Tag: writing pet peeves

Writing Pet Peeves #3: Who/That

John Guillen30 Comments

I’m already pulling my hair out just thinking about this. Why? Because all hope is lost in this case. Seriously. Hopefully you at least know what I’m referring to without me even being specific just yet. Who/that has got to be right up there with the most common mistake people make in speech or writing. EVERYONE says/writes it incorrectly over and over and over every single day. Let me tell you what I’m talking about.

Wrong

“Chad is the one that plays baseball.”

Correct

“Chad is the one WHO plays baseball.”

How hard is that to understand?! You cannot refer to Chad as “that.” But if you watch your local evening news, they will. If you watch your favorite TV show, they will. If you watch ESPN, they will. If you’re in casual conversation with your friend, you will. Happens way too much to ever change.

The funny thing is that a few years ago I was the same. I’d make the same mistake dozens of times a day. Guess what happened? I did it in a technical paper like three times. The professor first explained the error. And proceeded to question if I had any idea what he was talking about when he corrected me. It was an online class. But I did. And now I experience the same feeling he did when he came across the same error over and over again in my paper.

I’m not even going to ask if you misuse these two words…because you almost certainly do.

Writing Pet Peeves #2: Text talk

John Guillen18 Comments

txtkknknk

TeeTime

I told y’all I’d continue this series at some point. Well today’s the day.

Text talk. Ooooh. Do not get me started. This probably should have been the first post in the series because I think this irks me more than bad capitalization does. But it’s a close race. Anyway, we live in the age of the smartphone, right? Smartphones that have been made to help us do the simplest of tasks, right? Including our terrible writing.

See, I know not everyone is going to be like me and text/tweet with nice complete sentences and proper punctuation. But some people take it way too far. I just recently saw “ion” in a tweet and didn’t understand why that word was used in that context. Then I realized that someone was trying to say “I don’t” and had shortened it. Like what the? I also see “tryna” quite a bit. Which of course is “trying to” shortened. Tell me I’m not the only person who is annoyed with this nonsense. Cause these are just two examples of SO many.

Like all the stupid acronyms. I use “lol” because that’s my way of acknowledging that the other person was trying to be funny and I noticed. No laugh. No anything. But at least I’m acknowledging it. But seeing “smh” or “idgaf” or “lmao” or “rofl” or “fml” or “wtf” or any of the gazillion acronyms that are constantly used is about as annoying as it gets.

AND lastly, those who text with no sentences or punctuation or anything. They just type big blobs of text. Please stop. Just let your phone do that stuff for you like everyone else.

If you don’t know what all the acronyms mean…you lucky soul.

Writing Pet Peeves #1: Capitalization

John Guillen9 Comments

i_love_capitalization_hat-p148336012474213671enxqz_400

Photo Credit

I put #1 in the title of this post because there are several pet peeves I have when it comes to writing that I plan on discussing at some point. This will be the first. It won’t be a weekly thing, I don’t think, but I’ll add to the list whenever I come up with something new.

Okay. I understand that writing is pretty difficult for a lot of people. I’m talking those who struggle with writing a 2-3 page essay that makes any sense at all. Or those who struggle with grammar and punctuation. I get it. But there are some basics to writing that everyone knows, no matter how well you actually write. Punctuation at the end of a sentence. Capitalize the first letter of the first word when starting a new sentence. Capitalize proper nouns. At the bare minimum everyone knows these things. At least that’s what I thought until I got on WordPress.

But I see blog post after blog post all the time with sentences like this: “i never know what to write about on here. maybe i should just use it as an outlet…” I mean, really? Is it that hard to press the Shift key when starting a new sentence? Or when using “I” in a sentence? No. It isn’t. It’s lazy. And it’s annoying to read that way. Honestly, as soon as I realize the blogger refuses to use proper capitalization I just read something else.

If you’re going start a blog, no matter if you consider yourself a writer or not, you should at least respect your reader enough to use proper capitalization. Otherwise, you’re writing for an audience that doesn’t exist.

Don’t tell me about your writing pet peeves just yet. Cause I have like a dozen I’m going write about.