[Worldwalker]

My cell phone lacks a QWERTY keyboard (I wanted a phone that just phoned, and that was as simple as I could get ... it merely functions as a camera, notepad, game platform, calculator, and a few dozen other things) but I send correctly spelled and punctuated text messages anyway. This causes me to get into arguments with my friends as to whether "anal-retentive" takes a hyphen or not.

I'll admit to having a problem with schwas. We really just need to add the damned letter to the alphabet. 99% of my little red spellcheck underlines (aside from the ones where the spellchecker and I disagree about hyphenation, like on "spellcheck") are able/ible and its relatives like ant/ent. That's why people get "definately" wrong.

Then there are the people who say we should just spell everything phonetically. With, of course, their preferred regional accent. I can just imagine them trying to read things written by people from Yorkshire, Nashville, and Mumbai.

Yeah, the "a part"/"apart" thing steams me too. Also "alot" instead of "a lot" (really, do you write "alittle"?). And greengrocers' apostrophes (or should I have written "apostrophe's"?). And the recent trend of dropping "-ed" such as the big sign in the Spam aisle of my local grocery store listing "Can Meat". And ... and ... and ... all the things that make me want to scream. I actually snail-mailed a copy of the AP Stylebook to a reporter for a local TV station whose Web articles should have embarrassed him, but clearly didn't. In his favor, he thanked me and his writing improved.

Then there's the abuse of commas. Oh, the poor comma, how cruelly it is treated by the incompetent. People have decided that since it can be used to clarify the organization of multiple adjectives, it should be put between every two modifiers. They'd punctuate that sentence "every, two modifiers." They have no concept of the noun phrase, either. There are many, douche bags who are cruel to commas. I want to smack them. All of them. Also the people who have been trained by camel caps in the names of corporations to think that all compound words should be capitalized that way. Some of them spell my name WorldWalker. While I'm at it, I'll set aside a special large trout just to slap them with.

Yesterday afternoon I noticed a local cigar store with a sign saying "EVERYDAY IS CIGAR DAY" and wanted to stop and correct them. If you're one of the people who can't remember when there should be a space and when there shouldn't, try replacing it with "every other day". Martha Stewart's magazine wouldn't be titled "Every Other Day Food", but the cigar store could certainly, if they wanted to, said that "every other day is cigar day" (presumably selling their customers pipe tobacco for the alternate days).

The people who can't remember the difference between "their", "there", and "they're" don't read; they think words are just a way to transcribe sounds, which they then return to audible form in order to understand them. Their lips move when they read. So they don't understand that "they're" is the contraction of "they are" -- to them, it's just a way to write the "thaar" sound. They don't ever see the connection between "there" and "here". They don't realize that "their" forms a set with other possessives.

But most of all, what makes me want to scream is the people who say "it doesn't matter, you know what I meant." Aside from that being a comma splice, which is its own form of evil, yes, it does matter. It particularly matters when you're writing for publication, which includes blogs, comments on other people's blogs, forum rants, and especially fiction (yes, even fanfic).

I'd better stop now before my blood pressure gets too high.

Oh, and Lori is wrong. So, if they disagree, are the writers of dictionaries. "Douchebag" is slang and need not comply with the feminine hygiene spelling, and it's a compound word now. The distinction is necessary, because a douchebag will rarely if ever be found where a douche bag routinely does its business. And it's the former, not the latter, which has to be at the gym in 26 minutes.