What is Your Pet Peeve?

[Verrath]

its vs. it's and all of that ilk.

Mixing up tenses and point of view.

Drives me nuts

Actually, a lot of the stuff found here also rubs me wrong: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FanFic
Which is probably why I love browsing it so much. And then again.... with quite a few of these I find myself going... "I've done that". So maybe I'm just a masochist.


(It's not just about Xena fanfic but the whole of it - some of this text is pretty harsh, admittedly, but a lot of it is also sad but true )

[jumper23]

i finally figured out what my pet peeve is. those scenes where someone is sleeping or laying out or whatever and a character "opens one eye to glare". who the hell can glare with one eye open? it's always more of a squint when i try it. maybe that's just me though...

[seeker]

Male names: I also think this is annoying. I've just finished a story with a Luke (ok, really Lucinda, but still), I abandoned one with a Logan and now I'm browsing one with a Dean.

Other peeves: "green meets blue", "they fit together as two pieces of a puzzle", endless repetition of how wonderful and beautiful the leads are, the spelling of EVERY single thought from BOTH heroines (no POV at all), etc.

And the whole soulmate thing: it may be very romantic and related to the show, but it spoils the best part of a good love story: the slow process of falling in love. Even Melissa Good, who I think is the queen of Xena fanfic, understands and excels at this.

[L13]

I just realised (after reading a very good story) that I do have another of these peeves. If someone in a story speaks in a foreign language (real, made-up, anything), then I want a translation into English. I can just about understand when the character whose POV we are following does not understand but I can live without a translation for so long.

Speaking of that, mine would be to read something in a foreign language that has obviously not been checked by someone who could speak it. I assure you, sometimes authors write things that even a native speaker cannot understand... I mean, come on, it's not hard to ask somewhere -- here for example -- "Hey can anyone speak German/French/Italian/... ?"

[wolfie]

"Male Names"

Yup I just don't get the male name thing also in some uber FF the female parts are described like a penis eg. lenghtening and hardening I'm like what!!!

Drives me bonkers

[Otter]

Speaking of character names, I cannot stand when too many characters in one story are given very similar names. Eg, Susan & Suzanne & Suzette.

Or, when in large families, characters names start with the same letter. Alice, Andy, Anthony, Alicia, Alex and Amanda. I can't keep them all straight.

Naming two characters the same thing and then having those two characters have a conversation. Not fun to keep track of.

S'all I got. Happy Monday!

[Norsebard]

Speaking of character names, I cannot stand when too many characters in one story are given very similar names. Eg, Susan & Suzanne & Suzette.

Or, when in large families, characters names start with the same letter. Alice, Andy, Anthony, Alicia, Alex and Amanda. I can't keep them all straight.

Yeah, names that are too similar can get confusing at times, I agree.


Norsebard

[seeker]

When you not sure who spoke what and have to re-read the dialogue trying to assign the lines. And when this happen over and over again in the same story. I don't think the "she said" structure is necessary, BUT clarity definitely is.

[L13]

its vs. it's and all of that ilk.

When you not sure who spoke what and have to re-read the dialogue trying to assign the lines. And when this happen over and over again in the same story. I don't think the "she said" structure is necessary, BUT clarity definitely is.

Totally agree with those...

"I could care less" instead of "I couldn't care less", too. And this happens a lot. Even in the best fictions

[Otter]

I don't see this a lot in Xena fic, but when characters who are very American, suddenly call their mother 'mum'. Now, being Aussie, that's how I spell it myself, but I find it insanely distracting when I read it in fic with American characters (mostly in the Buffy-verse).

*shrugs*

Does anyone on the other side of the world find it hard to read when words are spelt in Queen's English (colour, realise, gaol etc...)? Not that anyone actually spells jail as 'gaol' anyway, but...you get the idea...

Anyone?
Otter.

[Scotti]

Oh my yes!

For some reason it quite distracts me when I read the "English" spelling of American based fan fiction, With s' replacing z's and the added u, I don't know why this annoys me so but it does. It's not as if it incorrect. Also using English venacular, but I guess writers are so used to spelling and using words and phrases that are common to them. I just tell myself its good to learn a new turn of the phrase, I can always use it on my European friends and hope they think I am well versed. Mark it up to being well read Otter. If it is ever your turn to try your hand at a "English" based fan fiction you can sneak in some Americanism to even the tally's.

PS

If I had ever called my Mama mum she probably would have sent me back to Texas, to learn to speak proper
English.

Yeehaw

Scotti

[Frankie]

I don't see this a lot in Xena fic, but when characters who are very American, suddenly call their mother 'mum'. Now, being Aussie, that's how I spell it myself, but I find it insanely distracting when I read it in fic with American characters (mostly in the Buffy-verse).

Does anyone on the other side of the world find it hard to read when words are spelt in Queen's English (colour, realise, gaol etc...)? Not that anyone actually spells jail as 'gaol' anyway, but...you get the idea...

For some reason it quite distracts me when I read the "English" spelling of American based fan fiction, With s' replacing z's and the added u, I don't know why this annoys me so but it does. It's not as if it incorrect. Also using English vernacular, but I guess writers are so used to spelling and using words and phrases that are common to them. I just tell myself its good to learn a new turn of the phrase, I can always use it on my European friends and hope they think I am well versed. Mark it up to being well read Otter. If it is ever your turn to try your hand at an "English" based fan fiction you can sneak in some Americanism to even the tally's.

Now, I have to admit, when I first read these posts, I was a little peeved.

Fortunately, I had to go out, and in the meantime my ruffled feathers had time to settle down. After all, if I was to pick a top peeve, it would probably be American writers making me cringe with their depictions of/dialogue for English or other European characters. (Also, totally unrealistic naming of English characters, although this isn’t just a fanfic thing, there was a recurring character on CSI: NY called Payton and every time she appeared, I’d just shake my head and think ‘An English woman called Payton, I thought this show had lots of researchers, couldn’t they do better than that?’)

So, I can hardly criticise anyone else for having equivalent feelings about the efforts of English writers, but…

… there have been some very even-handed defences of things listed as pet peeves on this thread, so in the spirit of this, I hope you’ll permit me two points…

One. Please bear in mind that unless you’ve spent a lot of time in America, it’s actually pretty hard to know which descriptors, phrases, even grammatical points, are particularly ‘English’ and would instantly stand out to an American as, well, not American. Of course, there are famous examples of words with different meaning (e.g. pants, fanny, bum, pissed etc.), and thanks to pop culture English people probably know American idioms better than Americans know English ones, but, even so, you write with the language you speak and if you’re an English writer, you naturally going to write not just using English spelling, or English words, but using an English style (even if you’re intending to be all-American!). I suppose, you may be thinking, ‘but if this is an American story, surely they should just find an American beta to correct any errors?’ My feelings on this would be, yes, this would probably be a good idea in order to write ‘believable’ American dialogue (thus keeping Mums out of America), or of you need someone to point out things like, ‘Use the word Laundromat, not Laundrette’ or ‘Say parking lot, instead of car park’, or if you want to pull a Hugh Laurie and fool the reader into believing you are American. But what if you don’t want to pull off Laurie, or like me, you know you couldn’t if you tried, because English idioms are an integral part of your narrative voice? Should a storyteller change their language in order to fit their audience? I’m just trying to say, I don’t think an English writer should necessarily try to write like an American just because they write of America, anymore than I an American writing about France should write in French. Which leads me to point…

Two. Point Two is a question, and relates also to those who rank ‘bad grammar’ as their pet peeve. Does variation make us richer or hinder communication? The World Wide Web is a fantastic tool of communication, and it functions at its best when language is standardised, because this enables communication to be global, or at least to head in that direction. If your aim, then, is to communicate your story to the greatest number of people, then, in the case of the Athenaeum, your best bet is to use the language of the majority, i.e. standardised American spelling and grammar. On the other hand, it can definitely be argued that TV, the web and other forms of mass media accelerate the rate at which regional and national cultural variation is eroded. As you can probably guess, I quite like identifying as English, rather than America (and I’ve lived in America, so I’ve had plenty of practice), but, as my Mum loves to remind me, thanks to TV, books etc. the language I use sounds a lot closer to American than someone of her generation. My Mum thinks this is a loss; I’m inclined to agree, except when she’s correcting my grammar . I consider the people who use this forum and open-minded sort of bunch, so this is my pitch for openness towards linguistic variation. I include ‘bad grammar’ in this pitch. Hear me out! When people write in a manner which might be considered grammatically incorrect, it is usually because they are writing the way they speak. We all speak differently; we use different phonetics, we use different idioms, we use different grammar. If someone uses a ‘simplified’ form of grammar and can still communicate effectively, you could argue that that is smarter not dumber than using the standardised form (Warning: Do not try this argument with your teacher). I will concede that if your grammar is so divergent from the standardised form that your writing is incomprehensible, then clearly there is an issue, but, generally speaking, this is not the level of divergence I’m talking about. The rich dialects of England are dying out, in part because they include forms of English which widely considered wrong and therefore, stupid. Where I come from the use of the form ‘I was stood’ is commonly used rather than ‘I was standing’, although this is ‘wrong’ according to standardised English grammar. Sometime I use it when I’m writing and then agonise over whether or not to change it. It is ‘my voice’, but I don’t want people thinking I’m stupid. If this is a forum for people to explore their voices as authors, we shouldn’t get peeved when people use their own voice, even if their ‘accent’ differs from ours, in fact, we should welcome it.

Ok. Here ends my little soap box moment.

[Verrath]

One more.

"could of", "should of", and such.... drives me quite nuts, almost as bad as its/it's. It's "should HAVE"m or "should've" - nothing to do with "of" at all.

Verrath - who will almost invariably run afoul of "Muphry's Law" (not Murphy's) when griping about other people's grammar and spelling...

[k_alexander]

I don't see this a lot in Xena fic, but when characters who are very American, suddenly call their mother 'mum'. Now, being Aussie, that's how I spell it myself, but I find it insanely distracting when I read it in fic with American characters (mostly in the Buffy-verse).

Does anyone on the other side of the world find it hard to read when words are spelt in Queen's English (colour, realise, gaol etc...)? Not that anyone actually spells jail as 'gaol' anyway, but...you get the idea...

For some reason it quite distracts me when I read the "English" spelling of American based fan fiction, With s' replacing z's and the added u, I don't know why this annoys me so but it does. It's not as if it incorrect ... If it is ever your turn to try your hand at an "English" based fan fiction you can sneak in some Americanism to even the tally's.

Now, I have to admit, when I first read these posts, I was a little peeved.
...
So, I can hardly criticise anyone else for having equivalent feelings about the efforts of English writers, but…

Forgive me for compressing these as I've done - I'd like to refer to them but leaving all of the quotes intact will take up a page or more.

I can sympathize with both of these views. As a reader I have a massive problem with a character using language, albeit slang or jargon, that does not suit. I'm always yammering on about characterization, and this is an important part thereof. However, as someone who is neither American nor speaks English as a first language, I also understand that it can be very challenging to get one's "voice" right when pitching a story to a (so-to-speak) foreign audience. Certain things don't translate well, and it is impossible to sniff all of these out without the innate knowledge of the culture.

My suggestion would be to get a pocket-sized American beta, as I have done, to iron out the glaring mistakes. But as a concession to all of us foreign writers who are trying our damndest to amuse you, you're going to have to suck up the spelling

It colours the story.

[k_alexander]

Oh, and I wanted to add one more peeve (because these things multiply when you leave them alone in your head):

The use of the word "both". I have to get this out of my system so that my long-suffering lover will not be subjected to random outpourings of wrath anymore. If two people do something together, they don't both do it together. By the very definition of "together" they're both involved. Ditto for "They both stared into each other's eyes", which is much more common than it should be. I get the giggles thinking of one person staring into each other's eyes, and then I just get agitated. You wouldn't say reversing backwards, would you?

Redundancy is ugly, and it's a scourge, and if you do it you're shortening my life-span (and my lover's) by years. And you don't want to do that. I'm fine with going when it's my time, but she's gorgeous and should be preserved.

[Bardeyes]

The use of the word "both". I have to get this out of my system so that my long-suffering lover will not be subjected to random outpourings of wrath anymore. If two people do something together, they don't both do it together. By the very definition of "together" they're both involved. Ditto for "They both stared into each other's eyes", which is much more common than it should be....

This one's for you....

The two of us both stared into each others eyes together...

[RhB]

Bad grammar is a touchy issue. But it is also an issue of comprehension for a lot of people. While the primary audience for fanfiction is American, as the statistics provided sometime back in this forum showed, there are a lot of people from all over the world reading fanfiction. I learned the Queen's English but I can read American English without really registering the difference because I have been exposed to both very much. Indeed if a character does not speak blatantly in English idiom, I would not register that some of the spellings are English rather than American, as long as I am told that the character is American.
However, bad grammar gets me every time and I don't mean that it irritates me but rather that it stops me from understanding what a sentence says. When someone uses "their" instead of "there" or "they're" then I will need to read the sentence again; if someone has "should of" instead of "should've", I will simply not understand what the sentence means. I can fully understand that for most native English speakers, English or American, bad grammar is an irritant but there are a lot of us out there that find bad grammar an obstacle to reading, understanding and enjoying a story. It is truly a shame because authors put a lot of effort into writing all those pages and getting all the scenes from their minds to the screen. Getting the grammar correct is not that big of a hassle and it makes a part of the audience not just enjoy the story more but in some cases actually understand it. I have to admit that there are stories that I started to read and abandoned because there were too many grammatical mistakes and I was not willing to spend the time and effort necessary to read a story where I would need to read every sentence twice.
So, while the language evolves and an author should have the freedom to write as one speaks or imagines the characters to speak, one should also keep the audience, all of the audience, in mind.

[Frankie]

Bad grammar is a touchy issue. But it is also an issue of comprehension for a lot of people. While the primary audience for fanfiction is American, as the statistics provided sometime back in this forum showed, there are a lot of people from all over the world reading fanfiction. I learned the Queen's English but I can read American English without really registering the difference because I have been exposed to both very much. Indeed if a character does not speak blatantly in English idiom, I would not register that some of the spellings are English rather than American, as long as I am told that the character is American.
However, bad grammar gets me every time and I don't mean that it irritates me but rather that it stops me from understanding what a sentence says. When someone uses "their" instead of "there" or "they're" then I will need to read the sentence again; if someone has "should of" instead of "should've", I will simply not understand what the sentence means. I can fully understand that for most native English speakers, English or American, bad grammar is an irritant but there are a lot of us out there that find bad grammar an obstacle to reading, understanding and enjoying a story. It is truly a shame because authors put a lot of effort into writing all those pages and getting all the scenes from their minds to the screen. Getting the grammar correct is not that big of a hassle and it makes a part of the audience not just enjoy the story more but in some cases actually understand it. I have to admit that there are stories that I started to read and abandoned because there were too many grammatical mistakes and I was not willing to spend the time and effort necessary to read a story where I would need to read every sentence twice.
So, while the language evolves and an author should have the freedom to write as one speaks or imagines the characters to speak, one should also keep the audience, all of the audience, in mind.

I'm feeling a little embarrassed. I'm ashamed to admit that I hadn't really considered the question from this perspective before. I can imagine how much trouble I would have reading an article in German if it didn't obey the grammatical rules I've been taught. Heck, I can remember how baffled I was the first time I read Tom Sawyer.

I suppose it really comes down to a balance. I'm going to stick by my point that non-standard grammar isn't 'incorrect' because linguistic expression should not be set in stone and I don't feel we should be prescriptive about its use. However, I'm more than willing to concede that there is a big difference between writing a whole story using a strong voice that employs non-standard grammatical forms but which obeys its own, internal, grammatical logic, for example telling a tale through a narrator who uses Patois or Yorkshire dialect for that matter, and unintentionally including a confusing grammatical ‘error’ in an otherwise grammatically standard story.

[k_alexander]

This one's for you....

The two of us both stared into each others eyes together...

It took me two weeks and some intensive therapy to get over that one, BE.

[k_alexander]

... and I'm aware that I'm dragging this post out of the dark dusty archives, but I keep reading certain things and thinking "I must share". Since reading this topic, there are a few things that I do pay more attention to when writing. Obviously one person's bad habit is another's style, so one can't take everything too seriously, but certain comments are very relevant to me, and thus I hope to others.

What I've just recently realized is a peeve: Unsuitable language. It falls into the bigger category of "characterization", which said category I think should belong to me by squatter's rights since I've used the word so often.
It's a temptation to "upgrade" on one's vocabulary when writing, as you want to make things sound just a little bit more rounded, but very often that makes the dialogue absolutely dire for me. Point in case - a story I've just put down. I would have finished it, but for dialogue gems similar to the following: "Did you inform her of the erroneous nature of her belief?". Sure, some people do have a better vocab use than others, and I'm not saying they shouldn't utilize it fully (the only thing sexier than a smart word is someone who understands how to use it, in my opinion), but there's a difference. Not even a terribly educated person would phrase a sentence so stiltedly. "Did you tell her she was wrong?" takes less space and thought.