I occasionally ask readers to unleash their pet peeves about grammar and usage. While at first, these complaints might seem to be docile house pets, once unleashed, they roar with ferocious fury.

Let's present some objectionable sentences as if they were scampering squirrels and then watch the ferocious peeves pounce:

— If I would have won the lottery, I'd be a millionaire.

"Grrrrr," growls Robert Boggs of Groton, Connecticut, who knows it should be: "If I had won the lottery, I'd be a millionaire." This use of "would have" for "had" in conditional statements is quite common, perhaps because "could have" is correct in clauses such as, "If I could have won the lottery..."

— His uncle passed last week.

"Was his uncle an NFL quarterback?" asks Mary Lue White. She wishes the use of "passed" to mean "died" would pass. "Passed away" as a euphemism for "died" is one thing, but "passed" (a euphemism for a euphemism!) raises the question: "passed what?" An algebra midterm? The mashed potatoes? A football?

— The company aims to increase profits.

Melanie Hansen wishes all such sentences were "aim"-less. "I've noticed a new trend that is making me quite insane," she writes. "It's the overuse of 'aim,' e.g., 'she aims to ... the department aims to ... the aim was not to annoy her.'"

— I felt so elated, excited ... ecstatic, if you will.

Pat Howard of Columbia, Connecticut, pounces on the pretentious filler "if you will." "It seems as though everyone is using it," she writes. "And what does it mean?" I'll answer that. It means that the person using it is being too tentative, nuanced ... precious, if you will.

— I mean, it doesn't really matter.

Kathy Doe Johnson of Watertown, New York, feels mean when she hears someone begin a sentence with "I mean." "Drives me crazy!" she writes. "Now it's creeping into the language of supposedly otherwise intelligent adults."

— We have apples, oranges, grapes, "ex cetera."

Susan Wirth of Baltimore finds no worth in the mispronunciation of "ET cetera" (etc.) as "ex cetera." "I hear 'ex cetera' all the time," she writes. Remember, "et" means "and" in Latin, and the phrase "et cetera" means "and the others."

— The fact is, is that we're out of money.

For Linda Duncan of East Hartford, Connecticut, the trouble is the double "is." She says she hears commentators on NPR use the double "is" construction all the time. "The second 'is' is redundant," she writes. "It most certainly is," is my response.

Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Connecticut, invites your language sightings. His new book, "Mark My Words," is available for $9.99 on Amazon.com. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via email to WordGuy@aol.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254.

Photo credit: LubosHouska at Pixabay