Grammar pet peeves [Updated]
Am I the only one who notices or is bothered by the following grammar issues? One is the increasingly popular use of the word “impact” as a verb. As in, “The high price of gasoline impacts me in a very negative way.” I’m not even completely certain this is technically wrong, but it bugs the heck out of me anyway. It seems more correct to me to write, “The high price of gasoline has a very negative impact on me.”
Another grammar issue that really gets to me is when people use a plural pronoun — their — in a sentence referencing a singular subject. For example, “Anyone who wishes to avoid the high cost of gasoline should not drive their car.” Argh. That really really annoys me. I find this mixup to be increasingly common, not just in personal use but in formal business language, and I simply don’t get it. If you want to avoid using “her/his” in this kind of situation, just make the sentence all plural, as in “Those who wish to avoid the high cost of gasoline should not drive their car.”
I may be making my high school English teacher smile (or she would if she knew these things bug me).
[Update: Maybe I'm not the only one bugged be these things after all. Just a short time after posting my mini-rant, I noticed the following news item: Facebook to users: Let's cut grammatical errors (AP). Interesting!]
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