Pet Intellectual Peeves

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This Is Kirk!
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Re: Pet Intellectual Peeves

Post by This Is Kirk! »

Blue Lion wrote: Mon May 15, 2017 12:18 am People have forgotten what the symbol "$" stands for. I've even seen the dollar sign followed by a number and the word "dollars" in a story in the New York Times.

One example from around here: An ad for a prominent personal-injury law firm features one of the founder's sons boasting that the firm has recovered "$1 BILLION DOLLARS" in judgments and settlements. And this ad has been running for months.
This is only tangentially related, but it bugs me when you see something written like this: "A dime is worth ten (10) cents." Is this intended for people who are incapable of reading numbers that are spelled out? :D
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Re: Pet Intellectual Peeves

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This Is Kirk! wrote: Wed May 17, 2017 2:20 pm This is only tangentially related, but it bugs me when you see something written like this: "A dime is worth ten (10) cents." Is this intended for people who are incapable of reading numbers that are spelled out? :D
This is common practice in legal documents, though I don't see how expressing the amount in both numbers and words makes things any clearer. Then again, attorneys insist on putting the most useless word in the English language, "hereby", in documents. (Full disclosure: I'm a member of the Bar.)
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Re: Pet Intellectual Peeves

Post by dhkendall »

OK maybe not an intellectual peeve per se, but a Jeopardy! fan peeve:

[Using a completely made up clue example]

Regular people would say things like: "You know, on Jeopardy!, when their final question last night was "who was the author of Les Miserables"? ... " when of course we know the questions are never phrased in such a way and the clue was really something like "this author of Les Miserables was pictured on the 500 franc note in the 1960s". Just *bugs* me when I see people all of a sudden forgetting the "answer is the question" format that Jeopardy! is famous for!

Rant off.
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Re: Pet Intellectual Peeves

Post by Wheatley »

Songs & poems where they rhyme "again" with "rain" or "pain," but they pronounce "again" in the way that doesn''t rhyme
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Re: Pet Intellectual Peeves

Post by acthomas »

Wheatley wrote: Sun Jul 09, 2017 10:22 pm Songs & poems where they rhyme "again" with "rain" or "pain," but they pronounce "again" in the way that doesn''t rhyme
Something tells me there's a special place in your heart (one way or the other) for The Who's "I Can't Explain" where they do it both ways, but lined up so that the rhyme works.

https://youtu.be/h3h--K5928M?t=31s
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Re: Pet Intellectual Peeves

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From a discussion thread today. Speaker is speaking out against a younger-generation friendly change and is in his 60s:

"Baby boomers are the fastest growing generation today!"

Uhh, no they aren't. No generation, save the one containing people being born right now (what is the one after millennial, Generation Z?) is growing. (He may mean "senior citizens", many of whom are baby boomers, which are indeed the fastest growing age group afaik, but no generation, save the current one, is "growing". So for all you millennial haters, rejoice. There's gradually fewer and fewer of them.)
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cmp146
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Re: Pet Intellectual Peeves

Post by cmp146 »

dhkendall wrote: Sun Jul 16, 2017 9:53 pm From a discussion thread today. Speaker is speaking out against a younger-generation friendly change and is in his 60s:

"Baby boomers are the fastest growing generation today!"

Uhh, no they aren't. No generation, save the one containing people being born right now (what is the one after millennial, Generation Z?) is growing. (He may mean "senior citizens", many of whom are baby boomers, which are indeed the fastest growing age group afaik, but no generation, save the current one, is "growing". So for all you millennial haters, rejoice. There's gradually fewer and fewer of them.)
Perhaps he meant growing by weight? Obesity is highest in the baby boomers according to this website: https://stateofobesity.org/obesity-by-age/ :-)
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Re: Pet Intellectual Peeves

Post by opusthepenguin »

People who think half rhymes are somehow illegitimate rather than an accepted and well-used effect in English poetry for centuries.
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Re: Pet Intellectual Peeves

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opusthepenguin wrote: Sat Jul 22, 2017 12:51 pm People who think half rhymes are somehow illegitimate rather than an accepted and well-used effect in English poetry for centuries.
As long as it's still okay to hate on "free verse" poetry. There's already a word for that: PROSE.
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Re: Pet Intellectual Peeves

Post by flutist319 »

Mine is when people take a simple fact of language and use it to attribute ideas or motivations to people. Like if someone is complaining about a certain subset of RPGs called "story games", and says something along the lines of "They call them 'story games' because the STORY part is so much more important to them than the GAME part."

No, dude, "story" comes first because in English noun-noun compounds, the head goes to the right. A story game is a type of game, just like a coffee mug is a type of mug and a water bed is a type of bed. A "game story" would mean something totally different in English -- it would be a type of story. So, in a way, this complaint is 180º from the truth.
This Is Kirk! wrote: Wed May 17, 2017 2:20 pmThis is only tangentially related, but it bugs me when you see something written like this: "A dime is worth ten (10) cents." Is this intended for people who are incapable of reading numbers that are spelled out? :D
Relatedly: style guides that tell you to write out single-digit numbers as words, and represent all larger numbers as numbers. Then you get newspaper articles with sentences like "Smith has two children, aged seven and 12, at the school," which I think looks really ugly.
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Re: Pet Intellectual Peeves

Post by barandall800 »

Volante wrote: Sun Jul 23, 2017 11:09 am
opusthepenguin wrote: Sat Jul 22, 2017 12:51 pm People who think half rhymes are somehow illegitimate rather than an accepted and well-used effect in English poetry for centuries.
As long as it's still okay to hate on "free verse" poetry. There's already a word for that: PROSE.
As a poet who works almost exclusively in free verse (if I start writing something that rhymes, I make it a song), BOO, I say. :P
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Re: Pet Intellectual Peeves

Post by Wheatley »

dhkendall wrote: Sun Jul 16, 2017 9:53 pm From a discussion thread today. Speaker is speaking out against a younger-generation friendly change and is in his 60s:

"Baby boomers are the fastest growing generation today!"

Uhh, no they aren't. No generation, save the one containing people being born right now (what is the one after millennial, Generation Z?) is growing. (He may mean "senior citizens", many of whom are baby boomers, which are indeed the fastest growing age group afaik, but no generation, save the current one, is "growing". So for all you millennial haters, rejoice. There's gradually fewer and fewer of them.)
Don't you know that the younger generation is KILLING diamonds, fabric softener, bar soap, napkins, Buffalo Wild Wings, cereal(negligent homicide), and the housing industry?
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Re: Pet Intellectual Peeves

Post by Kenny »

Wheatley wrote: Sun Jul 23, 2017 9:00 pm
dhkendall wrote: Sun Jul 16, 2017 9:53 pm From a discussion thread today. Speaker is speaking out against a younger-generation friendly change and is in his 60s:

"Baby boomers are the fastest growing generation today!"

Uhh, no they aren't. No generation, save the one containing people being born right now (what is the one after millennial, Generation Z?) is growing. (He may mean "senior citizens", many of whom are baby boomers, which are indeed the fastest growing age group afaik, but no generation, save the current one, is "growing". So for all you millennial haters, rejoice. There's gradually fewer and fewer of them.)
Don't you know that the younger generation is KILLING diamonds, fabric softener, bar soap, napkins, Buffalo Wild Wings, cereal(negligent homicide), and the housing industry?
+ CD's. But they're reviving vinyl records, for some reason. Wish I hadn't thrown out all my Beatles (Apple), Who, Led Zep & Stones albums back in the 80s.
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Re: Pet Intellectual Peeves

Post by Kenny »

People who say "begs the question" when they mean "prompts the question."
Last edited by Kenny on Mon Jul 24, 2017 5:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Pet Intellectual Peeves

Post by Kenny »

Wheatley wrote: Sun Jul 23, 2017 9:00 pm Don't you know that the younger generation is KILLING diamonds, fabric softener, bar soap, napkins, Buffalo Wild Wings, cereal(negligent homicide), and the housing industry?
+ CD's. But they're reviving vinyl records, for some reason. Wish I hadn't thrown out all my Beatles (Apple), Who, Led Zep & Stones albums back in the 80s.
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Re: Pet Intellectual Peeves

Post by Magna »

Kenny wrote: Mon Jul 24, 2017 5:26 pm People who say "begs the question" when they mean "prompts the question."
Hear, hear!
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Re: Pet Intellectual Peeves

Post by acthomas »

People who give a time abbreviation as standard time when we're in daylight hours.

Like, "the MLB trade deadline is July 31, 4:00 PM EST".

When it's not! These things matter (less than I think) but it's still obnoxious especially when you're in another time zone.
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Re: Pet Intellectual Peeves

Post by OrangeSAM »

Seconded.
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Re: Pet Intellectual Peeves

Post by 1stlvlthinker »

acthomas wrote: Mon Jul 31, 2017 1:57 pm People who give a time abbreviation as standard time when we're in daylight hours.

Like, "the MLB trade deadline is July 31, 4:00 PM EST".

When it's not! These things matter (less than I think) but it's still obnoxious especially when you're in another time zone.
Also can be an issue if you live in a place that doesn't use daylight saving time.
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Re: Pet Intellectual Peeves

Post by acthomas »

One somewhat guaranteed to get debate going:

If you are referring to a person in need of guidance from an older teacher figure, the word you are looking for is "protege". Or, if you want to be true to the roots, "telemachus", but that might come off a little elitist.

"Mentee" is an affront to language.
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