Spelling

One of my pet peeves is spelling. It's pathetic, I know, but I can't help myself. You know how some people get really upset about men who wear brown shoes? That's me with spelling.

My current annoyance is people who put superfluous R's on the end of words. This is especially problematic here in Australia where R's aren't usually pronounced at the end of a word, so they slip in oh so sneakily.

At this point you're thinking, "What the hell is he talking about?" so I'll give you some examples hot from my uni classes, and we'll see how riled you get.

Scapula vs scapular. Scapula is a noun, the name for the big flat bone on the back of your shoulder. Scapular is an adjective, used to denote things that hang around the scapula, like the lateral and circumflex scapular arteries.

Ulna vs ulnar. The ulna is a bone running from the point of your elbow all the way down to your wrist. There's a big nerve beside it called the ulnar nerve. Ulna - noun. Ulnar - adjective.

Same again for cochlea vs cochlear. The cochlea is the twirled up thing in your ear that turns sounds into nerve impulses. It sends those impulses down the cochlear nerve. Cochlea is not the same word as cochlear, people!

You probably get the idea by now, so I won't press the point any further. You might think I'm over-reacting to this but consider this: if you write ulnar when you mean ulna, I'm forced to conclude that you don't know your R's from your elbow.