My Top Five Technical Writing Pet-Peeves

Well, while I haven't had much time for the actual further creation of my stories, I've been editing papers and other stories (and I learned that other college students will pay to get their stories edited, which made me super happy - $_$).  As I've been spilling copious amounts of red ink on beautiful, crisp, unmarked papers, I realized that I have some serious technical writing pet-peeves.  If I listed them all, we'd be here forever, so I'll just do My Top Five Technical Writing Pet-Peeves.

Number 5: Starting every sentence with 'the', a pronoun, or a subject

   Students who have little writing practice tend to violate this pet-peeve.  They tend to forget that they can open a sentence with a clause or prepositional phrase.  They try to find complete sentence to put down.  The end result is that they all sound like mechanical robots.  The sentences that they write blur together without cadence or rhythm.  Readers quickly get lost.  They could read their papers out-loud to get rid of this problem.  They could also hire a paid editor...like me.
   (See what I just did there?)

Number 4: "OK"

   Please.  Guys.  Just spell it out, okay?

Number 3: Lack of an Oxford comma
   Of pet peeves 5, 4, (COMMA) and 3, this one is of greatest importance to me.  x)  (For those of you who don't know, an Oxford comma is the comma that you put in between the second and third items when you're listing three items.  For example: We went to buy glass-bottled root beer, fresh-churched vanilla ice cream, (<--- that's your Oxford comma) and pretty cups for our root beer floats.  Some people will say that the Oxford comma is not necessary, but...just...just...does it take that much more effort to press another key on your keyboard?

Number 2: !? instead of ?!
   I've seen plenty of non-professional authors use "!?", but, if you pick up your nearest adventure book where some angry stepmother is shrieking, you'll always see "?!"  Of course, if you don't want to bother about that question mark, I have also seen professional authors ask questions like: "WHY WERE YOU  OUT WITH STEVE!  I THOUGHT YOU LOVED ME!"
   Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to the inconsistencies of the English language.  Why don't we all just switch to Latin, eh?

Number 1: Anything wrong with quotation marks
   "Why is this a pet-peeve, Clove"?
   Clove sighs.  "Punctuation goes inside of the quotation marks, dear reader."
   "Is this better?" You ask with a short laugh.
   "Yes, except that now you need to un-capitalize your 'you'.  If the phrase outside of your dialogue is an action tag (versus a dialogue tag such as 'said', 'asked', or 'mumbled'), then you capitalize the first word of the phrase outside of dialogue.  Any other time (excepting proper nouns), the first word of the phrase outside of dialogue is un-capitalized."  Clove begins an action tag, closes her dialogue with a period, and glances at her confused reader.
    You nod hesitantly and say, "I think I got it.  Is this right?"
   "Yep!"
   "Phew..." you sigh.
   "Oh, and that's another confusing thing.  "Sigh" can be either an action tag or a dialogue tag."
   "Yeah, I could speak with a sigh," you sigh, "And I could sigh after I speak."  You sigh.
   "Exactly," Clove says, happy that you're catching on, "Except that now you have a new problem.  Anytime an action or dialogue tag interrupts dialogue," Clove says knowingly, "then the first word of the re-opened dialogue is not capitalized unless if it begins a new sentence.  For example, I have sentence one." Clove paused to interrupt her own speaking.  "Then I have sentence two.  The first word of sentence two is capitalized because it is...a new sentence."
   You give a roar of frustration.  "I GIVE UP!  This is ridiculous!"
   Clove shrugs.  "Agreed."  She cracks a grin and adds, "If you have a question, just pick up the book nearest to you and look for a dialogue piece that is like yours.  Match your punctuation to that of the book's, and, 99% of the time, you'll be writing technically correct."

Write on!
Clove