Pet Peeves Thread

[Tauremi]

First I must say: Xeis, your extreme dislike of envelopes brought me so much joy that I disrupted the bookstore with laughter. Though I must admit, I often end up wasting tape on my envelopes as I can't think of a proper way to attack that stale glue.

My pet peeves are more simple but border on the obsessive compulsive.... I can't stand doing dishes in dirty water. I have to pull all of the dishes out of the sink, rinse them off, wash out the sink and then wash each of the dishes individually under the faucet (I don't fill up the sink). I just have a weird problem with my hands being dirty or touching things that are dirty, can't do it, wont do it, will spend hours cleaning a door or window or microwave so that my hands don't have to touch the dirtiness.

I also cannot stand it when people leave empty food containers/dirty dishes, lying around. It drives me crazy to the point of throwing said dishes in that person's room. Actually, most of my annoyances some how stem around how the kitchen is kept. I need a nice orderly kitchen where dishes are washed every night before going to bed so you wake up to a fresh clean sink. After years of living with my previous roommates however, I have managed to get over the narcotic habit of not being able to sleep when there were dirty dishes in the sink. I would have dreams about the food particles crawling invisibly over the plates and would wake up a weird hours with the dramatic need to wash the dishes.

So yeah.... please don't leave dirty dishes around me, haha.

[Yyan]

*laughs and bows* I much prefer to amuse than offend.

And I have a new one now... #3 "Then" in place of "than"

You may thank my darling husband for instigating this beauty. While we were editing our book, I discovered that the word "than" does not exist in his vocabulary. It was a common occurance I saw in message boards and forums, but it's only after his gross neglect of the word that seeing a misplaced "then" will make my jaw clench.

[Niabi]

I had one of those moments the other day when Frug and I were looking at some equine sites for smut, yes we were looking for horrible equine smut, but anyways I couldn't help but notice that theses people kept using the word "no" when they meant to say "know."

[Tauremi]

I think that's something so amazing about english. We have so many different words that sound the same that sometimes people just choose to ignore the difference all together.

I use to help my college history teacher out and edit papers for him and there were sooooooo many times that I saw silly word misusages. (The students would always say it was because spell check doesn't check for words being used incorrectly lol).

Throw instead of through, seen instead of scene, has instead of have and all the like. It's funny, in actual novels I read, if a word is used incorrectly, I keep mentally rereading the same line over and over again without realizing why. It's like I walk into an invisible door when I see a misused word.... "brain does not compute."

[Pagusel]

In 100 years, chances are that several of those word pairs will be conflated. The contracted "'ve" for the auxiliary form of "have" (e.g. would've) is often rendered in unedited text as "of" because of pronunciation (e.g. "I would of gone"). Well, it seems this form is one that is changing, as "would of" has been spotted in some published advertisements. Ads are often considered markers for language change, since they so often target burgeoning audiences. Yeah, language change is a bitch, but if it weren't for that, we'd still be spelling "today" as "to-day," and calling tomorrow "anon."

[Tauremi]

Very true, just like you can add -like to almost anything and it makes a word: Dragon-like, flower-like, icy-like.

'course now words like 'google' 'myspace' and 'facebook' have all somehow become verbs, "Just google it."

This use to annoy me crazily but I've come to see that it's just easier to use them as verbs than fight it anymore, haha.

[Frug]

Well, the "would of" and "could of" mistakes are on my pet peeves list. I can't stand it when I see people use those. If they make it into regular language, I'll fight back violently. It's a mistake, pure and simple, and a pretty awful one if your proof reading fails to catch it. It might make it into language, but I think anyone who uses it even after 100 years will still look stupid. I suspect the proper 've version will still exist and I will never stop correcting people.

"I could care less" is almost as bad, and people say it's made it into the language. Sure, ok, it's made it into the language, but it's still wrong and another peeve of mine. Here's why:
http://incompetech.com/gallimaufry/care_less.html

Doesn't matter how widespread the use is, you'll still look wrong using it and I'll still correct you.

Using "no" instead of 'know" is actually more acceptable to me in the long run. I mean yeah, it's illiterate punks who will cause its use to spread. But the mistake seems less illogical to me. It seems less like a mistake in the long run, and more like a decision, because it is, at least, easier and quicker to write "no" instead of "know". Let's just drop the k and the w because it's easier. Sure. But would of isn't any faster, there's nothing to drop. It's just stupid.

Googling as a verb makes sense and I kind of like it. My friends and I turn nouns into verbs like that all the time. It's easier. I'm a little skeptical of treating "Googling" as a real word. It's widespread enough that I want my spellchecker to have it, but I also ICQ people, facebook people, MSN people, and I can't think of others, but turning names into verbs is pretty common. Doesn't mean I actually think of them as "real" words.

I don't think "googling" will last forever, or that it's a real word, because it is not an effective replacement for "searching". Kleenex became what we call tissues because the brand was so pervasive. Same with google. However if another search engine becomes popular, it will be different from google. Suddenly you'll say "I'm googling for it" and they will ask "are you using google?" and you'll be like "no I'm googling for it on yahoo" and that will wear thin on people. There is no functional reason to differentiate between tissues - nobody gives a shit if you're using Kleenex or Bob's brand of tissues - but there is a reason to differentiate between search engines. "Googling" is reserved for google, so it's not a real word. It's a makeshift that would die with the search engine.

[Tauremi]

The caring continuum is awesome.

I agree that "googling" will eventually die out but until then it will be continuously used as a made up verb.

[Jasmina Apsara]

Another one that's becoming acceptable that still annoys me is people using "nonplussed" to mean "unconcerned" or "not having a reaction," when in fact it means quite the opposite.

It's not just that it's a misused word, it's that if you know what it actually means, having it used incorrectly will totally screw up your understanding of the sentence and give you completely the wrong impression of what the other person is trying to convey.

So, ugh!

[Iarei]

posts with too much unnecessary description. Five seconds of walking to somewhere else gets turned into this epic description out of proportion, so you have no idea what happened even if it's this simple stupid thing. Guh. And stupid stupid orbs/hues/whatever for eyes. WTF.

That, and other rp posts like it, peeve me. Where do you begin?

I settle for baiting the hell out of the rpers in question.

[Pagusel]

Kat said "buttspike!"

But you missed an important distinction, Kat. No post like that would EVER contain the word "eyes." The thesaurus doesn't contain the words "oculars" and "orbs" just so they can sit around gathering moss!

And Hannah: I too have been totally thrown by skewed interpretations when "nonplussed" is not the intended meaning. It's great when characters who are supposed to be noted for cocky smugness get all discombobulated at crucial points . . . due to the writer's poor diction.

Incidentally, I am told my most common usage of "due to" is grammatically incorrect. It's only "supposed to" be used adjectivally in the middle of clauses, as in "The cancellation of the picnic was due to rain" or something like that. Apparently, many people (such as myself) use "due to" interchangeably with "because of," when it should in fact be interchangeable with "caused by." But GUESS WHAT, grammar?? If everyone knows what I mean when I say "Due to rain, the picnic was canceled" means, and nobody even thinks anything sounds off about it, then you lose, GRAMMAR! Ahem. Nonplussed.

[Iarei]

But. . .But Ming. . .I took that post directly from someone who made it. Consequently, a few other posts did use things like 'olive spheres' which also earned my wrath (I did get some crude humor from imaginging 'spheres' replaced by the word 'breasts' and hte like). But still. That was someone's real attempt at rp. Scary, scary, scary.

[Frug]

Heavily armored douche john doe walks in and looks around with azure eyes.

wat

Yeah I'd bait the shit out of this guy too. You're a girl, you should bait him with sex and then humiliate and belittle him. Just hike up your skirt and eye him back with your sapphire orbs. He'll bite.

When I read 'olive spheres' I think of a guy with olives for eyes.

Also I use "due to" in both ways. Due to common usage I say it's right. Fuck grammar on this one.