Miscellaneous Mistakes

Some random things I’ve seen and heard lately.

Don’t take it personal
Nope. Personally is how one should (or should not) take it.

You would make it personal, however, because you want an adjective to modify it (not the adverb that needs to modify take).

Happy New Years
Add this to the category of Apostrophe Catastrophes.™

It’s New Year’s Eve, but you express wishes for the New Year (whether happy or otherwise).

You could omit the capitals where the reference is general, not specific to the first day of January or in a greeting: I’ll see you in the new year.

In the mist of
Um, that should be midst – unless you’re fog-bound rather than in the middle of something.

One in the same
Perhaps like in the mist, this is one of those transcriptions of what one thinks one has heard.

It’s actually one and the same.

But add that to the list of redundancies and just say the same.

–Neil Guthrie (@guthrieneil)