- “For all intensive purposes…” should be “for all intents and purposes.”
- “I’m smarter then you!” should be “I’m smarter than you.” Than and then are not interchangeable.
- “High Councilman” is not a calling in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Each Stake has a High Council composed of High Councilors. Interestingly, counselors to the stake president are often chosen from the High Councilors. Note the spelling, it matters.
- Turn Indicators (blinkers) are there to alert other drivers that you are about to change lanes or make a turn. Used well they keep traffic flowing and prevent accidents.
- Changing lanes in the middle of an intersection. It’s illegal for a reason. The same goes for crossing solid white lines between lanes.
- Toilet paper rolls should always be positioned so that the paper comes over the top toward the front of the roll in an “overhand” fashion. If the roll is positioned in the “underhand” fashion, then the paper drops out of sight when torn off. There are other drawbacks, but I digress.
- Commercials for prescription medication for uncommon health conditions make absolutely no sense. They shouldn’t make the pharmaceutical companies any money, theoretically. Even if it makes people suggest the medication to their doctor, there shouldn’t be any doctors who would use a recommendation from their patient in the research and evaluation of their condition or the correct treatment thereof. If I were to visit a doctor who didn’t mention a specific medication on their own and then changed his recommendation after I mentioned a specific medication I saw on TV, then I would have serious misgivings about that doctor’s expertise and judgment.
- There is a growing trend among some people to avoid using a word with a negative meaning in favor of negating the negative word’s antonym instead. For example: instead of saying, “That is a mean thing to do,” I have heard, “That is a not nice thing to do!” It is obvious that this is a forced construction to avoid the negative word, otherwise they would be more likely to say, “That is not a nice thing to do.” This is probably a result of the “everyone’s a winner” mentality where self esteem is esteemed above all other attributes, and the possibility of damaging self esteem is, therefore the most important thing to avoid. Nichole Richie said on The Late Show with David Letterman that going to jail was a “not so good consequence.”
- Should of, would of, and could of instead of should’ve, would’ve, and could’ve. Just because we slur have into just “v” doesn’t mean we need to write it the same way as “of” (which wouldn’t make any sense at all). The problem with this is that I think people start to lose the idea in their own minds of what words they are actually using. Does this mean that there are people who think that of and have are interchangeable? If that’s the case, then when have becomes had, what does of become? Odd?
- My local library’s online catalog lists books that have been lost right along with all the books that are still available. This makes no sense at all. I don’t care if the library used to have a book, I only care about what books are available, and which are checked out. To make matters worse, the current availability of books isn’t shown on the search results page, so you have to click on each book in the list to see if it’s been lost or not.
- Speed bumps.
- Daytime Running Lights.
- Poorly-timed traffic lights.
- Traffic laws and fines that punish drivers even if they are not doing anything unsafe.
- Air conditioning thermostats with large swings between hot and cold.
- Why don’t office buildings and cubicles use ceiling fans anymore? I would rather keep the temperature a few degrees higher and turn on a variable-speed fan that I have direct control over than make it so cold that some people have to wear jackets indoors when the outside temperature is 115°F.
- The higher one’s wage becomes, the greater the chance that they will be fired due to political changes in the workplace. It seems like anyone I know that makes more than $100,000 is looking for a new job every 2-5 years.
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