Despite excellent scores on my SAT's many years ago, my school teacher husband continues to find it necessary to correct my spoken English. Threats of bodily harm have not produced any reduction in this most egregious habit. One annoying example is his assertion that I should feel "nauseated" and never "nauseous".
My pet peeve is for spelling errors and typos in publications that actually paid someone to edit them. Ever notice how "distrcating" a typo is when you're reading a book? I occasionally have an overwhelming urge to write the publisher and offer free proofreading in exchange for free reading material - a relationship from which we both could benefit.
As a legal secretary, I used to have heated arguments over punctuation with attorneys; for instance, was a comma before the "and" proper in a sequence? E.g., Bob, Mary, and Joe went to the store. Now that I work in business, I find improperly cited legal statutes unbelievably annoying.
I once received a form reply email from a software company's support group addressed "Dear Sir". My first name is rather obviously not male. When I complained, I wound up in an extended email battle over the proper use of gender in business correspondence.
Obviously I have too much time on my hands.
Despite all that, even I can't manufacture much feeling over improper typographical punctuation due to software limitations. Apparently there are those who can. So, if you want to stretch your abilities to criticize others' mistakes, take a look at this article on the "Ten typographical mistakes everyone makes". You really have to wonder about people who research their software and proper typography to the level of granularity required to avoid these common mistakes.
Link.
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