Irregardless -- I'm astounded that anybody still thinks this is a word. Regardless, they do, and it annoys me.
'Of' as a helping verb, e.g., "I should of gone to the store today," or "You wouldn't of hit your own car with your husband's truck if you only would of paid attention while you were backing out of the driveway.", etc. How anyone can construct a sentence and believe that the word 'of' belongs in there is beyond me. It's a preposition, people!
Significant other -- Okay, it's not a made up word, but it is used entirely incorrectly, and now it's perfectly mainstream to use it incorrectly, and that bothers me. I don't know why. It just does. "Significant other", as I learned in college psychology, is a term that means the person from your childhood after whom you model yourself, or from whom you gain an understanding of societal norms -- generally a same-sex person. Like your mom, or a teacher, or a favorite uncle. Now it's used to just denote the person with whom you're in a relationship. It just seems wrong to me. Morally wrong.
VIN number. I work in commercial insurance, and clients give me "VIN numbers" for their vehicles regularly. That would mean "vehicle identification number number". No. It's just a VIN.
Same goes for "ATM machine" or "PIN number". Either use the acronym or don't. Enough.
Orientate. People don't go through orientation to get orientated. I promise.
I could go on and on about my grammar peeves. For example, 'its' doesn't always need an apostrophe! The possessive 'its' means 'belonging to it'; much the same as 'hers' means 'belonging to her'. You wouldn't write, "The fancy new cell phone is her's." Would you? Because if you would, we can't be friends.
Oh - and there is a difference between affect and effect. You can't just use them interchangeably at will.
Grrr.
(Oh, and by the way, the example sentence above about hitting one's own car with one's husband's truck? Yes. That was me. Whoops.)
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