These Pretzels Are Making Me Thirsty

Yes, "drug" is used as a past tense verb in speech.

Sometimes, it's not talking about physically dragging something. Sometimes, it's talking about someone telling a story and she goes on and on and on. "She drug the story out for over an hour."

There's also the word "crunk" as the past tense of crank.
For instance, "It was really cold that morning, so I crunk up the car to get the engine warm before we drove off."

From:

People say lots of things in speech, but that doesn't make it right. I mean, is "brung" a word just because a bunch of idiots say it?

I don't care how vernacular "I could care less" is, for another example. It simply doesn't make sense in the context it's usually delivered. The proper phrase is and alway will be "I couldn't care less."

From:

Nope, it's not right. I remember a kid in my 12th grade English class arguing with the teacher over "brung." It was something he'd heard all his life, it was used in everyday speech, and now some teacher was telling him that it wasn't really a word? He didn't care that it wasn't in the dictionary. ;)

"Couldn't care less" is one of my bugaboos too.

From:

I heard improper use of drug on a TV show once. I changed the channel, toot sweet.

From:

Once upon a time, I read some of the Titanic fic on fanfiction.net.

It's not just the grammar that's bad.

The one line in a story that I just can't seem to forget is, "Rose realized she was pregnant and she freaked."

*headdesk*

From:

khek.livejournal.com

I take it this wasn't a comedy? :)

From:

Nope. Bad fic. ;)

From:

xayeidemon.livejournal.com

"Could of..."
"Should of..."

I hate that. Hate it, hate it, HATE IT!

From:

Oh, man, I should of thought of that. :P

Actually, I should've, because it bugs me too.

From:

aizjanika.livejournal.com

I hate that one, too!

From:

EEK! Not that one! *shields eyes*

From:

That dragged one bugs the shit out of me and it's not only over at Fanfiction, it's leads me to leave notes all over live journals too.

Chickens LAY eggs - please sort out the lay, lie, lays, lies down, lying and laying in your head before you start writing it down. This one is so prevalent I tend to bang my head and don't even bother trying to correct.

I'm also getting annoyed with the bring/take problem, which annoys me immensely even in the spoken form as it's just illogical. Written down it screams.

Yes, there is such a thing as spoken language as opposed to the written form but there is also dialogue and quotation marks that allow you to use slang and the vernacular.

One more whine is the horrible approach of not using quotation marks at all, what? I'm supposed to guess when characters are speaking? Some writers now use italics for speech - yes, darlings it may be trendy and cool, but I can't bloody READ it and isn't that the point?

From:

It's I'm more tolerant of, just because that can sometimes just be a typo. If it's repeated throughout, though, yeah...that's a problem.

I probably do the bring/take thing but I at least I don't confuse borrow/loan. ;)

One more whine is the horrible approach of not using quotation marks at all, what? I'm supposed to guess when characters are speaking? Some writers now use italics for speech - yes, darlings it may be trendy and cool, but I can't bloody READ it and isn't that the point?

Okay, that one I just don't get. It's not like it's a terrible amount of work to use quotation marks. They exist for a reason, no? It is interesting to see some things change. I'm reading an older novel right now, and it was custom to use single quotes for dialogue, not double. I find it kind of disconcerting, but at least I know what's being said, eh?

From:

I'm sure you don't do the bring/take thing. :)

Yeah, the quotation marks really do confuse me and I just hit the delete key now, sometimes I have found myself interested and really try to follow, but then I think I could be spending this valuable time reading something else I can follow quickly and I'm gone.

I will be one of those raging about the attempts to change the written language to one of phonetic spellings and no punctuation. I really can't see how people can hope to communicate without these things.

From:

And then there are the folks who can't seem to understand proper punctuation with quotations marks. I don't know why they think none is needed, or why periods started replacing commas.

Don't people, y'know, read books or newspapers or magazines or anything at all?

From:

Oh they probably do read them, find them all the same and strive to be totally unique - and unread. *G*

From:

Heh. It boggles my mind, honestly, that there are some stories so shoddily put together which receive an inordinate amount of feedback when some that I've found to be of decent quality get a handful of encouraging notes.

Er...

From:

God that gets me too. I found something only the other day that was full of dreadful spelling, mixed up tenses and the punctuation skills of a dead squirrel and I gave up trying to read, but not before scrolling down and finding about 20 messages full of absolute praise - I really wanted to tear my hair out and I should I suppose have left a message mentioning the problems, but honestly I didn't think I would survive the fallout.

From:

aizjanika.livejournal.com

RE: lie/lay: My advice is that if you don't know the difference, reword the sentence to use a different construction or a different word.

The other day, I read a fanfic that started with:

"He lied on the couch..." LOL

Some writers now use italics for speech - yes, darlings it may be trendy and cool, but I can't bloody READ it and isn't that the point?

I would say the same thing about people who post on LJ without any capital letters or punctuation. *g* If nobody can read it, what's the point of posting at all?

I'd probably screw up bring/take, though. lol

From:

The lay/lie thing is getting more and more muddled. I think it's because so many people are reading it in fan fiction and getting confused by not knowing it's wrong and copying it. I've got that reply on lots of posts where I have corrected the drug/dragged thing. The writer says they didn't know as they have only seen the drug word used.

Which is another reason I wish for better in fan fiction - if you read something too often that is wrong and let's face it a lot of computer youngsters only read on the computer, the confusion just becomes compounded.

The bring/take thing - I don't think you would screw that up - it's all to do with movement. Bring suggests movement towards the speaker or writer and take suggests motion away from. You bring things with you or to you and take them away. :))

I can forgive typos, we all do them and you can easily see from the rest of the piece where one has happened, three times on one single word though and I presume the writer has lost the plot....but maybe I'm a bit harsh.

From:

I hate lie and lay. I've been confused about those two since high school. The reason? I had a teacher that didn't know the usage and confused the crap out of us but I can't get her teachings out of my head. I think I'm using the right one, and boom! It turns out I'm not. It's like the word "relationship." I know how to spell it, I can do it with my eyes closed, but my first grade teacher said (yeah, I was reading big words in the first grade) told me it was spelled "realtionship." To this day, I want to spell it with an real instead of an rela even though I know better! It's absolutely annoying! It won't get out of my head, and I don't know why.

Sit and set? No problem.

Lie and lay? You have NO idea how much I love my grammar check on Word.

From:

Lie and lay? You have NO idea how much I love my grammar check on Word.

Then I hate to break it to you, but that is completely unreliable. I do know lie/lay and there are times when Word "corrects" me inappropriately.

From:

Things like that are confusing especially if you had someone who didn't know the usage correcting you as a youngster - I had a teacher that taught me my right hand was the one I used to write with - fair enough - but at that point I could write with both hands and she hadn't noticed. I still can't tell left from right to this day.

One of the reasons I wish writers would try harder even in fan fiction pieces is the more the words are used wrongly the harder it is for others to actually learn. It is true that the more you read the better you spell, but reading bad spelling is just as absorbing, after a while you get so used to seeing it it's hard to tell. I find this in fandoms especially - words and phrases become almost fandom specific and the same bad spelling of certain words goes along for the ride. Stargate fiction was always pretty good with the lie/lay but Supernatural is a disaster.

There is a good explanation here. http://home.comcast.net/~garbl/stylemanual/kthrul.htm#lay
but even that is a bit confusing, however it gives a good idea where to start and what questions you should ask yourself. :)

From:

Sentences like "I can’t lay down in the car." always make me want to say, "Of course you can't. Humans don't have feathers."

From: