Everyday means ‘happens every day’ or ‘commonplace’.

It doesn’t mean ‘every day’.

When you are absorbed in studying something you don’t pour over it, you pore over it.

It’s remuneration, not renumeration.

The new definition of literally (‘To acknowledge that something is not literally true but is used for emphasis or to express strong feeling’) is a fucking disaster. There is only one word that means literally (as in its other definition of ‘exactly’), so to dilute and confuse it by also giving it the meaning stupid people have been giving it for years does the English language no favours (see also: infer).

I understand typos, dyslexia and all that jazz, but if you’re an adult who doesn’t know why ‘your’ is different from ‘you’re’ you should clear a day or two to learn that difference just so intelligent people don’t think you’re stupid. The same goes for ‘its’ and ‘it’s’.

And I mention these examples not (entirely) because I’m a miserable pedant. They annoy me because they undermine the workability of the language. Now that the morons have taken over literally and infer we no longer have words with their original meanings. When someone says they ‘literally caught ten fish yesterday’ we have no idea if they actually caught exactly ten fish or they caught eight and feel like adding in some emphasis. And God knows what the hell you’re supposed to think when someone tells you they inferred that the president has died.

Maybe we should just accept that people can do whatever they want with the language – after all, if your intended meaning is conveyed to some degree then job done – but with every error of meaning there becomes an erosion of accuracy that could be avoided.

But I’d be interested to know if I’m alone in thinking this way. Do you have any English bugbears? Do you fail to give a toss as you fail to apostrophise correctly? Are you an art director? (Joke. Some of the best writers I know are art directors.)

Answers’ in the comment’s.