Irritating Inaccuracies

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And there is some precedent for highly respected writers having used that form ("their" as a gender neutral pronoun) for a long time. Jane Austen, for example: http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austheir.html



or octopi or virii.

I've also had problems with people taking me to task for using the proper plural form of words such as "penes" and "fora".

YES. I there are a ton of little inaccuracies that annoy me. Especially if it concerns an interest, or past interest, of mine. If it's something someone around me is saying, i feel compelled to correct them and go off into a Sheldon-y explanation of it. Someone at work recently pointed out to me that i'm very quick to correct people about things.
Here's a few common ones that will likely make me correct you:
- Calling Tegus a type of "Monitor" or, even more ridiculous, when they get labelled "Tegu Monitors." (i've seen this at pet shops) They're teiids! Not even related to monitors!
- Using the words "monkey" and "ape" interchangeably. This is obvious.
- Calling all snake teeth "fangs," even in nonvenomous species that don't even have fangs. Fangs are the teeth that deliver venom.
- Using the words "poisonous" and "venomous" interchangeably. Snakes are *venomous.* Venom is injected into a victim. Poison is injested.
- Calling metal, electro, or marilyn manson "goth rock," when it obviously isn't even similar and the only similarities are superficial. (80s goth rock used to be an obsession. Bauhaus!)
- People who have probably never even heard of one goth rock band referring to things, and often themselves, as "goth." (again, i know it sounds stupid... but i used to have that goth rock obsession. can't help it)
- When people take the record length of a snake species and then make it sound like they regularly reach that length. I'm sorry but "reticulated pythons get 32 feet long" is not an accurate statement just because one ONE TIME was measured at that length. That's like saying "humans get 8 feet tall" because of of a few extreme examples. Even nature documentaries i've seen have been guilty of this. Probably to add to the "wow" factor with big snakes. Something more like "reticulated pythons have been documented to reach record lengths of 32 feet long" would be more appropriate and less misleading. And the normal length is more around 16-20 feet, by the way. But they do this with other species too. I tell you, i've been to many reptile expos and seen a lot of ball pythons, and i've never seen a 7 foot ball python(i've heard that one too!). In fact, i don't think i've seen a ball python that was over 5 feet at the absolute maximum.
- Turtles getting called amphibians. I always imagine that turtle character in Over the Hedge saying "REPTILE!! !"

I might post more if i think of them...

I'm a big fan of goth but have never been able to listen to an entire Bauhaus album in one sitting (even though I love Peter Murphy's voice) because of the high pitched sounds in it. I get about three songs in and I have a raging headache.

Those have multiple pluralizations, of which the common forms are also correct.

Actually a fang is "A long sharp tooth ... by which an animal's prey is seized and held or torn." A separate definition is given specifically for venomous snakes.


By definition venom is a poison or "poisonous secretion/substance" and poison is medically defined as "a substance taken internally or applied externally that is injurious to health or dangerous to life." Also, medically, the first definition of venomous is "poisonous"

I agree. But that doesn't excuse lecturing someone for using a correct, if less common, pluralization. I don't mind being corrected. I resent being hypercorrected.

Also, use of "they/their/them" for one person when it's not a specific person is an old and well established usage. People who think it's wrong are either expecting language to be logical in a way that it isn't, or else are blindly following what someone else told them. Like it or not, it's part of our language, not an error.

Now, use of they/their/them for a specified person is less common, and I think also a newer usage. Basically, before the internet, is was quite rare to not know someone's gender when talking about them, but the internet has made that more common. Personally, it doesn't bug me when people do that, but I think it's best to avoid it in formal writing, if possible.

Oh, and generally, I try not to let others annoy me. It's a waste of my mental energy.

So, no, not going to waste energy being annoyed by things written in this thread. But I did decide to take time to post about one issue brought up.

When talking about animals specifically(well, other organisms too), venom is something that is injected into the victim and poison is injested by the victim, like with a poison dart frog(or absorbed through the skin, like with poison ivy). Calling snakes "poisonous" is wrong. You can lick them, eat them, touch them, whatever, and they aren't going to poison you. They are, however, "venomous" because they can inject you with venom. Likewise, poison dart frogs aren't venomous. "Poisonous" is often used as a synonym for "toxic"... But, even then, the snake itself isn't toxic, only its' venom is if it decides to envenomate you.

And with the "fang" thing, i am specifically talking about snakes, so the snake definition applies.

For me, it's historical inaccuracies in movies and on TV (I only majored in history while in college).
Case in point -
When I saw the Clive Owen movie King Arthur with my wife a few years ago, I was constantly whispering to her how the Saxons would have been armed with long bows, rather than cross bows. Or how the Saxons had been originally invited to Britain by the Romanized population there, before they turned on their employers - they hadn't just up and invaded on their own, as the movie implied. Or how Arthur's Sarmatian knights would have been descended from Sarmatians settled in Britain by the Romans generations ago, rather than coming out of the eastern steppes to serve the Romans by agreement, as shown in the film. Or how... Well, I'm probably boring everyone reading this with my ranting and raving. Suffice to say, historical inaccuracies make me nuts. So much so, that I'd drive my friends crazy with my historical nitpicking when we'd rent movies. I'm not the guy you want to watch a movie with that's supposedly based on history.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Using an expression (a combination of words) in such a way that is consistent with it's commonly accepted meaning is not inaccurate, even it does not mean what you would infer from the definitions of the words themselves. You can think of the whole expression as one lexical unit with its own definition if it makes it easier for you.

What are you referring to?

I empathze with you! Someone had me watch a romantic comedy (not a good idea in the first place, but . . .) and all I could do was criticize their made-up history of the elevator. The filmmakers didn't even care about the history of the elevator! It was just a plot device to get the time-travelling lovers to meet up again. I, however, cared deeply about the TRUE history of the elevator and I suspect as a result the person who had me watch the movie will never suggest another romantic comedy, especially one with any historical elements. Or elevators.

The OP and most of the stuff on page 1. I've been accused of being pedantic before, but grammatical errors only really bother me when they obfuscate the meaning of something. Something like "PIN Number" doesn't bother me in any way because the meaning is clear.

Ah, gotcha. Thanks for clarifying for me!

That can certainly be debated. Every macroscopic object is unique. We approximate similar objects together ("this is a chair, that is another chair, that is another chair, they are all chairs") when really there's no such thing as "a chair"; they are all unique arrangements of atoms, and moreover, they're arrangements which are changing slightly all the time. Uniqueness is not, properly, an exception which should be made for unusual objects; uniqueness is a property of every macroscopic object. Also, the position of an object is a property of sorts, so two chairs of exactly identical structure and composition are still unique; if by amazingly precise manufacture two utterly identical (like they were grown atom by atom in total vacuum or something) chairs were made, they would still be distinct; one would be "the chair over here" and the other would be "the chair over there", and by virtue of not being in the same place they'd be acted on by slightly different forces from the outside world.

The short version is that everything is unique, and that really it's calling things similar that is an inaccurate (but very useful!) expression.

The clue was staring us in the face all the time - the Queen would never begin a sentence with "my hurband and me...." she would always say "my husband and I....." It's a cliche in England, like "we are not amused" was for Queen Victoria. That's the Queen's English. I always suspected she must be useful for something.

Yes, a lot of inaccuracies annoy me. I used to correct people all the time thinking I was helping them. Most people don't really care though. Some of my annoyances are things like..

"I'm real thirsty."

Real thirsty, as opposed to the fake kind of thirsty, right? What they really meant is:

"I'm really thirsty."


"I'm AS."

This is used here a lot, and it annoys me because it isn't true. You are NOT Asperger's Syndrome. You'd have to be really loopy to be actually titled as the syndrome itself! Of course, I know what they really mean.


Online game acronyms such as "LFT" or "LFG" or "DPS" or "PUG" or "PST" are almost all used incorrectly. LFT/LFG is used shorthand for quick advertisements, which I'll let slide since most people are too lazy to put too much effort into typing. DPS is a simple acronym that stands for "damage per second", however it has evolved into an acronym that implies A LOT of damage per second and not just any amount. Also, some people will go as far as to type "DPSer", yes, "damage per seconder"! PUG was originally an acronym for "pick up group", implying you grabbed a bunch of random people to form a group. It now refers to even just one random person, such as, "He's just a pug". Yes, one person can be a group now, folks! PST originally stood for, "please send tell". It was used after a request or an offer of some sort, and people would end it with PST as a reminder to communicate in private chat, so the user can see it easier. Well, a lot of people seem to think it just means "psssst", like a whisper noise. So then you get people saying, "Blah blah blah please pst" or "Blah blah blah pst please". I've seen as much as "please pst please". Drives me bonkers.


That isn't all. My list is huge, I just can't recall it all. I don't record my annoyances, afterall. Last thing I need to do is remember something that pisses me off! Many many inaccuracies annoy me. If it is inaccurate in some way, I'm probably annoyed by it!