Do You Have a Grammar or Spelling Pet Peeve?
We can’t help but notice that many readers who comment on ABAJournal.com posts are obsessed with spelling and grammar—whether they’re calling out other commenters on their errors, or re-posting, chastened, to correct their own typos. This week, blogger Howard Bashman and 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner are getting in on the action: They had some words over Posner’s use of a singular rather than a plural noun in a recent opinion, and Bashman even brought a linguistics professor in on the debate.
So, we’re wondering: Do you have a grammar pet peeve? Are you bothered by a certain word or phrase that you constantly see misspelled? Or do you think people who revel in correcting such errors and making presumptions about those who make them are more bothersome to you than any typo or lack of subject-verb agreement could ever be?
Answer in the comments below.
Read last week’s question and answers about “poetic justice.”
Our favorite answer from last week:
Posted by Steve Minor: The only poem I ever saw from a judge was this, dated April 1, 1991, from the Circuit Court of Wise County, Virginia:
Dear Counsel:
This is a case of unique species,
not stare decisis, but stare feces.
The court had serious fun with these complex issues as it spoke,
but this opinion, signed the first, is no April Fool joke.
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