Grammatical Pet Peeves

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If you're sick to your stomach and you say you're "nauseous," that's wrong.

If you're talking about yourself, then you say "I'm nauseated."

"Nauseous" causes "nausea."

Improper use of the word 'literally'.
"At the party, we were LITERALLY going insane!"
"So you all <insert stereotypical insane behaviour here>?"

Also, when people use capital letters for every noun.
This happened in my business studies class a lot.

German's use capitals for nouns...

I know, but in English?

Hmmm... hadn't thought of that...

People who use apostrophes for plurals.

Mixing up "you're" and "your," and "it's" and "its."

Mixing up "good" and "well."

The way people around here drop their prepositions.

Yeah...I'm an English major.

'Your' and 'you're'
'There', 'their' and 'they're'
'Where', 'were', 'wear' and even 'we're'
'Its' and 'it's'
'Less' and 'fewer'
'To', 'too' and 'two'
Incorrect use of apostrophes, particuarly when used with dates, for example 1940's
Dangling prepositions at the end of sentences
Poor use of semi-colons
Poor sentence construction and inappropriate use of commas

I'm trying not to be such a grammatical pedant but when I see any of the above I get slightly irritated.

I think that's not meant to be taken literally...

When people whine about grammatical "errors" that aren't technically errors but either acceptable empathic usage (like split infinitives) or changes to the languages due to common usage, even though the reference books have yet to accept them (like dangling prepositions).

The "dangling preposition" fuss it especially annoying. People don't seem to want to accept that English is a clumsy language, particularly with regards to prepositions and transitive verbs. Often times, the way to afford this "error" is by making it even clumsier. I do not see the value of that.

All grammar rules are based on common usage. If the common usage changes, the rules need to change too.

Hmmm... Never really thought about "grammar" pet peeves before. If I have one, I'd have to say how the word "colour" is spelled. In Canada, it's spelled with the "u" (in the United States, it's spelled without), yet I see the odd sign spelling it without. If I was in the states, I probably wouldn't notice it as much.

Mind you, I'm not OVERLY critical about it. I just notice it, thinking "hey, they misspelled colour", then move on...

Multiple exclaimation marks REALLY p*ss me off!! ! !! ! !! !

I hate when people use "a" instead of "an" before nouns and adjectives that start with a vowel.

"Like"

"You know" (Not only annoying, but also patronizing, in my opinion)

"Anyways," for "anyway" (I hate the word anyway to begin with. I find it just another verbal filler.)

As long as I can understand someone, they may use whatever grammatical constructs they like, and it will peeve me not. I prefer more obscure and archaic constructs myself.

My own grammar is invariably perfect; any particular point that someone might disagree with me on this is simply artistic license. But I will admit that I am dyslexic, and could not spell myself out of a paper bag. And AspieMartian raises an excellent point about common usage. [Woah, did I just knowingly start two sentences in a row with conjunctions? ]

I have a Chicago Manual of Style around here somewhere, but I must admit I have not referenced it in years.

Good fortune,

- Icarus's editors think he is too "wordy"...

I once had an argument with a person on a simple point. I said it was A HOTEL, and he said it was AN HOTEL! It turns out, and I would concede this a bit, though he wouldn't, that it USED to be AN HOTEL because the H was not generally pronounced. The N simply makes it phonetic. So it is A HOTEL or AN 'OTEL. There isn't really any AN HOTEL, even if it IS spelled the same.

He started it, but was unwilling to agree I am right, even though I stated that he would be right in some circumstances.

Mixing up 'good' and 'well' bothers me a lot.
As does ending sentences with prepositions, but not so much when other people do it, but I try to avoid it as much as possible.