I’ve found this one in more blogs than I can count and it gives me goose bumps every time I read it. Literal goose bumps. Yes, I know I’m weird. Initially I was amazed at the fact that I only found this in blogs or on social media sites like facebook or twitter and never in books and magazines, until I remembered that books and magazines have editors whose job it is to avoid just these pitfalls. (I wish I had that job!)
Anyway, my pet peeve today is “without further adieu”.
What you actually mean is “without further ado”.
Ado means a flurry, hubbub, fuss or bustle (google it!). It’s most famously used by Shakespeare: Much ado about nothing.
Adieu is French for goodbye.
The phrase “without further ado” basically means that you want to get to the point without additional talk or activity. As you can clearly see “adieu” (goodbye) has nothing to do with this.
I’ll leave it at that, I’m trying to be civilized and levelheaded so no outraged rants for me today. Let me just say though, that when we’re writing, the easiest thing we can do, if we have even the teeniest doubt about what we’re saying, is to google it. Seriously, just use google and you will know in an instant if you’re using the right word, expression or turn of phrase. It literally takes one second.
"Grammatical Pet Peeves" is brought to you by your friendly neighborhood neurotic blogger, please join us next week for the next installment (because there are many more to come).
