My text is lagging as I type. Major pet peeve.
The reason it’s lagging? The internet is slow. Another major pet peeve of mine.
I have a lot of pet peeves. I’ve written two articles detailing some things I really don’t like both online and offline, but I could easily write several others or expand on the two I already have.
One thing that I find slightly frustrating but I don’t let get to me is when Americans correct my spelling. The reason I don’t let it annoy me is because those in the USA are taught to spell their way (color, realize, center, and so on and so forth) so they will consider my way of spelling (colour, realise, centre) to be wrong. I simply explain we spell things differently in the UK and they’re fine with it.
One day I fired off a tweet on Twitter saying that I didn’t like Americans correcting my spelling because I didn’t correct theirs. I realise now that it was probably not the smartest thing to tweet but I didn’t intend to cause any offence.
One girl replied to me almost immediately, and let it be known, she is the type of person who appears to argue with everyone. At first she mentioned that Americans are taught their way of spelling and don’t know that the British version is also technically correct (probably more correct than the American version as it originally was from England). After I replied saying I understood that Americans weren’t used to my spelling but surely they knew there was a different branch of English – namely British English – I got a mouthful.
The girl insisted that there was no one in the USA who used British English. So there were no English or Australian people over there? No one had moved house or moved to be with family? No one had moved because of a job promotion? Absolutely no one?
I replied to her mouthful by explaining that when people move to a different country they don’t just drop their old habits. Often their accent will change but things like the way they spell will not. I know at least five people who have moved from England to America and they have all lost their accents but still spell the way they were taught.
Likewise, I have a friend who used to live in America. She now has a British accent but uses American spelling for the most part. So it can work both ways.
Instead, this girl insisted that no one used British English near her and no one she knew was British. I worked out that it was possible she knew no one from England, but I explained that they will have lost their accent. She said that you didn’t lose your accent when you moved countries and insisted there was no one in the USA who used British English.
I told her about my friends. She still denied it.
At this point, I gave up. There was no point arguing about it any longer as she would simply argue back, even if her argument was invalid.
I then realised, after looking over her tweets, that each one ended with ‘lol’.
Using a smiley or ‘LOL’ after an argumentive comment… now that’s a major pet peeve of mine.