Americanisms

RobH1 said:
The best bit of The 'Arms for me is the way threads such as this spread laterally as they move forward, grow and educate. ( Eg. Accretion and contranym have been added to the list of words currently swimming at the front of my brain!)

Taking the time to look up odd words certainly increases knowledge, even if those words are not in common use. Recently, playing 'Bananagrams', two words of the day turned up- excoriate and turpitude, the latter just rolls around the tongue!

So different from other forums where comments or replies are poorly constructed, misspelt, lack or misuse punctuation and use words incorrectly.

Common errors such as loose for lose, misuse of their and there and a new one that popped up recently - I'am, subsequently copied by others in the same thread surprisingly annoy me.
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Here's two more for you to look up: ineluctable modality. :)
 
RobH1 said:
Common errors such as loose for lose, misuse of their and there and a new one that popped up recently - I'am, subsequently copied by others in the same thread surprisingly annoy me.
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Alot instead of a lot is a common one. You forgot misuse of they're too. And should of instead of should have is more and more common; I didn't understand that one until recently, when I heard someone actually saying it that way. No wonder it is mis-spelled. (Spelt?)
 
RobH1 said:
Eh?
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Hey, Wazzup Guys? seems to be the greeting that has replaced Howya Doin? in the US. It's hard to find a tech video on YouTube that doesn't start with it. Here is an example:

Marques Brownlee


Now, I absolutely love this person's videos, but is that greeting really necessary? It isn't just him, either.
 
What really grinds my s**t is spell checkers telling me that I've spelt recognise/specialise/summarise etc etc wrong and trying to get me to put a z in at the end - even when the dictionary is set to English. :mad:
 
Yes, or trying to change burnt into burned when I'm using as an adjective. I also had MS Word change co-location into collation recently (at least I learned what the one with double-l meant!)
 
@af123. Your posts are longer visible in "Recent Activity" Have you changed a setting?
I can see brian's posts there now so he has changed something. :)
 
oijonesey said:
What really grinds my s**t is spell checkers telling me that I've spelt recognise/specialise/summarise etc etc wrong and trying to get me to put a z in at the end - even when the dictionary is set to English. :mad:
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I always have trouble with those. Also -ice vs -ise, eg, practice/practise.
 
4291 said:
@af123. Your posts are longer visible in "Recent Activity" Have you changed a setting?
I can see brian's posts there now so he has changed something. :)
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It is probably the tick box for "Receive your news feed:" in the Privacy settings in Your Account. I have recently enabled this in my account, although I don't use the feature myself.:)
 
BMAX said:
Not strictly an americanism. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_spelling
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Well that clears it up - first it says the OED has both z and s variants then at the end of that first section it says "In 2011 the University of Oxford website recommended the use of "s" rather than "z" spellings for its public relations material"

Zo I shall rize to the challenge, and I will attempt to standardize my uzage in order that there be no further confuzion - I suppoze the good newz is that my scorez in Scrabble (or is that now Zcrabble) should increaze but the bad newz is that crozzwords could be tricky if you don't know which spelling they are expecting you to uze!!
 
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