Writing Quirks

Thursday, March 3, 2011

We all have them, and I'm not just talking about things like procrastination (*shakes fist at Mindjolt and Bejeweled*). What I'm talking about are those things that we *know* aren't right, or could at least be misunderstood, but by habit or preference do them anyway.

A few of mine:

"eventhough" <--- one word, not two. Surprisingly, I don't have issues with remembering to split "a lot"

"more than a little..." <--- nothing wrong with it on its own, but considering I find upwards of a dozen instances of this phrase in any given WIP, it's my kryptonite

"grey" <--- again, it's debatable if there's something wrong with it, but I can't make myself spell the color with an "a". I don't care what it says on the crayon; it looks wrong to me. (Besides, if it was good enough for Gandalf...)

"leapt" <---- (This is an all purpose quirk for any past participle that ends in "-t" rather than "-ed") Apparently, at some point, my Texas English lessons made me spell things the UK way. "Leaped" doesn't look right to me, and I know I hear people say "leapt" with a "t" on the end, but spell check, and American editors, say it's supposed to be "leaped".

Are there any little oddities in your own habits that irk you?

6 Chiming In:

funny in the 'hood said...

I also prefer grey - it just looks better to me - but my beta suggested I change it to gray. Also, my character "dreamt" something but during revisions I changed it to dreamed. Apparently, I sometimes think I live in the UK instead of the Midwest.

Tracey

Tracey

Matthew MacNish said...

Hah! LOL. I do the exact same thing with grey. Grey is British English and Gray is American English, but I don't give a damn. Since LOTR was the first book I ever loved and Tolkien was the first writer, it will always be grey for me, I don't care what they say.

Angelica R. Jackson said...

I use the word "just" a lot, but I think it's some kind of regionalism that I've picked up. We were just (ha!) talking about this in our crit group--one other person also uses it in her writing, but neither of us knows why. I have to do searches to weed out words like "just", "up", "down", and "that".

BK Mattingly said...

That's too funny, I do the leapt, leaped thing too. Leaped just looks wrong.

Jen said...

So funny to see all you guys sliding into UK English! I'm Australian, and grey is a colour. Yep. colour. You read it right! And now I've put the "our" ending in your brains...soon you will not be able to resist!

Abhishek said...

Yeah,


I used learnt always. I know it is wrong (as per dictionary) but can't help.

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