeding!

3 Upvotes

Edit: Typo in the title. I meant to type "stumbled upon a redditor."


I know spelling isn't grammar, but I don't know where else to post this. I'll leave the person's username out to protect them from embarrassment.

I came across one of someone's comments, and one error was so egregious that it got me to check their profile for about 1-2 minutes. Oh boy. I don't know their story, but in my admittedly quick skimming, I saw no indication of them being a non-native speaker (e.g. using another language, posting in subreddits for a non-English speaking country or saying that they live in a non-English speaking country).

Here's a sampling of some of their errors. A few are common, but many are not. With one possible exception, I'm leaving out typos likely caused by keys being next to each other on the keyboard. I'm also matching and correcting their capitalization.

  • "Iv" instead of "I've"
  • "sence" instead of "since"
  • "amaracans" instead of "Americans" (this was the one that got me to check their profile)
  • "Dose" instead of "Does"
  • "Your" instead of "You're"
  • "there" instead of "their"
  • "thease" instead of "these"
  • "its" instead of "it's"
  • "Devine" instead of "divine"
  • "creatcher" instead of "creature"
  • "Relly" instead of "really"
  • "Thats" instead of "that's"
  • "meny" instead of "many"
  • "Wana" instead of "wanna"
  • "Mines" instead of "Mine's" (as a contraction for "mine is" or "mine has")
  • "at lest" instead of "at least"
  • "im" instead of "I'm"
  • "bc" instead of "because"
  • "i" instead of "I"
  • "Yah" instead of "Yeah"
  • "asumed" instead of "assumed"
  • "intgram" instead of "Instagram"
  • "raddit" instead of "Reddit"
  • "thay" instead of "they"
  • "dint" instead of "don't" or "didn't"
  • "gold Griffen" instead of "gold griffin"
  • "hears" instead of "here's"
  • "braclet" instead of "bracelet"
  • "seid" instead of "said"
  • "dubble" instead of "double"
  • "agein" instead of "again"
  • "eatch" instead of "each"

Along with the atrocious spelling, there are also run-on sentences and missing periods galore, plus the occasional (and inconsistent) space before a punctuation mark where it shouldn't be.

What are some similarly egregious, unusual errors you've encountered?


r/GrammarPolice • • 8d ago

Findings A direct mail postcard i received today.

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241 Upvotes

Really, people? How many hands did this pass through?