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A lot of grammatical mistakes don't faze me, and I have my share of stubborn incomprehensions (don't always understand the good/well rule of usage). But the following kills me, because I fail to understand how people of average intelligence make these mistakes time and time again:
People who don't understand that you only put quotation marks around something someone actually said. For instance, if a politician says, "Read my lips: no new taxes," and a person is quoting him, it drives me crazy if they write, "the politician has told us to "read his lips: no new taxes..." Who is the his in that quotation??? It is the politician! So why would the politician tell us to read "his" lips? He wouldn't. He would tell us to read "my" lips. Alteration of a quote for purposes of clarification requires the use of brackets--these things []!!--so as to reflect their true intention ("he told us to 'read [his] lips' regarding taxes.")
I just don't get paraphrasing with quotes when the two are generally mutually exclusive. Or did the people who do this miss the day that pronouns were taught in school, leading them to think 'his' and 'my' are interchangeable?
The above is the most grammatically stupefying example I have, right up there with misuse of the word 'literally' as a hyperbolic device, but that's already on the list. The 'literally' problem could be avoided ninety percent of the time if people just substituted the word 'practically' for 'literally.' ("My boss was practically foaming at the mouth when he heard those numbers.")
Something else that pains me is when someone uses an apostrophe, but without intending to convey a possessive or a contraction. I find this is most often employed with plural names: "Why didn't the McCoy's invite the Hatfield's to Christmas?" If no one is taking ownership of anything, just leave it alone! I think people are uncomfortable with slapping an 's' onto a name, so maybe they feel the need to dress it up with an apostrophe..? Crazy
I also detest redundancy. Why end a list with "etc., etc."? Did the first et cetera not fully express itself?
The apostrophe misuse has gotten noticeably bad recently, and I can't stand it.
Also the literally thing. Someone was telling me a story about how she embarrassed herself, and said she literally died. REALLY? How are you here?
Re redundancy, I can't stand "past experience", either.
What also annoys me is when people came into New England and thought a Frappe is a Milkshake, when they are two differant things.
The French translation for milkshake is "lait frappe". Given that a lot of people in Quebec travel to and vacation in New England (after all, it's right next door), it doesn't surprise me that there might be some confusion, particularly among French-Canadian visitors.
^
In northern NY I once heard a Quebecois in a McD's order a Beek Mock.
There's a guy at work we all call Beanie, because he supervises a group of mostly-Costa Rican maintenance guys and that's what they call him. His name is really Vinnie.
Hmm. I just saw one I haven't seen before. Someone on the parenting forum asked for "Imput" on a subject. I figured it was a typo--the m is next to the n. But at the end of the thread, the poster mentions everyone's imput again.
That's funny. I have a friend who says "optical delusion".
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Sad. 
