Friday 5: Mind Your Peeves and Qs

Image courtesy Gunilla Granfalk on Unsplash.

What’s one of your language-related (that is, something people say or write) pet peeves?

Editors are supposed to have an endless list of these, right? So the stereotype goes. We are the gatekeepers of language and so on and so forth. And I guess we all do, probably. But if you look at the layperson's language pet peeves ("they're/there/their"! "your/you're"!) and the editor's pet peeves, the overlap would probably be quite small.

My personal ones these days are: The New Yorker's bizarre house style guide (coöperation? no thanks) and The New York Times's practice of referring to heads of state with honorific titles instead of, simply, their names.

Not what you were expecting, maybe!


What’s one of your dining-out-related pet peeves?

It's nobody's fault, but somehow the waiter always comes over to check on you just when your mouth is full of food. Or maybe they do this deliberately so as to avoid getting sucked into an actual conversation with someone who wants to nit pick the seasoning of the vegetables.


What’s one of your technology-related pet peeves?

Windows updates.


What’s one of your television-watching pet peeves?

Romance. Any time a show (or book or movie, for that matter) features a close friendship or even working relationship between a man and a woman, romance almost inevitably gets shoehorned in. If not outright romance, then something like Will They Won't They. It chafes for a lot of reasons (lazy way to add tension, heteronormativity, implying that the only possible relationship between men and women is romantic/sexual) but I think this one hits me personally because most of my inner circle are men. (Not for "women are just too much drama!" reasons; it just seems to have happened.) The close friendships I have with women are also way different than how they're portrayed in media (much more random weirdness, much less obsessing over shoes and sex) but at least they're not wholly misrepresented as some kind of waiting room for romance.

This is, incidentally, why I love Elementary so much. Sherlock and Joan are #FriendshipGoals to the extreme. Of course, now that I've said that, I've cursed the show to fall victim to exactly this trap. Sigh.


What’s something you do that you know peeves others?

Swedish has an expression: tidsoptimist. This is someone who lacks a solid grasp of how long it takes to get to places and (the implication is) is usually late.

I've been here for five years and I'm still a tidsoptimist. I still operate by American car-owning convenience and fail to take into account that I'm not leaving whenever I like, but according to public transportation's time table. I'm stricter about this with clients, or with traveling, but socially? All bets are off. I get there when I get there. (Maybe this is why I don't have many Swedish friends?)