I have a pet peeve. It drives me insane when I read professionally written work (ads, corporate websites, etc.) and I find typos and errors in grammar that somebody should have seen during the editing/proofreading process.
So often lately, I’ve noticed mistakes in newspaper articles and other published works. Mistakes in word choice, ie. affect/effect, principle/principal. Improper use of apostrophes. Mistakes in spelling (in one article, I saw congratulations spelled as “congraDulations”). Wouldn’t that show up in any word processor’s spellcheck?
And then there’s the punctuation problem. I found this on the web:
Punctuation is the Key
An english professor wrote up on the board “woman without her man is nothing” and told his students to punctuate it.
The males in the class wrote “Woman, without her man, is nothing.”
The females wrote “Woman! Without her, man is nothing.”
See what I mean? Is it just me? Is it because words are important to me that mistakes jump out at me as if they have a neon sign shouting “error! error!?” Or is it just that I’m an anal, obsessive perfectionist? Don’t answer that. 😀
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I can’t answer that one, because words are important to me, too, but I agree with you 100%! It drives me INSANE to see so many mistakes everywhere!
Debbie, also anal and obsessive
When I have paid $16 for a hardback and it is riddled with typos and poor grammar, I get pretty irate. I’m not a grammar or spelling wiz, so if I notice it, it must be bad.
I have no idea where the typos come from in books but usually it’s not the author! It annoys me when I find an error in my own books that I know I have turned in clean and even sent in the disk. From that experience, I always give authors a break when I read books because I know that often it isn’t in the author’s control. Now, on a website, that does bug me because it’s easy for that to be corrected at any time.
It jumps out at me when I see typos in books, but I know sometimes authors have no control over copyedits. I’d agree with Suzanne that websites should be free of errors.
I haven’t come across any published writing where there is a ton of mistakes. Maybe the odd one. I usually just ignore it and read on. Didn’t realize it may not have come from the author though. That’s interesting. And, yeah, websites should be corrected when mistakes noticed.
My biggest pet peeve is when I’ve read over something a million times and STILL miss the glaring typo a two-year-old could’ve caught! 😈
Grrr.
Tanya
Shesawriter is right. Just found I had written “consecrated” as “concentrated” in an ms – after dozens and dozens of going-overs.
BTW, you spelleg “legs” funny in the post about the bear.
Don’t hit me.
I’m an anal obsessive compulsive too… my biggest pet peeve is the rampant misuse of the apostrophe… since when did we start adding an apostrophe to make a word plural? And EVERYONE does it!:hissyfit: I’ve been the company editor at several of my jobs and no matter how many times I correct it, the same people keep making the same mistake.. and now I’m seeing it in published books too. I find I lose a lot of respect for a company that puts out books with basic grammar and spelling mistakes.
The scariest… I’m proofreading a already contracted novel that was written by an editor and it’s riddled with spelling and grammar mistakes (like it’s/its and your/you’re)… If she’ll let that go in her writing, I hate to think what her edits are like!:rolleyes:
That sort of thing drives me nuts, too! :wall:
That stuff drives me nuts too. I’ve been seeing errors a lot lately in the paper.
E-mail at work drives me nuts. People don’t spell check or proof read their e-mails before they send them to the entire company.
I used to be irritated when I saw typos. Now it mostly makes me smile, though I do prefer error-free books and articles!
Drives me batty too, Margery. At my old job, I felt like I was :wall:, trying to get them to see that. The mistakes that were made were just such basic ones.
At least one of the managers used to ASK me how to spell things. I was always amazed by the words she needed help with, but at least she asked.
The one that drives me nuttiest is its vs it’s. Everyone seems to think that it’s is possessive, not the contraction of it is.
Thanks for letting me vent ❗