Several things have been bugging me lately that are driving me nuts about the LJ communities on my friends list.

1. People using 'big' or 'advanced' words incorrectly or even inanely. This is a sentence from a post that appeared today: "I just love purveying things that are hand made" She's talking about buying things at craft fairs. Mmm, okay. I'm not even going to give her the benefit of the doubt by suggesting that it was meant to be 'purchasing'. It's probably a case of someone using a word that they think means something else. Maybe I'm just weird but any time I'm uncertain of a definition I look it up. Even for words that I use frequently just to make sure I'm not confused. At least she spelled it correctly which brings me to #2

2. Bad spelling - argh! Again, any time I'm not sure of the proper spelling I look it up. A learning disability is one thing but pure laziness (or apathy which I think may also be part of the problem) is another. And something else I don't understand is how someone can't see that they spell things wrong. My biggest example is the tattoo LJs. I can't even say how many times I see someone misspell the word tattoo which is used so often that if you played a drinking game you'd be drunk after reading one or two posts!

3. People posting questions that could be easily answered by using a search engine - is it that hard to look up something? Asking for opinons is one thing but wanting someone else to work for you? Lazy.

4. alot - haaaaate!! And what's even worse is that if it's not in the dicitonary now it will be soon and people will assume then that joining 'a' and 'lot' is correct. Much like many people think irregardless is a real word.

Now I freely admit that my grammar and punctuation is crap. The last lesson I had was in 7th grade and, to be honest, I can't remember a thing. Where to put commas and semi-colons, what splitting an infinitive means, why you're not supposed to end a sentence in a prepostion, what a preposition is anyway...dangling participles...all terms and rules that march through my brain with no tangible sense of how to apply them. I suppose everyone has their Achilles heel. Am I a hypocrite for berating anonymous people about one thing when I'm so weak in another? And that I have no frame of reference for why they post the way they do? I don't know. It's food for thought.