Ultimate Grammar Pet Peeves

Everyone has pet peeves. It may be scraping a fork on a plate while you're eating, or chewing with your mouth open, or, like me, having poor grammar. Now, I don't consider myself a snob, but there are certain words that I cannot tolerate seeing so blatantly abused. I embrace text speak, I understand and celebrate that language is ever-evolving, and I welcome breaking down classism in language--and yet, I still cringe when I see certain common mistakes.

It can be easy to assume people will look past basic grammar mistakes, but sometimes it's impossible, since it changes the entire meaning of what is being said. How can you expect to be understood if you're using incorrect words? You're putting the burden of understanding on the reader, and that just isn't a fair way to communicate.

At any rate, I was mentioning my personal linguistic pet peeves. Think you don't have any? Then read ahead and let me know what you think once you're finished.

Tenet vs. tenant
-Belief systems have tenets, apartment buildings have tenants. Telling the employee that "a fundamental tenant of our bonus plan...." makes no sense. Are there little people living inside a bonus plan? Do they pay rent and call payroll when their shower is leaking? Do we allow dogs in our bonus plan? If you were to order take-out, where would it be delivered?

Accept vs. except
If you want to accept an award, and you inadvertently except it....well, I think you would notice the difference. So would the person presenting it to you, who would think you were a foul douche for turning down their gesture. So would the job candidate whose application you were happy to except.

Alternately vs. alternatively
The first is to go back and forth between multiple items in turn, while the second is to consider another option. If you that "alternately, we could simply fire the employee," I really don't think that you mean to fire him, bring him back, fire him, bring him back, fire him...do you? That's kind of cruel. I might laugh the first time but doing it until the poor kid chokes himself on post-it pads and paperclips? Not cool. When you say "I alternatively assign filing to Jane and Tom..." do you mean that you ask your employees to file while wearing a nose ring and a Nirvana t-shirt? Or do you ask them in a new, alternative language- perhaps dolphin?

Rescind vs. resend
Listen, if the union accuses you of bypassing them and asks you to rescind the message you sent directly out to their bargaining unit members, and you then send them out another message stating that you are "resending" the original message...you're keeping me employed. Thanks.

Irregardless.
Oh, my...I just can't. I'm sorry. It's too painful.

Conversate
Look, you can do many things in this grand free country of ours. You can have a conversation. You can converse. You can wear Converse, like I do, if you so choose. One thing you can absolutely NOT do is conversate. See, my spell check doesn't even think it's a real word. Why? BECAUSE IT ISN'T A WORD, YOU STAGGERING SILLY PERSON!

Ensure vs. insure
You can ensure something happens by careful planning, due diligence and hard work. You can insure something from happening by purchasing a policy from an insurance company. If you really want your employees to "insure you get your mandatory training done on time...." well, I just don't think you can buy a policy protecting that. I really don't. Also, Ensure is the stuff that old people and sick kids drink. Maybe you COULD ensure a care by dumping a few gallons of the stuff all over it? Although, I don't know what your insurance company would say about the claim to follow.

Biweekly vs. bimonthly
Biweekly means every two weeks. Bimonthly means every two months (you want to use semimonthly if you mean twice a month). Believe it or not, it makes a difference and someone with a literary background reading your memo just might not actually show up until August if you ask them to "report bimonthly". Same goes for semiannual vs. biannual.

Nonflammable vs. inflammable
The first might be safe to hold a match to but the second wouldn't be. Therefore, asking the safety manager to be sure to order the inflammable coveralls for employees in the boiler plant....fuck. If I were one of those employees, I wouldn't appreciate that. Especially after I turned into Freddy Kruger and got knife gloves.

Although not technically bad grammar, typical office catch phrases like "think outside the box", "let's be pro-active" and so on just make me seethe.

Don't even get me started on "literally" and "basically". Because, basically, at the end of the day, when we wrap our arms around the situation while running it up a flagpole to see who salutes, if I hear either of those words used again simply for emphasis, I will literally throw up.