I have one: I once heard someone on television complain of a propensity for 'diarrhea of the mouth'. Either she was talking about logorrhea, or she had discovered the most entertaining medical condition ever.

Yeah, people getting their terms wrong when they're trying to sound smart is definitely a pet peeve of mine, even if it occasionally produces some very amusing malapropisms.

My biggest pet peeve is apostrophe abuse. My RA in my dorm recently put up a bulletin board outside the elevator discussing "Myth's about Drinking". I only made it two trips up the elevator before I finally couldn't stand it anymore, and finally scribbled out the apostrophe. Then there was the time I was in Macy's and the departments were labeled "Boy's" and "Girl's"…

Sorry abstaining from this thread till after thursday, at least the murderous rage part.

Pet peeves people giving me what think I want not waht I've asked for, and not listening when I'm stood there explaining what it is I want.

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Blood! Death! War! Rumpy pumpy! Triumph!

Apostrophy-wise, absolutely. It is an institutionalized stupidity where I live; you see it in shop windows, at the cheese-damned airport, in the writings of people whom I normally consider intelligent-ish. There also exists a much worse corollary (sp?) which I have seen on actual magazine covers. And not just stupid magazines; national, proffessional ones. Something like this (tabloid):

PARIS' PRISON HELL

tortured by sadistic prison gangs of roving midgets * electrocuted for fun by cellmate

You would think that just one Pari per prison would suffice, no?

Other people!

No really. Good example - in shopping centre, on one of those descalator ramps.

FAmily in front of us, with pram.

Decide to stop at the exit point of the descalator to have a long drawn out conversation while the rest of us do the descalator version of treading water because no-one can get past them to get off the bloody thing.

It is a very silly, very minor one, but since Jasper Carrott used the expression "Robin Reliant" in a comedy sketch, everyone repeats it. Not just comedians hoping to avoid lawsuits, but even in news stories.
The company is Reliant, the model is Robin. It is a Reliant Robin!

Apostrophe- wise, there are several restaurants in Birmingham whihc have signs saying

YOU'R WELCOME TO BRING YOUR OWN BOOZE.

And they are all identical signs, presumably from some manufacturer, with the same stupid mistake.

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Turn the silliness to eleven!

Aussies must be a cut above you simple Northern Hemisphere types then. I haven't seen a badly punctuated piece of advertising for years! (cue pomposity)

And I think she might have meant *verbal diarrhoea* (as in using twenty words where one will suffice) by diarrhoea of the mouth. Might not be a commonly used expression elsewhere in the world, but it certainly is here.

Ah yes, punctuation in advertising. Around here, every brand name nowadays ends with a period. If the name consists of multiple words, spaces are also substituted by periods. (Which, if you think about it, is a very old custom. I seem to remember seeing medieval manuscripts done with marks between every word.)

And if you want to sell things to the under-twenty-crowd, you have to use exclamation marks, instead.

The expression "verbal diarrhoea" is very common in the U.K.

Yup, I know many a sufferor of verbal diarrhoea.

Shame they don't make any Immodium + for the verbal variety, I always feel depressed when I watch a programme with stereotyped adverts, you really do begin to get paranoid!

I once had a checkout chick refer to another checkout chick with the statement: "She is so ignorant to the customers." Some ten years later I am still trying to decide what she said!

Apostrophes. Yes. Try reading "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" a perfect read for pedants and grammarsists (sp?) everywhere.

Apart from the punctuation thing, one thing that gets right up my nose is the curious aversion people have to adverbs. "It was real good". No, it was really good. And text messaging language irritates me too. hd a riLy crp da. Well, so did I now that I've read your indecipherable message.

*goes and sticks head in swimming pool to cool off*

Looks like my lecture notes.

Although there I have my own shorthand. Then I write it all into a book afterwards.

Short run-down of the system:

Use caps for double letters. bEr = beer, really = reaLy
the = t
it = _
an, am = a
and = +
not = -
but = ^
ea becomes E
ie becomes E
ei becomes A

I am still working on it, but this I have managed to get working reasonably well.

becomes:

i a stiL working on _ ^ ths i have managed to get working rEsonably weL.

Also makes it more fun when someone asks to borrow my notes. Still need to find a systematic way of shortening long words, but without merely dropping the vowels.

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'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

'Verbal diarrhea' is fine -- the initial qualifier brings the message into the realm of intangibility, and, hence, designates 'diarrhea' as a metaphor. 'Diarrhea of the mouth', on the other hand, simply relocates the physical symptom to another part of the body. Eagh.

Eats, Shoots and Leaves was a wonderful read--it made me feel vindicated in my urge to correct apostrophe abuse! I don't mind intentional odd grammar or spelling, like in your notes, Martin, although web speak really makes me want to claw my eyes out.

The opposite of Verbal Diarrhea is, of course Conversation Constipation

I use webspeak in conversation. But then we do it as a group, just a side effect of being online a lot I guess.

But then as a group we are odd....

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'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

I love most weird permutations and variations in language. txt tlk rx, btw! dit L33T. It's like watching evolution, but a LOT quicker.

Evolution good, stupidity bad.