There’s a problem

That is, with the world’s ability to abbreviate the words “there”, “is”, and “are”.  I really can’t believe how many times a day I hear “there’s” misused.  On TV, at the office, down the pub.  It’s extremely annoying because if people put in just a little thought and unabbreviated, they would realise how stupid it sounds.

Interestingly, this is one of the few occasions in English where the suject comes after the verb.  So if someone starts their sentence with “there is …”, you can’t anticipate at that point whethere they will refer to a single or multiple entity.  But all too commonly, in my view down to laziness, people say things like “there’s three cookies left”, or “there’s lots of people in the store”.  In the latter case, it is easy to see where the confusion is, because it would be correct to say “there’s a lot of people in the store”.  Just rearranging words and letters can make all the difference.

The most annoying thing of all is that I find myself from time to time either almost stumbling into the same mistake, or actually doing so and then cursing myself for it.  Being such a pedant about grammar means that I always catch myself (I think!), but it still annoys the hell out of me.