bias: Used incorrectly by undergrads as an adjective, as in, "This article was bias." Also sometimes mis-converted, especially when spoken, to the nonexistent adjective "biasted."
researches: Though it's a rare plural form of "research," undergrads don't keep it rare, using it freely in sentences like, "This evidence can be seen in several researches."
Besides the usual grammatical problems (its/it's, they're/their/there, etc.) (hey, that's another one--undergrads like to write "and etc.," as in, "We bought cookies, milk, bagels, and etc."), what other misused words are in the undergrad's idiocabulary*?
*"Idiocabulary" is a term I just made up. It refers to the vocabulary of an idiot. I like this term a lot, and I'm kind of bummed about posting it anonymously. Oh well.
My favorite is "for all intensive purposes."
ReplyDeleteFrom a purely grammatical standpoint, I'm often annoyed by "could of", as in "I could of used correct grammar, if I weren't such an idiot."
ReplyDeleteFrom a scientific perspective, the use of "specie" as the singular of "species" really grinds my gears.
Idiocabulary? I love it! These would be great submissions to "Fonnica: A Studnet Dicshinary."(The tag on CM for it is "student dictionary.")
ReplyDeleteAks or ax. I'm not sure how they spell it.
ReplyDeleteAs in, "Prof CommProf, can I aks/ax you a question about this assignment?"
Oh, and I love "idiocabulay" too. How do you people have time to come up with this awesomeness? Seriously, I work so much I'm lucky if I have time to wash my clothes...
ReplyDeleteI've learned that there is this word students use, "unfair". Now, that's a word that has a standard definition, but the standard definition has only passing resemblance to the word used by students. When used by a student, it means "not perfectly optimal for what I personally want right now".
ReplyDeleteI also get bothered when students use the word "derive" to mean "differentiate", but that's more technical.
'Amount', applied liberally to count nouns; as in, "A huge amount of people are affected by it." (Or, the even-worse variant, "A huge amount of people are effected by it.")
ReplyDeleteIt's a sure sign that, not only have they not had much formal grammar instruction, but they also don't read anything besides their friends' text-messages.
When I assign my gender-bias-in-music essay, I always get one or two who insist on using "artist" as the plural.
ReplyDeleteI had a kid write about a certain group of people being placed on a pedestal. Only he wrote: "pedal stool." Another indication that the effort to write better is futile until they start reading more frequently.
ReplyDeleteIt's a doggy-dog world. Oldtimer's disease.
ReplyDelete"The media," with no sense that it is already a plural, and that TV shows, movies, various web constructions, and even such archaic formats as newspapers and books can each be spoken of as an individual medium. They write a sentence invoking "the media," and then the next one is hopelessly tangled because they don't really have any sense either of what the word means, or of how it functions grammatically.
ReplyDeleteI'm bothered by "bias" for "biased," too (and "cliche" for "cliched"), but even more concerned that they seem to think that some sources of information aren't influenced by their context, purpose, cultural milieu, etc. etc.
I haven't seen "biasted"; that sounds like what one does to a turkey on Thanksgiving.
"All in the sudden," "my next-store neighbor," and "back round" just kill me. And this is monied-rural America.
ReplyDelete"In today's society" and "in everyday life" incur automatic 5-point penalties.
ReplyDelete"Ax/aks" is often preceded by "gots." No, I am not joking. "I gots to ax you a question."
ReplyDelete@CC - I think "biasted" is what southerners do to a Thanksgiving turkey.
ReplyDeleteSee also "Alot":
ReplyDeletehttp://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html
ps: In case you wonder what I am like in person, I am probably a lot (see what I did there?) like the author of this blog, except fat and ugly. Oh, and I wouldn't put shoes on my dog. Otherwise, yep, me.
"the basics"- Used as a catch-all for General Education and prerequisite courses, regardless of major. What students don't realize is "the basics," when used in the context of "prerequisite," can vary wildly between majors.
ReplyDeletefrom a place where these errors in particular are particularly bothersome/enervating/troubling.
ReplyDeleteordinance for ordnance
envelope for envelop
bomb for artillery round
moral for morale
attributed for contributed
comprise for compose
calvary for cavalry
using "impact" instead of "affect" (he was greatly impacted by the decision of the general)
the German's strategy
strategic tactics, operational strategies, tactical strategies, strategic tactics, tactical operations, and other such nonsense.
the constant need to capitalize "Soldier"
other annoying words: operationalize, concretize, orientate, azimuth, nested, overtake. the list goes on.
and, finally, "LEAD" instead of "LED" - He lead troops into battle. I swear, if there is ONE VERB they should be able to conjugate correctly, it seems "to lead" might be a good candidate.
You can only call it a "bombfire" if somebody throws a bag full of bottle rockets into a flaming barbeque pit.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you do when your prof makes up his own words? He likes to add suffixes to words to create new ones that sound almost technical but not quite right.
ReplyDeleteWe've checked, they're not words.
Oh c'mon folks ...
ReplyDeleteI'm "loosing" my mind over how everyone seems to have lost the ability to differentiate between "loose" and "lose"!
@vietcong
ReplyDeleteHaven't you heard? One should indeed capitalize "Soldier," and your failure to do so shows how unpatriotic you are.
http://www.military.com/NewContent/0,13190,122303_Soldier,00.html
I suppose we should expect no better from another liberal academic carrying around the name of the "vietcong."
I get alot of the same errors on test about how a specie evolutes. The Little Dears try not to be bias and to site reasearches by leading scientist, but they often think that a web cite is a peer review source.
ReplyDeleteMy personal fingernails-on-a-blackboard, teeth-grinding, knickers-twisting cliche (are there more?) is "in-depth analysis," picked up from nightly news. As if what they might see on TV news is deep. As if anything they might write as an undergrad has depth. As if saying it's "in depth" makes it so.
@Sara: At a parent-teacher conference, I learned that I should be proud of my son, with his "photogenic memory." Advice? Just take notes, give the man back what he wants on tests, and bask in the realization that you know the language better than he does.
Finally, kudos to Vietcong: "I swear, if there is ONE VERB they should be able to conjugate correctly, it seems "to lead" might be a good candidate."
"This is the ball with which I hit you with."
ReplyDelete"Whom is that?"
"He has a stereotypical view of Asians."
"I am now in post-secondary."
"Themself." As in, "One must know themself well in order to fulfill his/or her dreams and be who they want to be in one's life."
Students also seem to misunderstand the word "opinion." To them, it is a personal view that, because it's simply an opinion, can not be challenged, judged, or otherwise evaluated -- ever.
I get "loose" instead of "lose" CONSTANTLY, and I'm convinced that it has to do with the fact that our dear little snowflakes never lost at anything growing up; instead they received awards just for breathing successfully.
ReplyDeleteSeveral of my student use "weary" instead of "wary." The latest was "so post to" instead of "supposed to"! It took me a while to figure that one out.
"If I would've known you were coming, I would've baked a cake." Or worse: "If I would of known you were coming, I would of baked a cake."
ReplyDeleteI see "bias" instead of "biased" all the time too. Indeed, my students frequently drop the "ed" ending on adjectives.
@SchmittyRKD
ReplyDeletewell aware, yes. and I gleefully tell them that this is remarkably stupid.
they love my liberal-long-haired-hippie-military-history-teaching-self around here.
no, really.
Chemical elements are not proper nouns. That is all.
ReplyDelete@vietcong
ReplyDeleteI share your pain ... my flakies seem to think that ANY job title needs capitalization ... Fur Weaver, Underwater Basketmaker, etc.
And gotta love the irony in SchmittyRKD's linked article. In the sidebar, explaining the history of Stars & Stripes (the original source of the article) they write "... 'Stripes' reporters have been in the field with American soldiers, sailors and airmen [since the Civil War] ... ".
Uncapitalized all ...
And, sorry, but for ANYone to claim that capitalizing "soldier" is a duty in patriotism, how about you focus on making sure servicepeople get the resources they need -- during their service and AFTER -- and stop focusing energy on empty symbolism?
Sara,
ReplyDeleteJust be happy no one has asked you to read Mary Daly. She was a pro at making up her own words in the middle of the text.
"Since the dawn of time, we have [insert ANY topic]..."
ReplyDelete"Society has always [insert any topic]."
"Have you ever... [insert any verb]"
My "pet pee" is when they use "issue" instead of "problem" or any other descriptive word that would work more correctly:
"I had printer issues."
"She has psych issues."
"The group I'm in has issues."
To go along with the "evolute," my favorite typo this year from a student writing about endangered species in the rainforest: "The engendered feces in the rainforest..."
Ack, you and I are peeved by similar things. I can't bear the misuse of the word "issue" that has recently become endemic in our culture and if ever I see one of those "since the dawn of time" sections in an essay, I cross the whole thing out with my little red pen.
ReplyDeleteI'm also really disgusted with the recent glut of adjectives used as nouns in advertisements: "Welcome to wholesome"; "Together is amazing." Ugh! I know that will soon show up in my students' writing, just as the two sentence paragraph has done.
Exactly, Issyvoo!!! And the whole "let's turn a noun into a verb" (thank you very much, Google! problem is something my British colleagues cannot fathom).
ReplyDeleteI've noticed a problem with "a part" and "apart" (two completely separate meanings that students can't seem to grasp). Speaking of "grasp," I have some students confusing that word with "grapple."
What really chaps my lips is any cliched reference to "giving back" (to whom and what are we giving back?) and vague phrases like "in times like these" (that I also see in TV advertisements). What times are these?
Grrrrr...
I have a long list of typos I've been collecting ("idiocabulary" is my new favorite word): remote memorization; doom buggies; Aspirin regiment; something being 'chalked full of'; etc. And when I really get tired, I remember that 'resistance if feudal."
Taylor Mali has a wonderful bit on YouTube about proofreading that I show in class and half the students don't get it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OonDPGwAyfQ
I've shown that clip. My students liked it and I think it helped them grasp the problem (or should I say "issue").
ReplyDeleteStudents constantly use the word "simplistic" when they mean simple. I'm also peeved by "back in the day," and "back then," when they clearly have no idea at all which day or just when "back then" was. Every time they use those expressions, I ask them to clarify, yet they still show up on essays.
Resistance is indeed feudal. Thanks for gifting me with that one.
Oh-EM-GEE!
ReplyDelete"Back in the day" makes me want to throw up on their papers and on them! And I hate throwing up! But I hate that phrase more than I hate throwing up. Gross.
And the "resistance if feudal" was actually how a student wrote it (with the 'if' spelled incorrectly--sigh).
Thanks for the commiseration on these 'issues.'
One that's quite common around these here parts is the use of "defiantly" for "definitely." That error often changes the meaning of sentences in quite hilarious ways.
ReplyDeleteAnd I, too, despise the "since the beginning of time," and "Humans have alway," phrases. It's called filler, people, and cut it out.
Loose for lose, god, yes, it sets my teeth on edge. And your for you're. And its for it's, or it's for its. They're and there and their. Arghhh.
ReplyDeleteAnd "based off of," as in "based off of my reading of the poem, it is about birds."
And "as a pose to."
Also "in conclusion."
"Spece" or "specie"—you know, the singular of "species"—is a classic. We find that papers talking using such idiocabulary are usually improved immensely by picturing gold coins doing whatever the flake says they do, e.g., "This specie tends to congregate in mountain streams during spawning season, but alot of them are eated by bears."
ReplyDelete"Times".
ReplyDelete"You times the six by nine."
Makes me shudder with revulsion.
Trail instead of trial.
ReplyDeleteOne winner was able to kick that one up a notch when he said something about how he didn't want to see the suspect get off Scotch-free if he went to trail.
I got a new one this week: genital instead of gentle!
the constant need to capitalize "Soldier" or any other noun, at random.
ReplyDeleteLast I checked, English-speakers haven't spoken any form of German for at least a millennium.
What else that hasn't been mentioned? Let me see... how about "inferred spectroscopy"? That's one I tell students about every year, as an illustration of why they need to turn off auto-correction, and why they need to proofread for things their spell-checker won't catch. I still see it now and then.
I was, of course, joking by calling vietcong unpatriotic. I hope my irony was not too subtle.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, yes, the gimmick with the General Schoomaker ordering the word "soldier" to be capitalized is almost unconscionably stupid.
The absurd lengths that certain people go to venerate The American Soldier makes one wonder how any American soldiers ever survived in World War II or the Civil War.
*make one wonder
ReplyDeleteSee proffies? I caught it!
@ Schmitty
ReplyDeleteUpon my initial read of your original response, I did pause and think it sounded over the top.
Sadly, exposure to student writing and (::shudder::) newspaper comment boards has made me sensitive to hyperbolic expression which, in those cases, is sincere and intended.
Thanks for the clarification.
Now, I must attempt crafting a response to my student who has been fighting a pitched battle to justify her referencing her previous coursework as authoritative information for subsequent work.
@SchmittyRKD,
ReplyDeleteOh, I quite enjoy being called unpatriotic, so I took it as a compliment. I take it as a sign I'm doing my job well.
I have only one thing to say, and that is:
ReplyDelete.
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Thru
My undergrads, who barely read anything longer than a text message and know nothing, NOTHING about any era of human history are fond of assuming an attitude of world-weary ennui, and proclaiming that "as we know, history always repeats itself..."
ReplyDelete@ Aware and Scared
ReplyDeleteThank you!
I once had a student eval complain, "You can't believe the amount of upset I feel about the final exam." I laughed.
ReplyDeleteVietcong, way, way, way up there already mentioned impact, so I'll take it one step further: impactful, as in, "It will be more impactful if we open the speech with a joke."
ReplyDeleteAlso, impacting upon. I hear that all of the time: How is his hangover impacting upon his ability to get to class? If something can impact something else, isn't the upon part implied?
I'm also not a fan of the phrases "despite the fact that" and "due to the fact that," which seem reducible to "although" and "because" (respectively).
ReplyDeleteMaking "because of the fact that" a vile sin against all that is good and holy.
I had a student note that, after viewing a video of her speech, she saw that she had many distracting jesters. Another student worried that he'd lose his composer during his speech. I wrote, "Mozart? Handel? Who?" But the student who wrote that his delivery flaws "pooped right out" at him apparently felt the same way I did about his efforts in that class.
ReplyDeleteAnd the defiantly/definitely swap is a spell-check classic. When a student writes in a term-end review that she "defiantly learned a lot [or alot!] in this class," I ask, "Really? Learning was an act of defiance?" And then I cry.
Ooh, here's another one, though I always hear this spoken and not written: "The thing is, is..."
ReplyDeleteListen for it. Even your smart colleagues will say it. "The thing is, is that we're not just talking about basket weaving."
Why the second "is," you morons? Does someone go around teaching sentence construction based on "subject - verb - SAME VERB SAID QUICKLY - rest of sentence"? I blame the state-of-being verbs themselves. They're insidious with the way they slip themselves into sentences.
One of my favorite student spelling errors: Mrs. Ruby had a classmate--in grad school--write about popping zits (for some reason), and she wrote that she squeezed "until [her] puss exploded all over the mirror."
When outlining an opinion (or story or idea, etc) different from the one they have just been discussing, my students usually write, "The complete opposite opinion is..." In fact, it's usually a slightly different one, not a completely opposite one.
ReplyDeleteAnd, for the love of God, why is it so hard for them to embed quotations? They write things like: This idea is a good one as quoted in "I like this idea." Worse, they often just slam quotations in the middle of a sentence with no set up whatsoever: This idea is a good one "I like this idea" shows what I mean.
I am also not at all fond of people claiming that something is "compelling" when they mean that it is interesting.
ReplyDeleteMy military students have to overcome "to include" when the word is "including."
ReplyDelete"We will need to pack several items, to include Thirsty Thursday drinks, snowflakes, and helicopter parents."
Still, it's not as bad as some military publications which invented the word "Warfighter."
I'm going to add to "idiocabulary" and hand you fine people the term "moronitude" for those students that believe a "D" is all they need.
ReplyDelete