Post Swap Friend Friday #40: Blog Pet Peeves

As I am away sunning myself and celebrating my birthday, I have asked a few of my favourite bloggers to guest post for me. Today, France of Oranges and Apples and I have swapped Friend Friday posts - so you can find my post over at Franca's blog. But before you go read mine, make sure to check out Franca's post:

Unrelated photo that came up when I searched
flickr for ‘annoying’ via here.

Hello!

This is Franca from Oranges and Apples. Emily and I are swapping posts today, for Friend Friday, where the topic is top 5 things that annoy us about blogs we read. I’m probably going to come across quite harsh, so I just wanted to say right from the off that none of the things I will be talking about will make me immediately stop reading a particular blog, and I completely understand how and why they happen, but they are things I dislike and will make it less likely that I’ll return. Please excuse any rantiness!

1. Poor grammar, spelling and quality of writing. Writing is hugely important to me and I think any blogger should make the extra effort to make sure that their writing is coherent. I generally try to proofread everything a couple of times before I post. But I appreciate that that’s not always possible and I do post some pretty rushed stuff myself sometimes. I am much less bothered by typos than by mistakes that make me think the author actually doesn’t know any better. Top 3 offenders:

• Would of instead of would have. Where did this madness start, please? It somehow seems to have become acceptable, but it is not. It makes no sense, and it’s not even any shorter. If you can’t be bothered with would have, and even would’ve is too much effort, by all means write wouldve. I use didnt and wasnt occasionally, so I won’t judge. But I will judge people for making up a completely random alternative spelling. Desist.
• Wonder/wander. The world at large (including Mr. Oranges and Apples) seems to not realise wander exist. They’re not even pronounced the same!
• Their/They’re. Obvious.

Ooops, that was quite a lot in a oner! The rest of them are shorter, I promise.

2. Poor photography. You don’t need a great camera to take good pictures, and the internet is awash with outfit photography tips and there’s plenty of easy free editing software out there. Life’s too short for badly lit blurry photos in front of cluttered backgrounds.

3. Pop ups asking me to subscribe to the blog feed before I’ve even read the page. There is nothing that will make it less likely for me to actually subscribe. Follow options should be easily accessible, but pushing yourself onto unsuspecting readers is just rude.

4. No share buttons for posts. I didn’t appreciate just how annoying not having these is until I joined twitter. It drives me mad when I want to tweet a really good blog post, and then I have to go to an URL shortener site, and shorten the link manually, then go to twitter and write the thing. Chances are I won’t bother.

5. Personal bitchiness. I don’t mind people writing about their private life, I really enjoy some highly personal blogs, and neither do I mind people complaining about things (including things people have written on blogs) and having a bit of a rant. But bringing these two together and complaining about a specific person in your life that readers don’t know is just bizarre. It feels like being cornered by a stranger at a party who feels it’s ok to just offload all their weirdness. You have no idea who they’re talking about and you know that what you’re getting only one side of the story, but no idea what they other side might be and it’s just awkward. If you must bitch about specific people, please make it generic enough for other people to relate to. Complaining about people always cancelling plans at the last minute = OK, complaining about a particular friend and how they always let you down = not so much.

And those were my top 5 annoying things! Thanks Emily for having me!