Yesterday I wrote about the fact that I really don’t mind typos in the work that I’m reading and that I even kind of like them because they add a little bit of humor and surprise to my reading. However, I will say that there are some typos and writing errors that annoy me when I see them. There’s nothing inherently more wrong with these particular typos than with other types of errors. They just happen to be my own pet peeves in writing.
The typo pet peeve that annoys me the most is when people put apostrophes in front of an “s” for no reason. I recently saw an article titled Way’s To Save on something or other. The article was fine but that random apostrophe in ways made me not want to even read it. You can never tell if this is a typo or if the person doesn’t understand the use of apostrophes but for some reason this one always grates against me.
It also annoys me when there are accidental capitalizations in writing. FOr examplE. This isn’t the same as when people to choose to write in ALL CAPS. That annoys me a bit too but it’s not really an issue. But then random capitalizations that are clearly a mistake annoy me. It just seems like something that you should easily catch when glancing at your screen. In contrast, accidentally failing to capitalize something doesn’t annoy me at all. Funny how we are about these things isn’t it?
What are your pet peeves when it comes to errors in the writing that you’re reading?
Typo Pet Peeves has 4 Comments
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May 7th, 2009 at 2:28 am
This really rang a bell with me, as I am one of those people that sits fuming at typos and misplaced apostrophe’s (only joking!!!). Also spelling mistakes – almost everyone has a spellchecker, it shouldn’t be that difficult!
@Rebecca – nice joke
and you’re right, even many blogs have spellcheck built into them …
May 7th, 2009 at 6:04 am
Random apostrophes are one of my major ones too. I am especially amazed at the number of printed signs for various stores that show this error. Some others that I see a lot are some of the following:
their/there/they’re used interchangeably (same with your/you’re)
blatant misspellings such as “microwave” = “microve”
inability to form complete sentences
@ Will – I, too, have noticed tons of signage with the apostrophe problem. I may not l mind most typos much but I definitely make sure to carefully proofread all of my promotional / marketing stuff!
May 7th, 2009 at 9:41 am
This all reminds me of this hilarious site: The “blog” of “unnecessary” quotation marks
I have to say that added apostrophe bothers me too. Makes me really gnash my teeth.
@Phyl … I definitely hate unnecessary quotation marks!
May 14th, 2009 at 4:07 am
People spelling ‘lose’ as ‘loose’. “You’re a complete looser!” (or more commonly, “Your a complete looser!”)
@Bill – that one definitely irks me too!