Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.

[IDEngineer]

Exactly!  Have you noticed how often people pluralize words with an apostrophe (catastrophe?) s rather than just adding an s?

Truly annoying, with one exception that I personally practice: I use an apostrophe when pluralizing acronyms. I struggled with this decision for a long time because it's technically inaccurate. However, I had too many cases where people got the trailing "s" confused as part of the base acronym despite using lowercase. So now I write this:

"The address lines of all RAM's have equal length."

...instead of the arguably more accurate:

"The address lines of all RAMs have equal length."

I just got tired of people asking stuff like "Does each RAMS require its own bypass cap?" or "Nobody carries that RAMS component, only something called RAM". Since the apostrophe those misinterpretations have died off. It's worth it, at least for me.

[TimFox]

I use apostrophes for plurals of numbers, e.g., four 7586’s, but learned not to do so for abbreviations, e.g., four FETs.  My boss at the time enjoyed catching my errors in reports, e.g., writing “ordinance” for “ordnance”.

[IDEngineer]

Here's one: The word is HOBBYIST. Not "hobbiest."

Yeah!!!    Just like "orientated". Or "preventative". Why do people insist on adding letters and syllables that are not only wrong, but completely unnecessary?!?

Here's another one: "Commentator". WTF?!? If someone is offering a comment, they are a commentor. Not a commentator.

I'm all for more T and A in the world, but let's have the good/fun kind. Not the annoying, needless, illiterate kind.

[IDEngineer]

I use apostrophes for plurals of numbers, e.g., four 7586’s, but learned not to do so for abbreviations, e.g., four FETs.  My boss at the time enjoyed catching my errors in reports, e.g., writing “ordinance” for “ordnance”.

I use your style for numbers too. So I guess my informal rule is that I use apostrophes to prevent misunderstanding where the trailing "S" might be interpreted as part of the thing being discussed. In part numbers, a trailing "S" can definitely be a significant character... so your example is perfect. But I'm sticking with my method for acronyms too, for exactly the same reason.

Ordinance vs. ordnance is a great one.

You'll love this: I write my own patents before submitting them to the attorneys for "legalese". Far cheaper and more accurate to have ME write about the topic than to partially educate an attorney (at our expense) and then pay them to write what I would have written anyway (at our expense) so I can then review it (at our expense). On a network interface patent there was a certain important characteristic about how data was managed through the interface, and I used the word "transit" to describe the conveyance of data from one side of the interface to the other (example: "The byte then transits the interface without having to be written into, and later read from, the shared memory").

I submitted this for legal review, and it came back with a fat invoice for "corrections". That was wildly out of character as I'm a very careful writer. Upon inspection, I found that every single instance of the word "transit" had been replaced by some paralegal with the word "transmit" and we had been billed accordingly. Nobody asked, nobody emailed, nobody read in context - they just "knew" it was related to networking so I must have meant to use the word "transmit", right? Yep, I must have somehow mistyped every single use of the word "transmit" in the entire document. Yeah, that's logical.

The above sentence would thus become the nonsensical "The byte then transmits the interface without having to be written into, and later read from, the shared memory". Pretty cool being able to transmit hardware, eh? Apparently this is part of the overall intellectual property package surrounding my perfecting of the Star Trek transporter. 

Bad enough to be miscorrected, but then to be BILLED for the service. BTW, they initially argued with me (the author!) but when I cited a couple of their "corrected" examples they conceded defeat, undid their "corrections", and the invoice disappeared.

[PlainName]

"Commentator". WTF?!? If someone is offering a comment, they are a commentor.

'Commentator' is a proper word: "A person who comments on events or on a text" (ODE)

OTOH, 'commentor' is not a valid word. Perhaps you meant 'commenter'. 

[IDEngineer]

Oh, I know "commentator" is an accepted word. It just doesn't make logical sense.

In English, typically you describe someone who does something by adding "er" or "or" as a suffix to that something.

Solder -> Solderer
Labor -> Laborer
Hunt -> Hunter
Drive -> Driver
Teach -> Teacher

So why not:

Comment -> Commenter (or Commentor)

[SilverSolder]

Why not indeed!

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/commenter

[harerod]

...
There's even a term for that apostrophe abuse. It's called (in England) the Greengrocer's apostrophe. Of course that means just one greengrocer owns the error. If more than one greengrocer is involved, it's the "greengrocers' apostrophe."
...

In German we are less polite and call it "Deppenapostroph" (fool's apostrophe).

[harerod]

...
English spelling is complicated and does not always follow logical rules.
...

This is an understatement, if I ever saw one.

[mansaxel]

Oh, I know "commentator" is an accepted word. It just doesn't make logical sense.

In Swedish, "Kommentator" is for instance a sports commenter. It's the only proper from.

[Cubdriver]

That problem probably results from the false equivalence with, for example, “deadly” to “deadliest”, but that is a superlative form of the root word.  Perhaps a badly constructed circuit could be denigrated as “hobbiest”, but that is a totally different meaning from your example.

Tim, you put too much thought into it.

It's simple illiteracy.

Exactly!  Have you noticed how often people pluralize words with an apostrophe (catastrophe?) s rather than just adding an s?  Of course hobby would pluralize to hobbies (though many would type "hobby's"), so this is a case of mangling what would be a proper plural for use as what should be a different word.

-Pat

There's even a term for that apostrophe abuse. It's called (in England) the Greengrocer's apostrophe. Of course that means just one greengrocer owns the error. If more than one greengrocer is involved, it's the "greengrocers' apostrophe."

As we all well know, the crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe.

There's a guy on another forum I'm on who misuses them far more often than he uses them correctly - he had one post I recall reading that had eight or ten apostophes in it.  Perhaps TWO of them were used correctly, and on top of that there were several instances where there SHOULD have been one and it was missing.  It made it difficult to take his posts seriously, and if anyone pointed the errors out to him he'd accuse them of being a Grammar Nazi and act proud of his misuse, saying that was just how he wrote.  (And in my head I'd think "yeah, you write like an illiterate moron.")

Nearly always had to bite my tongue to not reply to his more egregious posts with a link to the Oatmeal's "How To Use An Apostrophe" comic.

https://theoatmeal.com/comics/apostrophe

-Pat

[PlainName]

(fool's apostrophe)

Or fools' apostrophe? 

[TimFox]

"Commentator". WTF?!? If someone is offering a comment, they are a commentor.

'Commentator' is a proper word: "A person who comments on events or on a text" (ODE)

OTOH, 'commentor' is not a valid word. Perhaps you meant 'commenter'. 

There is a difference between a “commuter” and a “commutator”, even though they share a root.

[PlainName]

Got to ask, Tim: why quote my post? Something wrong with it?

[TimFox]

Got to ask, Tim: why quote my post? Something wrong with it?

No, just continuing the discussion about commentator vs. commenter with a parallel example.

[IDEngineer]

In Swedish, "Kommentator" is for instance a sports commenter. It's the only proper from.

Exactly. A sports commenter. Why does it need a different word?

It feels like when people say "irregardless" to make themselves sound erudite. "The bigger the word, the smarter I will sound! Yeah, that's it!"

The problem with this word is it's become so commonplace that people just accept it. I fear that will happen to "orientate" and "preventative" too. To say nothing of "pre-existing".

The dumbing down of language....

EDIT: I decided to dig into "pre-existing" a bit more. The Chicago Manual of Style says this:

Q. What’s the difference, if any, between the words existing and preexisting? Isn’t the prefix pre- redundant?

A. You can use pre- in ways that are redundant, but it’s a valid prefix, and preexisting has its own meaning. For instance, if you want to describe dinosaurs in relation to humans, existing doesn’t work, but preexisting does.


...which ironically means the present common usage of "pre-existing" (to describe an existing medical condition) is exactly backwards. The strict definition of "pre-existing", according to the above, is something which used to exist but no longer does. If it still exists, then "existing" would be the correct word. So a "pre-existing medical condition" would properly be one which used to exist but no longer does.

Is it too much to ask of anyone that enters politics to be able to effectively communicate via written words? Legislation, their actual work product, is literally written words. {sigh} We get the government we deserve.

[Cubdriver]

Is it too much to ask of anyone that enters politics to be able to effectively communicate via written words? Legislation, their actual work product, is literally written words. {sigh} We get the government we deserve.

Yes, it is.  I believe that the vague wording is intentional - easier to stretch the boundaries and expand the scope later that way - it gets the camel's nose under the tent, so to speak. Pass something that on the surface sounds innocuous, then start stretching and bending to suit your actual purposes.

It all depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is...

-Pat

[TimFox]

"Pre-existing" is not redundant in its normal usage:  it means something that existed before a given point in time.
A "pre-existing condition" is one that existed before the start of ones insurance coverage or similar event.
An "existing condition" is one that was true at that point in time.
A subtle distinction, but one that is important to the insurance industry.

[Bassman59]

...
English spelling is complicated and does not always follow logical rules.
...

This is an understatement, if I ever saw one.

"I before E, except after C and a laundry list of other exceptions!"

[Bassman59]

Here's one: The word is HOBBYIST. Not "hobbiest."

Yeah!!!    Just like "orientated". Or "preventative". Why do people insist on adding letters and syllables that are not only wrong, but completely unnecessary?!?

How about "I am wanting" instead of "I want?"

I honestly don't understand that. Why use three words when two suffices?

There was an episode of "The X-Files" which was basically Mulder and Scully participating in a reality show like "C-O-P-S." Mulder was totally into goofing on the whole thing, and Scully was just sighing throughout at him. The best part of the show was how it parodied that ridiculous "cop speak" that literally (as in literally, not figuratively or virtually) law-enforcement agent uses. I guess they think it makes them seem smarter than they are. The line that stood out was one where some sergeant was addressing the press after the police sketch guy was found murdered: "He died in the line of duty, while serving the department in an artistic capacity."

[Bassman59]

Another one, inspired by the What do we mean by bandwidth? thread ...

The use of words like "bandwidth" and "optics" outside of their actual technical meaning.

For instance, "I don't have the bandwidth to do this, that and the other thing." Maybe if you could frequency-division multiplex yourself you would!

"We need to consider the optics of the situation." As we say in New Jersey, "fuck outta here with that shit!"

[james_s]

For instance, "I don't have the bandwidth to do this, that and the other thing." Maybe if you could frequency-division multiplex yourself you would!

I first heard that within Microsoft, it was a very common expression. I always liked it, it's very intuitive, I know exactly what it means when it's said.

[harerod]

Quote

    (fool's apostrophe)

Or fools' apostrophe?

German can be way less precise than English native speakers are led to believe. "Deppen" could be a whole range of cases. However, consistent with with the "greengrocer's apostrophe", I stand by my original translation.

Edit: To illustrate this point, I give you a conjugation table for "Depp" (fool): 

            Singular     Plural
Nominativ   der Depp     die Deppen
Genitiv     des Deppen   der Deppen
Dativ       dem Deppen   den Deppen
Akkusativ   den Depp     die Deppen

[m3vuv]

for me,its when a video made by an american,uses weight measurments in lbs(pounds) and talks of speed in kilometers per hour,maybe in old school but in the uk we use miles per hour for speed and kilograms for weight,why the hell is this so common for yank documentries to do this?,it sends hy head in a spin and benifits no one,anyone else pissed off with this too?

[harerod]

m3vu, let me guess, you tell your body weight in stone, pound, and ounce? 

Regarding the U.S.American aversion against metric: They use thermometers to measure Fahrenheit...

In general aviation there is a distinct usage of length measurement units. The unit changes with the type of length (e.g. feet for altitude, meters for visibility, knots for speed, nautical miles for distance traveled). A beautiful arrangement, which has led to some rather tragic accidents. Being a German engineer rooted in SI, I really enjoyed flying seventy year-old crates which gave IAS in mph. And don't get me started on inches of mercury for pressure. Makes you feel like at the doctor's.