"Would of" drives me nuts - my daughter told off her friend the other day for just saying it - told him it should be "would have", and then raved at me for making her notice these things. It's obviously a generational thing in our family, because split infinitives just jump out at me off the page and every time somebody says "It is me." I want to say "It is I", which is what my mother would have said. Those were her two bugbears which I've assimilated (quite torturous in this day and age) and neither of them are considered to be incorrect any more - an example of language changing, which is fine by me too, Peepmaster. If only I could get over the irritation. It's just so ingrained because of the way we learned as well - parsing sentences week after week - subjective clause, objective clause, etc. I still try to put adverbial phrases in the right order, for goodness sake! Anyone else remember that - time, manner, place?
Right, I'll just go off and put my hand up for an Australian version of "Grumpy Old Women". On the "oldies" radio station here they have a segment called "What really gets on your goollies." where people phone in and tell what really gets on their nerves. I've been meaning to phone in, but I just can't decide which thing to choose out of the hundred or so I have at the back of my mind (most of them to do with driving!).
