Equestrian Court of Grammatical Peeves

[S1969]

@Grey623

My peeve – abuse of the word timely. As in, “produces reports timely and accurately.” Or, “delivers package safely and timely.” Or, “submit your expenses timely.” Please. Just say “on time.”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen this. The first time I read it I didn’t understand - because I automatically changed it to “produces timely reports”.

The only time I really ever see the expression “timely” is in job descriptions. And half the time they are written in a way to sound fancy and flowery. And no one reads them carefully, ever.

I’m trying desperately to slash the word count of all our job descriptions and people have pushed back. They like those fancy, complicated sounding phrases. It sounds better than just saying “perform analysis and produce reports.”

[sorrelfilly721]

A friend recently posted a pic of the cover of a local magazine. Receive was spelled recieve. On the cover. I can’t believe no one caught it.

[anon29046226]

Intensive purposes drives me bonkers.

[Janet]

@sorrelfilly721

A friend recently posted a pic of the cover of a local magazine. Receive was spelled recieve

YEARS ago (in the 1970s) one of the big motorcycle magazines (Cycle World or Cycle Sport, I forget which) had a cover focused on introducing the new bike from (IN BIG LETTERS) “YAHAMA”!

[Rackonteur]

[Rackonteur]

YaHAHAHAHAma!

[Grey623]

Yes, that’s the abuse I meant.

Grey

[Ambitious_Kate]

@endlessclimb

And if I drive past a field of horses, I say “PONIES!” every time

I say “Look! Horthies! Horthies!” with a lisp, because everything cute has a lithp. Guinea Pigs talk with a lithp, just so you understand. My big fat orange pig wasn’t named “Wheeks”, he always said “Thaths MITHTER Wheekth, to you!”

[Ambitious_Kate]

And you don’t SALE your horse, you SELL your horse. Despite how you might pronounce it.

[ShenanAnna]

To make “produce reports timely” more grammatically correct, you’d have to make “timely” an adverb. Timelyly?

[Grey623]

I suspect that the folks writing this way either don’t know or don’t care about grammar. Accurately has an ly at the end and so does timely, so they just match them up.

@S1969, job descriptions are mostly where I’ve seen the usage, though I have seen it on social media too. I suppose it does cut a few words out of the phrase ‘in a timely manner,’ but boy, does it grate on my grammar nerve!

Grey

[ShenanAnna]

“In a timely manner” bothers me by itself, but these contorted uses of “timely,” well, .

[SillyHorse]

“Three AM this morning…” As opposed to what? Three PM this morning? Or three AM this afternoon?

[trubandloki]

@SillyHorse

“Three AM this morning…” As opposed to what? Three PM this morning? Or three AM this afternoon?

Three AM yesterday, or three AM on last week on Tuesday.

Or is it the AM part you are upset about.

I think they are saying two things.

At 3:00AM today.

The this morning is them saying today, not Tuesday or some other day.

[SillyHorse]

@trubandloki

@SillyHorse

“Three AM this morning…” As opposed to what? Three PM this morning? Or three AM this afternoon?

Three AM yesterday, or three AM on last week on Tuesday.

Or is it the AM part you are upset about.

I think they are saying two things.

At 3:00AM today.

The this morning is them saying today, not Tuesday or some other day.

I’m not upset about anything. “AM” and “this morning” are redundant. One or the other, please.

[sascha]

@SillyHorse

I’m not upset about anything. “AM” and “this morning” are redundant. One or the other, please.

Yup. I think what they’re trying to say is “3 o’clock this morning”, but somehow o’clock gets changed to AM because “at 3 this morning” somehow sounds incomplete.

[anon40672407]

@SillyHorse

“AM” and “this morning” are redundant.

I think that the point is, while “a.m.” and “morning” might be redundant, the “this” part isn’t. Because it might be a different morning than this one.

[jvanrens]

[Bluey]

@jvanrens

I don’t think we can blame that one on autocorrect.

[Rackonteur]

Yes, please.

Simon and Garfunkel wrote “Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.” As you say, redundant.

OTOH, Paul McCartney wrote a song that began, “Wednesday morning at five o’clock …” not “Wednesday morning at five a.m. …”

AFAIK he literally wrote it OTOH, being left-handed, unlike – AFAIK – Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel.