The curse of being an editor is that you can't read (or hear) anything without recognizing things that are wrong. You blow most of it off though because you know that most of it is based on obscure rules. Still, there are some things that make me cringe!
1. Overuse of myself
* Example: Jill and myself will be attending the book signing. UGH. Whenever I hear this, I think it makes the speaker sound self-involved. Why? Because myself is a reflexive pronoun, meaning it should only be used when the subject is referring to itself. A good memory tip? Only use this pronoun (or the others, yourself/himself/themselves) if the subject is the same as the object, i.e., he did it to himself.
2. Not putting a subject in the second half of a compound sentence
* Example: Jacob went to the zoo with Sophie, and played with the monkeys. This is one of the most common things I see, and it drives me crazy. This is a compound sentence, so each side needs a subject. The first half is good; Jacob is doing the action. What about the second half? What's going on? Who is playing with the monkeys? Not only does it sound weird, but it can be misleading. The way to fix this is to remove the comma or to add something like he or they before the word played.
3. Misuse of dashes
* That guy has nice eyes. Trust me-they're deep hazel.
* I read pages 25-34 for class last night.
All right. Now this pet peeve comes from one of my senior year journalism professors. She demanded that we be correct in our dash usage. So, here ya go: hyphen (-), en dash (–), em dash (—). The first example above needs an em dash. These are used like semicolons, but more emphatically; they connect a clause to another clause or phrase. The second example needs an en dash. These are used in "from/to" situations, most commonly in ranges of numbers. Hyphens, believe it or not, are rarely necessary, except in things like phone numbers or connecting words.
4. I versus Me
* Between you and I ...
This is a common overcorrection, because people are taught early on that I is always right (as a subject, at least). In this case, though, the two pronouns follow a preposition, so the pronoun me is actually correct.
5. Heterographs
* They're/their/there, our/are, here/hear, your/you're
I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one annoyed by this. Come on people—first grade spelling?
Thanks for reading my rant! Hope you learned something :)
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