I do the same, especially first thing in the morning.

 

Thank the good lord, i am not alone.
Not to mention the unforgivable of spelling the charecter's name wrong. Nigh on impossible to do yet they manage to do it!

 

Early on, I made many of these errors. Hell, I still do, but I'm getting better. The biggest one I commit is usually the your/you're one in Bungle/TML since it's in 2nd person - still happens a bunch in rough drafts, but I've gotten to the point where one pass of self editing of the final draft is looking at every your and you're and nothing else.

For like the first 6 chapters of Darkness Hermione and Severus were misspelled. I believe they've been corrected, at least on FFA and FF.net.

With fanfics, I run my stories through usually 2 betas these days. They catch alot of my crap, but even still some sneaks by. I can't bring myself to use more for a fanfic. My view is that I'm entertaining you - for free.

Original works on the other hand go through at least 6 or 7 people sometimes the same person twice. Assume every story a potential editor reads is going to be grammatically error free. Assume that every error will make that editor's finger hover over the delete button regardless of the plot of your short story. Quite frankly, the first two to three paragraphs of a short story better be perfect and grab the editor by their figurative balls, otherwise they move on to the next piece in the slush pile and copy paste your email into the form template email reject-o-notice.

 

"Aloud" instead of "allowed". That annoys me greatly

 

Meh I hate the "mispelled words that annoy me thread". Most retread thread in all of internet forum posting history.

Oh yeah, and I hate it when people speak or write, "for all intensive purposes" instead of "for all intents and purposes". Drives me fucking nuts.

I also hate when people (98%) of the time misuse, reiterate. To iterate means to repeat, to reiterate means to repeat again. If you've said something once do not try to add emphasis when saying it again by beginning with, "...and let me reiterate." because you're not reiterating, you're iterating, and misusing the word makes you looks like an ass...erating

Omagic

- practicing hypocrite

 

Mine is 'laid' as in 'he laid on the bed'. It's 'he lay on the bed' dammit.

Of course there's the confusion between they're/there/their which also annoy me, and you're/your.

 

Personally I was reading a fic the other day and two really jumped out at me (these mistakes were also repeated several times to my annoyance).

Occulmency instead of Occlumency
Gallions instead of Galleons

 

Private Drive instead of Privet Drive.

Mixing up parselmouth and parseltongue.

Adding of a dollar sign ($) in front of any form of currency, even galleons (i.e. he had $10 galleons in his pocket).

The use of acronyms when they are not needed. I mean really, how hard is it to type out Ministry of Magic instead of MoM.

Misspelling a canon character's name, repeatedly.

 

I hate the abuse of the whole see/seen/saw set. Like in "Shake Me" by RoxieSnape. It's okay, but her inability to utilize that set of words just irks me to no end.

 

For me, people mixing up It's and Its. I won't close the browser if I see it just one time, because it's an easy typo to make, but if it happens a lot, and it's obvious that it's not just a typo, I click the magical red X. I also get annoyed at Their/They're/There and Your/You're.

My biggest pet peeve, though, is seeing grammatical mistakes in actual, published literature. I've read books where I caught myself thinking 'dude needs a beta', and there's really no excuse for that.

 

Confusing clothes and cloths just makes me want to kill people.

 

Whilst I agree that this is annoying, and inexcuseable, in their defense, most people who make that error grew up having "me and him" drilled (some times slapped) out of their minds from an early age, without being told WHY, so they assume ANY case of 3rd Person plus 1st Person should automatically be "He (She) and I". If no one tells you that that is only the case in the Nominative, then you will inevitably do it in the Accusative, Dative, Genitive, and Ablative as well.

Worse yet, many teachers don't teach the children why they should replace a Nominative 1st+3rd Person with "He (She) and I", because they don't know any better themselves. In one movie (I forget the name) starring Tim Allen, Tim's character corrects his teenaged son's useage of a clearly correct "him and me", telling him that it is "he and I" - an example of hypercorrection on the part of the adult who never learned any better themselves. Hypercorrection is also exemplified in Ron's use of Wingardium LevioSAR, when it is LevioSA.

Studies have shown that humans don't learn grammar in terms of Root+ending, but in terms of seperate words. This means for example that we have entries in our minds for "walk", "walks", "walking", and "walked", and a set of rules that chooses the correct one based on context. Furthermore, what might look like three words on paper is in fact a single word in the brain, ergo, "he and I" is one word in the human brain, and if no one learns the word "him and me", and which of these two words is to be used where, then they will inevitably make that mistake.

 

I would've thought the penname "RoxieSnape" would have been enough to keep you away.

 

Oh do I hate that one.....

Come to think of it, why don't I just come out and say that all spelling/grammar mistakes make me want to scream and start killing. Even the ones I make....

 

An Hero Snape... LOL!

Then you lucked out because I see this one constantly. Literally, it seems like every other fic I read (that employs the word) makes this mistake.

Both are correct, depending on the circumstances.

Here are some more excerpts from my list of Potter fanfic rules, that are devoted to general spelling and grammatical errors, more than HP specifically:

7: Threw, through, trough, thought, though, tough. For God's sake, look these words up in a dictionary so you know the damned differences between them.

A: I THREW a baseball.
B: It went THROUGH a window.

(1: There's no such fucking word as THRU. Thru is used by stupid, lazy fuckers.)
​

C: Horses drink from a TROUGH.
D: I THOUGHT I was done teaching you dummies grammar.
E: You write, even THOUGH you have no fucking brains.
F: You think these are hard to remember? Well that's TOUGH shit.
​

8: The Cruciatus curse does not make people Wither. The word you are looking for is WRITHE. That's right, lemon writers, no one should wither during an orgasm unless there is some serious black magic going on at the same time, so don't be retarded. If I got my hands on you, I would have you WRITHING in pain (maybe pleasure if you're lucky). Withering is what fruit does when it rots, what flowers do when they die and what my prick does when I read your shitty writing.

12: It is 'For all INTENTS and purposes', there is no such phrase as 'All intensive purposes.' If you are writing it the wrong way, then, for all intents and purposes, I should put you in the intensive care unit.

13: GESTURES are motions you make with your hands. JESTERS are fools that caper and prance about like morons. If you don't know the difference between the two, you are the latter.

15: BEAR and BARE...

A: "I hope you're eaten by a grizzly BEAR."
B: "I can't BEAR to read your mistakes so you'll have to BEAR with me."
C: "Now I've laid BARE the crux of your stupidity." and if that's unclear, try this on for size, "I am BARE naked."
​

16: PAST is a noun, adjective, preposition, and even an adverb. PASSED is a verb. Please remember the difference.

24: A MINUTE is a unit of time, there are sixty of them in an hour. A MINUET is a dance and attempting to perform sixty in an hour would be imprudent. Do try to remember which is which.

26: NODDING your head up and down means 'YES', SHAKING your head from side to side means 'NO'. Nobody 'shakes their head yes.' What planet did you people grow up on?

27: GLEAM: "Polished chrome has a certain GLEAM to it."

GLEAN: "See what information you can GLEAN from those files."
​

28: WONDERING: "I was wondering how I'd kill you."

WANDERING: "I've been wandering over the countryside."
(Surely you've noticed that Wonderful is spelled with an 'O' and made the connection there too. No? Then do us all a favor and wander off a cliff.)
​

35: WAIST vs WASTE. If I have to read one more line where Harry puts his arms around a girl's 'waste', I'll scream. Since when is Harry a coprophiliac?

A: WAIST; Noun - A person's midsection.
B: WASTE; Noun - Refuse, fecal matter, garbage, your attempts at writing.

Verb - To use something frivolously or to destroy something.
​

36: A TOMB is where you put dead people, a TOME is a book. Got that? For all the god damned 'tombs' Hermione has picked up in fanfiction, you'd think she was fuckin' She Hulk.

40: BOWLS are what you put food in. BOWELS are what the food comes back out of after you've eaten it... any questions?

41: A VIAL is a container. Something evil, despicable and disgusting is VILE.

45: TAUNT as a noun, refers to an insult or challenge. As a verb it refers to the act of insulting, mocking or challenging someone.

TAUT is an adjective that means tight, having no slack, not flabby. It can also refer to something that is kept in proper condition.

(Nobody has a taunt stomach, taunt muscles, taunt nipples or a taunt quim, so (once again) you lemon writers need to knock it the fuck off already.)
​

If I had a nickel for everyone that thought Choking was spelled Chocking... I'd be able to afford a lawyer for when I go on trial for choking the life out of the next person that makes that mistake.

 

Oh! Oh! How about these?

We starred at the shinny mantle while eating desert in the dinning room...

 

As someone who has made ever single above mistake typing I can only saw give it a rest. People make mistakes, and the majority of the fan-fiction out there is unbetaed. I proofread everything I've written but no one goes over what I've seen and the result is I miss things. But the thing is everyone misses things so 97.6%(Pulling this number out my ass here) of all fan-fiction will contain misspellings or grammatical errors. Some will be simple things like their instead of there that the author probably should have caught if they went back and re-read their work. Others are much harder to spot like the appropriate usage of he and I and him and me. As I missed third grade grammar I don't know when to use the latter.

An interesting thing to note is that we don't read every letter but blocks of letters and our brains decipher the words from that. I'm not sure that I've said this clearly but what it means is that we ca read text with minor misspellings and transposed letters and still understand the passage. I'll admit a steady stream of spelling errors will drive me away from the story but for the most part I gloss of little things. You'd enjoy your day and not feel the need to kill any authors if you did too.

 

Yeah, well, in most of the circumstances I find it, the author is referring to THE Prophecy.