07/21/2003 Archived Entry: "Pet Peeves in Writing (your writing, not mine)"

I feel like I'm going to get a good lashing for this one...

I know that I’m not the best writer around, I have my own little writing idiosyncrasies and my grammar is certainly less than perfect so I shouldn’t be criticizing anyone else’s writing but I’m gonna do it anyways!

So here then is a list of things that make me absolutely cringe when I read them.

One
I hate it when people use the words “himself”, “itself”, “themselves”, etc. to emphasize something. Most of the time, the emphasis is completely unnecessary and sounds horrendously cheesy, as if it’s of huge importance that whoever being emphasized cares about whatever is said.

Here’s an example: ”Did you know that Nintendo themselves was in a way responsible for the creation of the PlayStation, the N64´s worst competitor.” That word sounds just so horribly superfluous! I can’t find any other examples of it today, but this kind of emphasis is really prevalent in those emails that tell you that unless you forward it to X number of people your pc will die because “Microsoft itself” said so.

The only time I think this is acceptable is when we’re dealing with something truly astounding like “not even God himself will forgive you for using that word”.

Two
The pluralization of words when talking about a collective entity. Ex: “Nintendo are”. When I’m referring to a company I always treat it as a singular noun. It’s like when one’s talking about a sports team, we say “the team is winning” and not “the team are winning”. It should be the same with businesses dag nabit! I’m sure that it’s grammatically correct to say “Nintendo are losing” but it just sounds plain ol’ wrong!

Three
Repeatedly using the same word over and over and over and over. I know I fall into this trap pretty often but I always try to catch it and sometimes it’s impossible to fix; if you’re talking about DNA, you’re going to have to say DNA quite a few times.

Four
Repeating a structure. This one doesn’t happen too often. Back in OAC English we did a lot of essays; once, the teacher pulled out an essay that she thought was particularly good and gave it to the class as an example. I went absolutely nuts because the writer introduced each of his/her main points the same way; the first paragraph of the point would start with “First of all” (“Second of all” for the 2nd point, etc) and then the second paragraph of each point would start with “However”. The repetition is way too formulaic and it's the only thing that I remember from that essay all these years later.

WHEW! Glad I got those off my chest.

And now for something completely different!
The best quote I read today
"Fiction is not about reality, it's about truth. One of the differences between the two is that reality is bound by time. Truth is not." -Devin Grayson

Replies: 12 comments

Yoo ar de bessete writeur ine mye mynd, Thai! Onli thai himeselfe quenne beatt thai at writigne, maudit!

Posted by Étienne @ 07/21/2003 06:05 PM EST

da!

Posted by Hyperion @ 07/21/2003 06:20 PM EST

Bastards...I knew this would happen...Calisse!

Posted by Rayne @ 07/21/2003 08:36 PM EST

It was too tempting ;)

Posted by Étienne @ 07/22/2003 09:41 AM EST

damnit, i thought i wrote soemthing here.

maybe you did?

wait... damnit, now i'm replying to myself. am i going crazy?

Posted by shawnathan @ 07/22/2003 09:58 AM EST

yes, you are

Posted by shawnathan @ 07/22/2003 09:59 AM EST

of course, you are

Posted by shawnathan @ 07/22/2003 05:25 PM EST

HEY!! that wasn't me! the third one... someone else wrote that AS me. trust me, i know what i write

*wonders how people could trust him when he's going crazy*

(and i now have a shawnathan.woot.net address, in addition to shawanthan.cjb.net and capricorn.woot.net/~shawnathan/)

what are some words that end in "net"?

Posted by shawnathan @ 07/24/2003 11:36 AM EST

and i can prove it too! see the 05:25 PM time there? i don't have internet at that time! i went home from work at 5:00 PM that day, so there's no way it could have been me.

Posted by shawnathan @ 07/24/2003 11:37 AM EST

SHAWN NEEDS THERAPY!!!!

Posted by dAN @ 07/24/2003 12:32 PM EST

i know i do

Posted by shawnathan @ 07/30/2003 01:41 PM EST

of course, you do

Posted by shawnathan @ 07/30/2003 01:42 PM EST