People who know me might agree that, on occasion, I can be a bit cranky.

Just a little…

I am a lover of lalochezia, when in a safe environment. When the environment is unsafe, or just unknown, I tend to only swear on the inside, quietly popping parts in my head. Sometimes, to be extra safe, I swear internally in Korean or Chinese.

We all have things that annoy us. Though, part of learning to live happily is learning to not let these things get to you.

That being said, here’s a list of speaking, writing, grammar-y kind of things that drive me mental.

  1. Lists. Lists suck.
  2. Microsoft Word. Have you ever thought: This will just take me 10 minutes, then found yourself 2 hours later—still trying to format your bulleted list so it looks like the others—shaking your fist at the screen, dripping tears of exasperation, pleading with Word to just, please, fucking work! For the love of everything holy, which sadistic madman designed the formatting system? Have you ever tried to create and work with table styles? And why, why, why, was it designed so that when you remove a section break, the page layout for the section after the break applies itself to the bit above? People have started wars for less.
  3. The phrase ‘Hi, there!’
  4. People who have the salutation ‘warm regards’ built into their email signature. I have doubts about the authenticity of your sentiment.
  5. Anyone who calls me ‘Big fella’, or ‘Chief’.
  6. The phrase ‘your good self’. Even more when people use it about themselves. ‘I took my good self down to the shops.’ You what?
  7. Apostrophes used to make plurals, on signs—like, Delilahs Sausage’s. [Yes, the double whammy.] So, no-one in the whole sausage outfit, or the printer, has ever read a book—or even food packaging?
  8. Internet lists of ‘words you should never use’. You know, ones that say things like: Never use the word ‘that’. Try taking ‘that’ out of the previous sentence.
  9. The Insert key. And Caps Lock. Both these keys need to be banished from keyboards for evermore. If you don’t know why, you must be someone who can properly touch type. Smartypants.
  10. Auto correct. Listen, Phone, I very rarely want to use the word ‘duck’ in a text. Very, very rarely. After much training, I taught my phone not to autocorrect a certain word to ‘duck’, and to instead prefer my intended word—a much more versatile one. But then I found myself staring at a sent message in horror. I had meant to say: Just ducking across the road to the newsagent.