People that think "y" in online gaming means "yeah" instead of "why".

"flush it out" instead of "flesh it out" when designing a plan

They're, you're

Sneak peek

In portuguese: mas/mais - people often use "mais" (plus, sum) when the correct would be mas (but)

Some weirdos write decades as possessive. Writing "90's" implies that there's a 90 that owns something.

Having made some of these mistakes, I tend not to be rigid about them. But here are some fun ones.

• on line vs in line
• to graduate vs to be graduated
• antivenom vs antivenin

All of the above have been normalized, but at one time was not.

Another quirk, we used to not call former Presidents President So and So. We used to call them by their highest position before president. So it would be Senator Obama and not President Obama.

It's "I didn't taste it, let alone finish it." not "I didn't finish it, let alone taste it.". Not those exact words, of course. People get it wrong more often than not IME. The wrong version never makes sense, and it always trips me up.

Haha is this a follow up on that one post with the OP writing "back-petal"?

Using “uncomfy” instead of uncomfortable. I recognize this one is fully style, but it’s like nails on a chalkboard. Break the entirely fake rules of grammar and spelling all you want, but have some decency when it comes to connotation.

Comfy is an informal and almost diminutive form (not technically, but it follows the structure so it kinda feels like it) of comfortable. You have to have a degree of comfort to use the less formal “comfy,” so uncomfy is just…paradoxical? Oxymoronic? Ironic? I’d be ok with it used for humor, but not in earnest.

Relatedly, for me “comfy” is necessarily referring to physical comfort, not emotional. I can be either comfy or comfortable in a soft fuzzy chair. I can be comfortable in a new social situation. I can be uncomfortable in either. I can be uncomfy in neither, because that would be ridiculous.

FWIW I would never actually correct someone on this. I would immediately have my linguist card revoked, and I can’t point to a real fake grammatical rule that would make it “incorrect” even if I wanted to. But this is the one and only English usage thing I hate, and I hate it very, very much.

Coming from the other direction - when someone ackshullys a parson, but the person was using the phrase correctly.

I had to explain to someone online today that "liminal space" had multiple meanings, and it didn't only refer to spaces you transition through, and the spooky "liminal space aesthetic" is a valid and coherent use of the word "liminal" and the term "liminal space"

Using loose instead of lose.

itt pedants lose their minds over idioms and dialects, because they think they're done learning things.

I feel like the vast majority of people online use "yay or nay" instead of "yea or nay".

The vast majority of these issues could be solved if people a) read any halfway-decent book, b) and didn’t choose to remain willfully ignorant. It’s fine to misunderstand or just not know something. We’ve all been there, we’ll be there again. NBD. But to be shown or offered the correct way and still choose to do it wrongly? That’s not cool at all.

The "positive anymore" is a vile grammatical abomination spawning from the Midwest US.

Normally using the word anymore has a negative tone to it (I don't eat meat anymore) . Except when used in this manner which seems to be when they should instead be saying currently or nowadays.

I find it viscerally unappealing.

I really hate it when us media uses the word "ouster".

For example:

https://www.kpcw.org/ski-resorts/2025-01-27/vail-resorts-shareholder-calls-for-ouster-of-ceo-cfo-and-rob-katz

"Vail Resorts shareholder calls for ouster of CEO, CFO and Rob Katz"

They mean to use the word here as "removal", but "oust" is also a verb and "ouster" would be "one who ousts".

So, calls for the ouster of the CEO/CFO to do what?

"The proof is in the pudding."

The actual phrase is: "The proof of the pudding is in the eating."

It means that your dessert might look and smell delicious, but if you fucked up the recipe, say by using salt instead of sugar, then it will taste bad. You won't know for sure until you eat it. So, a plan might look good on paper but be a disaster when implemented.

"The proof is in the pudding" doesn't mean anything.