Saturday 15 December 2007

Little things annoy us

No - not children! Although ...

I'm thoroughly enjoying the paperless advent calendar from the Bishop of Kensington. However, today (Day 15) I spotted an error - a typo, a mis-spelling - and as I watched it again to check, this small error took on epic proportions for me. It leapt off the screen, in font size 3-billion.

I'm not a skilled proof-reader (don't have the patience), but these things can bother me. Especially in formal documents.

Don't people use spell checkers? Do they ever read the words that they've written before issuing their material? Do they care?

And don't get me started on apostrophes!

And yes I am aware of various typos that appear in this blog from time to time. I'm not perfect, just crabbit!

Do we all have these little things that distract/annoy us?

Sometimes - for me - the good quality of the material means that I can overcome my irritation - for example, I still think that the paperless advent calendar is cool! But at other times my irritation leads to an irrational prejudice or at least bias against the article.

It's a disappointing character trait, but it's who I am.

Feel free to point out grammatical errors in this entry - that's not a strong point of mine.

3 comments:

Lins said...

Yes. That typo does kind of change the message somewhat, doesn't it? Hilarious!

My thing is noisy eaters. Just can't bear it - makes my blood boil.

I was staying over in a hotel this week and went down for breakfast. This chap sat opposite me and ate his whole breakfast with his mouth open and made the loudest, most irritating noise you have ever heard.

Thankfully, he finished and left just as I was going to tell him to sort it out.

I'm not like that with anything else but I have been known to move tables if the person next to me is chomping away at a great level of decibels.

That Hideous Man said...

The pedants are revolting!

His Girl Friday said...

ohh, how bout noisy mastication combined with conversation! ;)