Yes, I agree that those errors are annoying. But I've recently been wondering how often those mistakes come from computers/phones instead of directly from people.Beating a dead horse here, but it still just gets under my skin every single time:
Their - possessive! It belongs to someone or something. This is their sign.
There - location! Opposite of 'here'. The sign is over there.
They're - contraction of 'they' and 'are'! They're putting their sign over there.
My God, how hard is this to remember???
To - The sign points to a door.
Too - This sign points to a door, too. The sign is too small.
Two - You need two signs.
Your - This is your sign.
You're - You're not reading the sign.
Than - His sign is bigger than yours.
Then - If you want a sign, then ask for one. I'll have it for you then.
There are so many more, but these above are the biggest peeves for me. Every time I see someone use them wrong, I just want to throttle them with a grammar book!
Auto-complete likes to give wrong words, like "pulley" instead of "pullet." It could be causing grammar errors as well.
And any feature that lets a person say something and the computer turns it into text has a large potential for getting wrong words when they sound alike.
I don't think computers deserve ALL the blame, because those errors have been too common since long before computers existed. I'm just wondering if they make it worse.