If I hear these one more time......

My tolerance doesn't stretch to misuse of apostrophes. After my last post, I went to the active threads page where I spotted a title that really bugs me!

I have just received an email from a clothing company saying, "Should OF worn this today".
Since when was "of" a past participle?

Goodness, what a lot of hate there is on here, and such dogmatism too.

Since accepting that language evolves naturally and that grammar changes to reflect that (albeit more slowly) , I have to own up to now preferring many of the newer words and expressions frequently complained about on here, as opposed to their older - often, dare I say it, rather outdated - equivalents! But maybe that's just me. (See what I did there, deliberately starting a sentence with 'but'?

I have seen 'defiantly' used quite frequently where 'definitely' is the intended word. A lot of mistakes are a result of auto-correct and failure to check before posting.

I hate to hear or encounter any or 'all of the above' misdemeanours mentioned in previous comments. Yes, I think taking Latin at school did help' I took it to A level standard.

It especially grates on my nerves when people being interviewed on tv (especially (ex) politicians like Cameron) say 'gonna' instead of going to. How much did their parents pay ( waste) on their education!

Also, I hate incorrect spellings and the misuse of the apostrophe in public spaces and I always point it out to shopkeepers/businesses etc. whether they want to hear it or not. For example 'definitely' misspelt with an 'a' or an apostrophe used for a plural.

At work, (I work in education) I am constantly asking adults and children alike to say 'pardon' if they don't hear what is being said, not 'what' or 'huh'. Also, I hate the phrase, 'Do you want a bit more milk?' when it should be 'a drop'. You cannot have a bit of a liquid.

My absolute worst......"nookewlaar" instead of "nuclear". Heard George W Bush say it, and a couple of North Amercan News presenters.

Yes, yes, yes! I agree with everything that's been said. There seems to be a trend to ad words: "typing up", "parked up", "pre-recorded", "pre-ordered". I love the English language, grammar and I used to enjoy parsing - we did that when we were 11.

Our local council places road signs warning of forthcoming road works. They are all headed "Advanced Warning". Ugh.

I wonder how many of us did Latin at school? Is there a correlation between being pedantic English speakers/writers and our subject choices?

I have read 'I past the shop' and also 'in the passed' - a lot of confusion there! When I was teaching I lost count of the times I saw 'should of' 'could of' etc. Also rigid spelt as ridged which has quite a different meaning.
I get annoyed by 'very unique' or 'absolutely unique' too - it's either unique or not ie there's only one of the kind. But surely 'almost unique' is ok, ie there are only a few?
'Less' rather than 'fewer' is very common and very irritating. But the one that really drives me mad is 'it looks like it's going to rain' NO! It looks as if it's going to rain.

Oh yes BBevan - in primary school as well! I was an odd child I think, I actually enjoyed it!

ALL OF THE ABOVE! Sorry to be shouty.

'Gotten' has slithered into normal use, too.

The phrase " on sale" used to mean "in the sale" - of course they are on sale as they're in the shop but are they in the sale? Where has this come from? I too hate "can I get...." instead of "please may I have..." A contestant on Only Connect even asked if he could "get the twisted flax please"!

Did anyone do ' parsing' in English grammar lessons. I loved doing that ?

'Let's eat Grandma' has a completely different meaning to 'Let's eat, Grandma'. Punctuation is everything!

From Oxford Living Dictionaries:

Which of these expressions should you use: is one of them less acceptable than the others?

Do you ever get bored with eating out all the time?

Delegates were bored by the lectures.

He grew bored of his day job.

The first two constructions, bored with and bored by, are the standard ones. The third, bored of, is more recent than the other two and it’s become extremely common. In fact, the Oxford English Corpus contains almost twice as many instances of bored of than bored by. It represents a perfectly logical development of the language, and was probably formed on the pattern of expressions such as tired of or weary of. Nevertheless, some people dislike it and it’s not fully accepted in standard English. It’s best to avoid using it in formal writing.

How beautifully tolerant ?

If one must be bored, what about bored about?

Walk in's what? Do you mean walk ins?

Perhaps the thing is not to be bored.

People who say "I swear down" !!! Yeeugh!

I dislike people saying "so, I turned around and said..." They must be dizzy, some of them.

Walk in's! Too awful!

We have objected to "bored of" for many, many years. In fact, I've heard it so much now that I have to stop and think which is the correct one - bored of or bored with......

What irritates me very much is the increasing use of 'so' to answer a question! Surely it is meaningless and unnecessary.