Pet Peeves

OK, everybody, it's time to air our frustrations. Perhaps all of us can gain some insight by hearing about how others view certain things.

My own concerns include frustration with careless language usage. Nearly every mature person these days has at least been through high school. Why is it, then, that we have difficulty exressing ourselves beyond the fourth grade level? There should really be no confusion about the difference between "lie" and "lay"--among "their," "there," and "they're," between "jibe" and "jive," between "its" and "it's," between "to" and "too", and believe it or not, between "knew" and "new!" There are a number of other careless expressions as well. Generations ago we let the "setting sun" slip by to replace "sitting" and that is not recoverable, but most common errors are today. One has only to read essays written by academia to be aware that good usage is still respected by those who care. Of course there have been serious proposals to make english a phonetic language, and they make sense with respect to an example or two, but carrying such a trend to its logical conclusion would produce an almost unreadable result for most of us.

So that is just one of my own "pet peeves." Your reactions would be interesting, as would the sharing of your own concerns, and of course they do not have to be limited to language usage. Mores, custom, too-casual attitudes about work, corporate and governmental power, distortions to influence thinking, and much more, are all fair game. What do you think?