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Discussion: Biggest pet peeves in writing - sound off!
posts: 2 views: 187 last post: 11 years ago
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I'll go first.

Bad grammar, insanely slow pacing, too much info (authors LOVE to tell us what people are eating, for some reason), and typos. Yeah, they happen, but sheesh.

What drives you batty?
Besides the usual grammar and punctuation errors, a lack of basic research will pull me right out of a story. For example, in a novel I otherwise enjoyed very much, right near the end, there was a reference to 1987 being a time when people took more time to dial phones because they were rotary. I was 20 in 1987, and already it had been years since I'd used a rotary phone. My family still had one they hadn't yet bothered to get rid of, but they mostly used that one to answer the phone if they happened to be in the room.

A peeve of mine is when characters "breathe" their dialogue. Grrrr.
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