@cstross People ‘wrecking havoc’ rather than wreaking it.

@cstross and the classic (mostly American?), confusion of 'loose' and 'lose':
'Loose the reins' (slacken them) is not the same as 'Lose the reins' (you dropped them down a hole).

@cstross Unless, of course, you *mean* the version that you wrote. As a kid, I thought it was "for all intensive purposes" and when I wrote it, I *meant* that, for all purposes that were intensive. When my English teacher corrected it to "for all intents and purposes", it changed the meaning of what I wrote.

@cstross Oh, thank you fellow grammar enthusiast. Another which always get's me....people say "I could care less".....I tell my son, then you COULD care less which goes against your point - it's "I couldn't care less".....which means your caring is at it's bottom level which is the point!

@cstross it's "set foot," not "step foot"!

@cstross

Yes, well, you can take it for granite, it's a doggy-dog world.

@cstross My favorite is when people ask me to “bare with them” rather than to “bear with them.”

Oh, also when people say they have “bated breath” (which sounds like a particularly awful form of halitosis) rather than “bated breath.”

@cstross

https://xkcd.com/326/

My pet peeve: crimes that are perpetuated instead of perpetRated.
Not the same thing!

@cstross Seems to me that the things you get when hungry are both pangs and pains. "Pangs" is more traditional and a bit more specific, but "pains" isn't a _mistake_ in the way that e.g. "mute point" is.

I think there's literally (like, _literally_ literally_) no situation where using "begging the question" is a good idea other than when you know all the people you're talking to well enough to know how they will understand it. A lot of the problem here is that "begging the question" is a really unnatural way (in modern English) to say the thing it traditionally means, and rather a natural way (in modern English) to say the thing it often means nowadays, and both of those are things it's reasonable to want to say.

So I say something like "assumes what you're trying to prove" when I mean _petitio principii_, and "raises the question" when I mean the other thing.

(Sometimes I might say something like "begs the question, in the original sense": if I'm talking to people whom I know _know_ the original sense but there isn't enough common knowledge -- everyone knows that everyone knows, etc. -- that they can safely assume that I am using the words that way without further clarification.)

@cstross

Shoo-in. Good to know.

@cstross but maybe i mean jive with

@cstross

What we need here (Nth Central Victoria Australia) is free rain.

We're in a 1 in 100 year drought.

Trouble is it's our third 1 in 100 year drought in 25 years.

@cstross but is it "tow the line" or "toe the line"?

@cstross ALSO: Nobody will ever convince me that "based off of" is anything but edgelord idiocy coined by 19-year-olds in like 1996 who drove tuned Corollas dropped to an inch above the pavement with neon lights underneath and spoilers the size of 747 wings, and who listened to Orgy on auto-repeat on their 500-CD changers.

@cstross The "jibe" vs "jive" thing still confuses me. I've read explainers over the years that have claimed each of them is correct, or both are.

I also don't know whether "home in on" or "hone in on" is right (though I suspect it's the former).

@cstross

"Mute point" is:

1) The setting on a "Squelch" control that silences the background noise in the absence of a signal. (VHF radio).

or

2) When you've finally had enough of some irritating troll (or other person) and block the offending pest. (Internet).

3:O)>

@cstross For all intensive purposes.