They're/Their/There pisses me off greatly....

Also You're/Your

And also, use of acronyms... WTF is it with using DADA????

 

Many authors dislike typing so many characters.

It's pretty common to abbreviate, shorten, or render to acronym names of courses. "comp sci", "chem", "bio", "psych", "polisci", even "diff-e-q" for "differential equations." In the list of unforgivable offences, I think "DADA" ranks about #283.

 

I don't see why they have to use DADA though, I myself refer it as just Defence in anything I write. It's more realistic for people to say that than the abbreviation and using it outside of speech is just a cop out for lazy people.

Aekiel

 

Precisely, if you were text messaging, (for some reason) the word then that would be fine. In an actual sentence, "Lets go to DADA!" looks incredibly stupid/lazy looking on the author's part.

 

I think "your" instead of "you're" is actually kind of cute. All other spelling mistakes annoy me, though, especially if the word misspelled is a name or a term from canon.

 

Spelling errors in general are annoying, but the ones that really make me want to beat the author with a dictionary are:

- through <=> threw

- your <=> you're

- rouge <=> rogue

Especially the last one. As was said previously, there is a serious difference between rouge, a rogue, and Rogue.

 

Unfortunately, I have. :|

 

'then' instead of 'than' or vice versa. It annoys the creeps out of me

 

Yeah, my Latin teacher is pissed because we never learned all of the cases. He said that Latin class would be easier if we would have been taught them.


Anyway, I have seen the same mistakes as you all. Seeing so many mistakes annoy me and thats when I close the page. Also, I close the page when a character's name is spelled wrong, like 'Herminne' instead of 'Hermione', 'Won' instead of 'Ron', and 'Hary' or 'Harri' instead of 'Harry'.

 

I actually had to stop reading a story once because the author persisted in referring to Harry as "Slytherin's Heirloom."

 

...How does that even happen?

On the topic at hand...for the most part, pretty standard things annoy me - mistaking one word for another (for example the There, To words), mostly. Seeing "Defiantly" in place of Definitely will annoy me, too.

One of the other things that makes me cringe is when someone places dialogue in the middle of the paragraph. It goes at the beginning or the end, damn it!

 

What fic was that? It must have been pretty shitty.

Heh, "Slytherin's Heirloom" makes me think the Potters were being pimped out for a thousand years.

 

The worst is definitely any misspelling of 'definitely.' It probably ranks up there as one of the most misspelled words in the entire Net.

Grammar errors don't annoy too much, unless the seriously impair my ability to understand what is written. Most of the time I just tear apart and rebuild as I go, and it works fine.

I can't understand, though, bollixing the basics of things, as in the spellings of characters' names and other such canon facts. Invariably, I see McGonagall misspelled the most, along with Hermione. And when you're going to use Dumbledore's full name, make sure it is Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, not anything else.

 

For me the most annoying one is 'signed' instead of 'sighed'.

Whenever I read,

Harry signed dejectedly.​

or the like, I do a quick mental calculation as to whether I should click that nice little red box in the tab.

 

* cheerfully *
Oh, I figure that the author means American sign language. He's signing a "deep sigh, with small frown, and eyes directed toward the floor." That's a very advanced gesture - the author must be VERY good at signing, to know THAT one...

 

I have several that I see frequently that make me cringe, hurl, or both.

"Yea" "Yah" "Ya" BEEP. You are not a winner. The correct spelling is, "yeah". The only one of those that is actually a word is, "yea" and you won't find it these days outside of Shakespeare or the KJV of the Bible.

"dinning room" instead of "dining room"
I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to eat in a 'dinning' room because it would be an awful loud place to eat.

Lucius Malfoy is in no way, shape, or fashion luscious. The thought is hurl-inducing.

You cannot ally with Diagon Alley. It is not a sentient being and can neither think nor communicate.

It takes more than a minute to dance a minuet.

Aberforth probably owns a wether, but he does not control the weather, nor does he dictate whether Albus does something or not.

There's a distinct difference between a comma and a coma.

The problem with these are that they're all real words, so they're not flagged by computers. And I'm guessing that because an author knows what they mean, their eyes just kind of skip over them. I have lists of stuff like this; I call it "Random Word Syndrome." I think every author has suffered from it from time to time.

 

Considering the current interest I have, I would have to go with the now classic variation of Fluer Delacour. Not only is it misspelled, but it sounds hideous. Go ahead and pronounce it and see for yourself. Or rather, hear for yourself.

 

Dolores, Delores

J.K. wrote it Dolores so I don't understand why so many write Deloroes. After reading OotP so many times, it just doesn't look right either.

 

How about this one that hasn't been mentioned yet:

Irregardless is not a word. It is a made up word by stupid people.

Regardless:

adv. In spite of everything; anyway: continues to work regardless.

adj. Heedless; unmindful.

People use Irregardless for the same meaning, when it is a double negative and grammatically incorrect.


Here is what Wikipedia has to say on the issue:

Origin

The origin of irregardless is not known for certain, but the consensus among references is that it is a blend of irrespective and regardless, both of which are commonly accepted standard English words. By blending these words, an illogical word is created. "Since the prefix ir- means 'not' (as it does with irrespective), and the suffix -less means 'without,' irregardless is a double negative."[1]
Irregardless is primarily found in North America, most notably in Boston and surrounding areas, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, and was first acknowledged in 1912 by the Wentworth American Dialect Dictionary as originating from western Indiana. Barely a decade later, the usage dispute over irregardless was such that, in 1923, Literary Digest published an article titled "Is There Such a Word as Irregardless in the English Language?"






I seriously cannot count how many times I've seen people make this mistake. It's always an instant 'x out' when I see this regardless of how good the fic is.

 

Myself, I'm sick of reading about folks who go to the bookstore to purchase tombs, then go to the potion shop to buy a bunch of stuff in viles. If only one could turn a review into a letter bomb...