I have have several pet peeves when it comes to peoples’ misuse of the English language. There’s no excuse but sheer laziness. Worse, it seems to be pervasive in our society rather than just isolated cases. Here, in no particular order, are some of my grievances.

(Disclaimer: Any mistakes in grammar that you might spot in this post are unintentional, and more the result of my fingers having typed independently of my mental control, than they are of any ignorance on my part. At least, that’s my story.)

“I could care less.”

Well, if you could care less, then obviously you already care at least a little bit and there’s some room for a little more apathy. The correct phrase should be, “I couldn’t care less.”

“The victim was taken to hospital.”

Has nobody ever heard of an article before? Now, obviously, this one is a little bit of a grey area, but only a little bit. The mangling of this sentence hasn’t gone on quite long enough yet that “hospital” can be forgiven for its lack of an article. We say “in jail”, “taken to task”, and “go home” – rather than “in a jail”, “taken to a task”, “go to my home”, but that seems to be okay, at least in those cases. (Whether it started off that way or not, or actually is technically at this point, I don’t know. “Home”, for example, is, in this case, a kind of state of being rather than an actual object, so it doesn’t appear to need an article. As for “taken to task” or “taken to a task” neither one of them really makes any sense anyway if you think about it.)

But “hospital” hasn’t got to that point yet. I don’t recall anybody ever leaving out the article when I was growing up. It just seems as if people have become lazy in recent times. It would be far more correct to say “The victim was taken to a hospital,” or “The victim is recovering in the hospital.” (Obviously, you would use “the” if the name of the hospital had already been mentioned.)

“1000’s of cars for sale!”

Really? Just who is “1000” anyway that they own so many cars?

“I can always get a lite meal at my favourite nite club.”

While I’m always quick to correct any “could care less” comment, I never fail to shudder in horror (although I may not say anything) when I come across examples of “nite” or “lite” on signs, letters, or other forms of written media. I can almost forgive all of the rest I’ve mentioned just because it’s “easy” to overlook those mistakes. This one, however, has no excuse at all. Anybody more intelligent than a 3 year old knows right away that these are nothing more than bastardized versions of English. It might be okay if their use was considered to be cute – but that’s almost never the case. (Cute would be, as I joked with a friend of mine from University, naming a potential restaurant of hers “Kate’s Korner”.) People know that these words are wrong, yet they use them anyway. Except in those few circumstances where it is done to be cute (and that meaning clearly comes across) the only thing you can say about the people who write / compose this type of thing (or allow it to go un-edited) is that they are simply being stupid.

I’m sure I can think of some other examples. No doubt I’ll post about them in future entries as they occur to me.