We all have our pet hates in one area of our lives or work or another. Mine are all concentrated on writing, reading, and not understanding. I have collected a few of them here; I'll get to more later on, I'm sure. As they are pet hates, I try to blend them out of my life to help me stay calm. But they keep on intruding persistently.
This might be considered a follow on from my rant about the apostrophe's demise. Dive into the world of someone who reads to understand, not just fill his head with dross.
One of my pet hates lies in sloppy grammar. I don't know why people think they can write without applying proper grammar. You can get away with occasional sloppiness without distorting the sense completely, but you better have a care or someone is going to wash out your mouth with soap. But my favorite example will show you what can happen if you don't watch your step. Please note that every sentence is made up of the same eight words each time.
Only she told him that she loved him. She only told him that she loved him. She told only him that she loved him. She told him only that she loved him. She told him that only she loved him. She told him that she only loved him. She told him that she loved only him. She told him that she loved him only.
Having screwed your eyes and mind with that one, lets move on to other horrible things people do to the English language. You can call it spelling or grammatical mistakes; either way it's killing me when I see it. And to see it you only have to go onto Twitter and Facebook and they jump out at you from every post you see.
They're their, she said, it can't be that bad. There, there, I say; this is the unholy trinity of language abuse. As a German speaker I could top this with adding dare to the mix. I hope you like the idea as much as I don't. But as the German gentleman said when asked about his age: My wife is dirty and I am dirty, too. We can add the you're and your confusion to this without going into details; I hope Midge Ure doesn't mind being treated so cavalierly.
Another one that keeps on coming at me is to, too, two. Is it that hard to remember, or is it mostly sloppy typing? It's not supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. There are three letters in the longer words. That should be feasible in my opinion. And you don't have to wear a tutu to get it right.
For this one I blame Disney and the jungle book: bare and bear. I can't bare it is not the same as I can't bear it, please. And the care bears would object to be the care bares; as would Yogi Bear. And talking of Bs, that is the letter B, not the insect bee or the girl Bea. Brake and break are not the same. I am taking a break from braking makes sense, taking a brake form breaking doesn't; breaking doesn't sound too good anyhow. And I definitely prefer my car to have brakes rather than breaks.
There is in general a tendency to mix up homonyms. Homonyms are words that sound the same when spoken, but are written differently: By the light coming through the window pane, the son of the sun was brushing the mane of his main horse without causing it pain. Feel free to add to this collection in the comments section. I missed out on dozens if not more.
Further reading
Reading Improves Your Writing Vocabulary
The Writer Checklist
Jane Austen and Spelling
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