What are your fan fiction gripes?

I hope it was. Context wasn't provided, I just thought people might find it amusing.

 

I'm so bored that I'm reading anything available and good lord the subeditor in me is about to bang his head on the wall

Quaff is what you do to a mug of ale
Coif is the (short wordform) you are looking for to describe an immaculately styled barnet (or coiffure, to be precise, but let's let the slang slide, hey?)

Just. So many literals. Just bounces me out of that nice fic headspace, you know? Annoys me when journalists get it wrong in papers, too, this isn't just an amateur writer thing.

 

well, we do at least know that since they're still around to write it...

...they're not Sirius.

 

Oh god I hate homophone mixups. I think the worst I've seen was "waist" being consistently misspelled as "waste." (Yes, it was erotica; no, that wasn't the kink. :P)

 

hoard/horde and discrete/discreet are my pet peeves

 

Ugh. Whenever a character says they're discrete I imagine them dissolving into disconnected points.

 

I have trouble with discrete/discreet but my trick is 1. discr-e-t-e separates its es, discr-ee-t smuggles them together, and 2. I check it literally every time I have to use one of them

adding to the list of STOP IT: queue and cue

 

Same. Also overheard my sibling on voice chat yesterday complaining about how every time they see someone in a video game misspell "queue" as "que" they read it as Spanish.

 

I remember it by never remembering that discrete is even a word.

 

...I did not expect this to be a problem more people than I had.

 

honestly, as a writer you will be fine only remembering “discreet” 95% of the time, because in the vast majority of usage (in fiction), “discreet” is the intended meaning

 

bated breath, not baited. taut, not taught. headphone cord, not chord. toe the line, not tow the line.
also people misspell rogue as rouge just, so often

 

"Baited breath" always makes me think of fishing.

 

Actually, even better, just don't say "bated breath" at all. If a phrase has a word that you have literally never heard in any other context, that phrase is a cliche that has outlived its usefulness.

 

Bated breath has uses in terms of its alliteration and syllable count and weight. Granted I am a poet and therefore judge all things on a basis of 'can I alliterate this?' and 'does it fit well into a three word based metrical pattern?'

 

this gives me an idea for a poem. as professor eisner does love to fish.

 

The 'bated' in that phrase is a contraction of abated. It makes sense when you know that, but not everyone sees/hears a new word and goes 'hmm, I wonder what the etymology of this is'.

 

I thought that might be it... but the phrase shows up all the time in writing and speech that would never use the word "abated" otherwise. (And anyway, in that case shouldn't it have an apostrophe?)

I just think the words in a phrase should make readers/listeners think of the meanings of the words, instead of what other people seemed to mean by the exact same phrase.

 

Some shortenings like that just don't get apostrophes because English spelling is like that. Happens with tis a lot too. Though you'll see that one with an apostrophe more than bated.