Pet-peeves. We all have them, but writers seem to possess an extra dose of grammar and syntax idiosyncrasies that drive us bonkers. I am not immune from this, although I tend to be more forgiving in some areas (I don’t judge misspelled words in social media postings. I just assume auto-correct hates everyone.)
However, there are two habits which frustrate me. One is the overuse of the word “I” in first person, but that is a different blog post. The other is a dirty four-letter word which should be deleted 95-percent of the time.
If you want to know another word for annoying, I got you, fam. That word is literally that.
Yes. I hate it. My animosity toward “that” started in college. As a freshman, I found a home on the newspaper staff, although I had a mild panic attack when I walked in and there were two upperclassmen on staff. For my new followers, I attended North Georgia College (now the University of North Georgia), the senior military college of Georgia. I soon learned the newspaper office was a “safe space” before such a word existed.
In that room, free of military rigidity, one upperclassman, a member of the 124th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment, Georgia Army National Guard, bestowed upon me his hatred of the word “that.”
“Read the sentence with that and without that– you probably don’t need it,” he said.
Since I was still a noob and still kind of uptight around even nice upperclassmen, I did as he wished. I read every sentence and soon just looked for ways to omit that even when that worked.
Admittedly, sometimes, it’s necessary, but most of the time, that can go.
If you are a writer, make it go away.
-Sus
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