drives me crazy sometimes. Stop it.
Okay, so most of you are pretty interesting folks and you're generally fairly nice, and I enjoy reading about your lives and your thoughts on a wide variety of subjects. But as I have mentioned in a few previous articles ("Argh! Don't SAY that!", "How to annoy me", and "More ways to annoy me), sometimes you write things that are just so blatantly wrong that I have to suppress the urge to grab my taser and hunt you down. You've got to stop that, okay?
Here are some more of the hideously wrong things that you write:
1) Than vs. Then, or 'If X is greater than Y, then Y can't you get it right?'
Okay, hands up if you went to elementary school. ... Hmm, I see an awful lot of hands out there ... so you should KNOW this already! "Then" is a word that indicates chonological sequencing, or the consequence of a supposition. In other words, "then" is used in two major cases: "First X happened, then Y happened" or "If P is true, then Q must also be true."
The word "Than", on the other hand, is a comparative conjunction or preposition, as in "You are a better sport than he is", or "I know more about grammar than you."
And as an added bonus, I'd like to point out that after "than", the subjective case pronoun ("I", "she", etc.) is correct; even if you don't say it, some form of the verb "to be" is implied after the comparison. "You feel worse about it than I (do)", "He is farther along than she (is)", etc. Lots of people would say "He is farther along than her", but they're wrong.
Easy Rule:If you're comparing something to something else, use "than". Otherwise, "then" is almost certainly correct.
2) Who's vs. Whose, or "who's been listening so far?"
If you check "How to annoy me", you'll see a fair chunk of ranting about "its" and "it's". Substitute "whose" for "its" and "who's" for "it's", and you'll have everything you need to get this one right too. For those of you too lazy to go look, I'll summarize briefly: Possessive pronouns NEVER use apostrophes. This includes the indefinite/interrogative pronoun "who".
Easy Rule:"Who's" means "who is" or "who has." "Whose" means "belonging to whom."
3) Incite vs. Insight, or "Don't incite me to doubt your insight."
It's all right there in the tag line. "Incite" is a verb; it means to stir up, to instigate, to spur into action. "Insight" is a noun; it means discernment, or the ability to see the inner nature of things. Please note that "inciteful" is not a valid word, and should not be written even if you are referring to that characteristic that causes someone to go around routinely instigating things.
Easy Rule:If you're having it, it's an insight. If you're doing it, it's inciting. And if you're talking about someone else's thoughts, they're insightful (or moronic, as the case may be).
4) Elusive vs. illusive, or "You can't catch it if it's not real."
This one is less common than the others, probably because peoples' vocabularies are shrinking. But on the occasions where their spoken vocabularies seem to include the word "elusive" (which means "difficult to catch"), many times in their writings it will be rendered as "illusive" (which means "having the nature of an illusion"). Not many people write about the illusory nature of things in such a way that the word "illusive" is properly called for. (Especially since "illusory" is much more commonly used anyway.)
Easy Rule:go with "elusive" unless you know otherwise.
5) Hypocrisy vs. any of a thousand varied misspellings, or "Is the grammar nazi a hippocrete?"
If you're smart enough to be bandying this word about, you should be smart enough to spell it correctly. Come on. It's not THAT tough. Put out a little effort, you lazy bum.
Bonus phrase!
I saw someone use this recently and I just had to comment on it.
6) baited breath, or "Look, I swallowed a worm!"
Let's think about this for a minute, in one of its common uses: "I await your reply with baited breath." Why the hell would you bait your breath? Are you trying to conquer a lover with your honeyed exhalations? Do you intend to drive off strangers with your annelid-flavored halitosis? What does baiting your breath have to do with anything? The answer: NOTHING! The correct term is "bated breath." "Bated" is a form of "abated", which in this context means restrained. You know how people say "Don't hold your breath"? Well, that's pretty much what this expression is referring to: you are holding your breath waiting for the answer.