Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Pet Peeve #7

Okay, so I'm really not that picky about most things. But there are certain kinds of poor grammar that just irk me. And here's maybe the biggest--using "i.e." when you mean "e.g."

I mean, come on! "i.e." means "in other words." In Latin. Literally it's "id est" or "that is".

"e.g." is Latin for "exemplia gratia" or "for example".

But people insist on such sentences as this one that I saw today: "Misc/General Interns may be students or professionals; however, the internship is not in fulfillment of educational, professional or licensing requirements/goals, i.e. summer camp counselors."

If this sentence is taken literally, it means that THE ONLY kinds of Misc/General Interns are summer camp counselors, instead of what they meant to say, that summer camp counselors are AN EXAMPLE of these kinds of interns.

I wanted to be witty with this, but instead I'm just came out grumpy; e.g. I'm sorry.

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