My apologies if this topic has been covered before, but I simply must get this off my chest.
It seems that almost every time I read a story, I find mistakes so egregious (to me, anyway), that I want to reach through the monitor, grab the author by the hair, and shove a dictionary into their brains through their nose. Without lubricant.
Excessive? Perhaps. This has been building since I started reading fanfic, and I can't take it anymore.
I am not talking about the people who mistake you're and your, or write "could of" instead of "could have". Those people are beyond redemption as far as I am concerned (unless they are five years old. In which case, I may cut them some slack). I am referring to the otherwise well spoken (or well written, might be more accurate) people who don't seem to know the difference between reign and rein, to use just one example.
Or peak, peek, and pique, to use another. You don't peak around the door frame to see into the room. You PEEK around the door frame. If you are offended by this post, you won't flounce off in a fit of peek, but you might do it in a fit of PIQUE (in which case I'm sorry for offending you, and I invite you to pick apart my writing for mistakes. I'm particularly adept and abusing and misusing commas).
Anyway. My current pet peeve is "equally as". Department of Redundancy Department, anyone?
Are you guys equally as annoyed by this stuff as I am? No, of course you aren't. You are either as annoyed, or equally annoyed. Not both.
So, campers, what are some of your pet peeves when it comes to the blatant and rampant abuse of the English language in fanfic (or elsewhere)?
(Full disclosure: I was raised (and schooled) in British English, and I may not be aware of how some words have been "Americanized". I also understand - reluctantly - that language is a living, changing thing, but why does that mean adding a new word to the lexicon simply because half the population systematically uses it wrong? Will "aks" become an acceptable alternative to "ask" someday? Or "nucular" instead of "nuclear"?)