Conundrums: Pet peeves

I was recently having a conversation with a friend and I prefaced something I was about to say with “to be honest with you”. After I finished my thought, he pointed out that one of his pet peeves is when someone uses a statement like that to preface a thought. In his mind, it sounds like you’re saying that you’re not always honest. I get his point and now I try to steer clear of saying that—partially because I agree with him, and partially because I don’t want to annoy others who might have the same pet peeve.

This got me to thinking about my own language-related pet peeves. Here are a few that always seem to get to me.

“Nother”
This is not a word. But the good news is, there are two perfectly acceptable ways to avoid it:

1. That’s a whole other story.
2. That’s another whole story.

“Alot”
This is not a word either. “A lot” refers to large quantity of something, “Allot” is a verb that means to divide, distribute or appropriate. It doesn’t matter how you say it, but it definitely matters how you spell it.

“Anyways”
Even though this word is accepted as a colloquial term, I still think it sounds silly. It’s like saying “Nordstroms” or “deers”. Well, actually, it’s not, because nowhere in the history of the Nordstrom name will you find an “s” tacked on to the end of it, and “deers” is simply not a word.

“Supposebly”
I can’t imagine what horrible things “supposedly” did to deserve such disrespect.

“These ones”
I’m all for using extra words to embellish or emphasize a certain point, but not when it makes one sound like a backwoods hick. Let’s just say “these” please.

What language-related pet peeves do you have? Share them with us in the comments and we’ll publish them in our news-letter next month. (See what I just did there?).