By Sara Hoffmann
Senior Editor
All right, blog readers, I have a confession: I am a grammar curmudgeon.
Dangling modifiers drive me crazy.
Misplaced apostrophes make my hair stand on end.
I cringe when I spot those “ten items or less” signs at the grocery store. (It’s all I can do to stop myself from crossing out less and writing in fewer!)
This obsession of mine goes waaay back. When I was a kid, I’d sometimes grab a pencil to fix punctuation errors I spotted in books. (Note to our librarian readers: I can honestly say that I never once wrote in a library book. I promise!)
To this day, I sometimes find myself proofreading in my head when I read for pleasure. And some of my special pet peeves are missing commas (or excess commas) and the above-mentioned dangling modifiers—like this one, for instance: “When driving down the street, the scenery was lovely.” (When who was driving down the street?! Augh!)
Are there any other sticklers for grammar out there? If so, what are your grammar pet peeves? I’d love to hear them.