A little while ago, I was talking with friends about being annoyed at grammar or spelling mistakes. I'm not talking about when someone knows how to spell something, but misspell it because they are typing too quickly. I'm talking about when people are too lazy to look up the correct spelling of a word, or the correct word to use in a particular situation. For instance, I get annoyed when I see someone type "They really could of done a better job." Or, I get annoyed when I hear someone say, "Me? I'm doing good." Rrrrrgh.
Ok, well, there was this huge laundry list of complaints as various people brought up their pet peeves. And then someone said that they were annoyed when people used quotes for emphasis. Huh? Quotes for emphasis? What are you talking about? They said that they sometimes see people type quotes around things that they want to emphasize, instead of using asterisks (like *this*) or using bold or italics, etc. I was really confused.
And then it hit me. I have seen this before [fluggart.com], but didn't know what I was seeing:
I saw that on a sticker on top of a gas pump at a gas station I had stopped at, and was confused at why Attention was in quotes. Now I know. And it *is* really annoying.
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