Most Common Writing Errors ✔️

Pet Peeves :/

Read the disclaimer if you haven't already.

This chapter is about pet peeves I have in writing.

Okay, so these pet peeves range from "There's nothing wrong with it, I just don't like it" to "these are wrong and need to stop." So some of them are genuinely incorrect, and others are just me being nitpicky and silly.

Some of these pet peeves are about writing and some are about authors.

TL;DR: Not all of these pet peeves are "right," they're just personal preferences.

Content warning: Opinions

1) Semicolons in dialogue

Oh.

My.

God.

I laugh every time I see a semicolon in dialogue. I can accept ellipses, colons, dashes, commas, whatever else, just not semicolons. They bother me. I think I've written one line of dialogue that included a semicolon and that started my hatred of them because I thought it looked so goofy and changed it.

So yeah, I can't with semicolons in dialogue. I don't know why I have such a strong reaction to them being in dialogue, but they make me giggle. And not just giggle. I mean full out hehe and hahaing.

2) Backseat Authors

I cannot tell you how many times I've read a story for my review shop and saw other reviewers in the comments being backseat authors.

There is a difference between being a reviewer and being a backseat author.

Backseat authors are like backseat gamers. Backseat gamers are people not playing the game who excessively comment on the gamer's playstyle and/or telling them what to do. Backseat authors are people not writing the story who excessively comment on the writer's style.

There's a difference between helping and leaving inline comments every other paragraph correcting the tiniest mistakes.

The reason I dislike this is because of how many different ways there are to write a story. Correcting a sentence by saying, "It should sound like this..." is counterproductive and forces the author to try to write in your style, not theirs.

Of course, there are times sentences are genuinely incorrect and need to be corrected, but there's a difference between making a grammar correction and telling an author to write in a completely different style. I'm talking about people who excessively comment on an author's style, not the ones making grammar suggestions.

You'll notice when I write reviews and correct sentences, I always offer alternatives that are the closest to the original sentence and make sure to stress that there are countless ways to rewrite a sentence.

Also, whenever there are consistent technical writing errors, I find it more productive as a reviewer to give general suggestions and examples to help steer them in the right direction rather than correcting every little thing using inline comments.

I feel correcting an author so often could turn potential readers off about the story, which is the last thing I want to do. That's why I say "I'd suggest reading sentences out loud to make sure they make sense" or "I'd suggest using a grammar checking software" instead of leaving inline comments on every single incorrect sentence I see. I also feel it can hurt the author if I'm tearing apart their sentences.

I'm not saying my suggestions are perfect or even good, and I understand some may prefer the inline comments on every error depending on how they view criticism, but I feel a few specific examples and then a general suggestion to improve the overall grammar is more effective than leaving a million comments about every other paragraph in the story.