# Little things that you are irrationally picky about **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 19, 2015, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-things-that-you-are-irrationally-picky-about/710309 "2015-01-19T20:27:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-things-that-you-are-irrationally-picky-about/710309/21 "2015-01-20T02:04:09Z")
> [@kayT](#): > > No no, it was in your link. One of the scientists talking about snowflakes said “the reason is because”. Gotcha, gotcha. Nevermnd! ---
**Author:** ![california\_jobcase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@california\_jobcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/california_jobcase)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-things-that-you-are-irrationally-picky-about/710309/22 "2015-01-20T02:05:35Z")
“Compare and contrast” questions. English teachers railed at us for years to use our dictionaries, when they apparently never looked up the definition of compare. ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-things-that-you-are-irrationally-picky-about/710309/23 "2015-01-20T02:06:43Z")
> [@kayT](#): > > No no, it was in your link. One of the scientists talking about snowflakes said “the reason is because”. How’s your grasp of perfectly correct German? :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![fisha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/da6949/32.png) [@fisha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fisha)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-things-that-you-are-irrationally-picky-about/710309/24 "2015-01-20T02:15:21Z")
> [@Helena330](#): > > You’re probably another one that can’t stand all the nickering and whickering in films and TV, like the horses are “talking”. Makes me crazy. > > (Horses don’t do that. They’re usually pretty quiet unless it’s time to eat or they’re upset about something.) Horses will, however, greet each other upon their return, they’ll call out if one’s leaving, they’ll have quiet conversations out in the pasture or in the stalls, sometimes they’ll call out to a horse far away, try to see if they know him or not.They’ll call out to their owner, or other humans, but usually that’s just a gambit for food. They’ll scream when they’re pissed, and whicker in surprise or fondness. Are they having ling drawn out conversations? No. But they definitely talk, they’re social animals. Some are way noisier than others. I’m going to have to respectfully disagree. And I’m not one who thinks that they’re anything but animals, not some wonderful spirit brought forth in four legged form. They’re horses. Large domesticated animals to be utilized, occasionally eaten. But they definitely talk. ---
**Author:** ![harmonicamoon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/65b543/32.png) [@harmonicamoon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/harmonicamoon)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-things-that-you-are-irrationally-picky-about/710309/25 "2015-01-20T02:24:52Z")
A fried egg, or an omelet, and the white looks like snot. I can send it back for more heat, but after seeing the snot, I have lost my appetite. ---
**Author:** ![Octarine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/22d042/32.png) [@Octarine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Octarine)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-things-that-you-are-irrationally-picky-about/710309/26 "2015-01-20T02:30:01Z")
People whose Powerpoints are just paragraphs of text that they read directly from. If you’re writing it word for word, I don’t actually need you to talk, thanks. Also, people just seem to suck at Powerpoints in general. Neon-green-and-pink color schemes, terrible rainbow default backgrounds, ridiculous clip art, keeping the while square backgrounds in images, disorganized text, having swirl in/jumping around/whatever-ing text . . . I mean, you don’t have to be a graphic designer, but try not to send everyone into epileptic seizures. > [@california\_jobcase](#): > > “Compare and contrast” questions. English teachers railed at us for years to use our dictionaries, when they apparently never looked up the definition of compare. . . . That’s now going to irritate me for the rest of my days. Aargh. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-things-that-you-are-irrationally-picky-about/710309/27 "2015-01-20T02:30:04Z")
At work, if people price things .59¢ I’ll make them reprice them AND I’ll explain to them (usually several times with increasingly smaller words) why they can’t do that. “Cent sign or decimal and dollar sign, but never both”. It drives me batty when I can tell they’re just doing it because I’m telling them but they still don’t get it. On message boards I get irritated when a poster messes with the defaults. Either choosing a different font, using blue color tags around links, adjusting the font size (typically up one size), or the biggest one, rearranging the quote tags so instead of > [@Joey P](#): > > Something I said they make it Quoth Joey > [@](#): > > Something I said None of these things happen automatically, they’re extra steps the person has to take and, in my mind, they’re doing it just to make their post stand out. To me, it makes the person look narcissistic. To the people who do these things, why? Why pick a different font? Why put blue tags around your link? Why do the quoth thing (which then makes quoting your post a PITA? The only one I can slightly understand is putting color tags around the link if you didn’t know that it happened automatically, but I have to assume they’re doing it to make it a different shade of blue. Do people really assume every single link on the internet is manually coded by the poster to be blue? ---
**Author:** ![kayT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayt/32/3633_2.png) [@kayT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayT)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-things-that-you-are-irrationally-picky-about/710309/28 "2015-01-20T02:31:52Z")
> [@Leaffan](#): > > How’s your grasp of perfectly correct German? :rolleyes: What does this mean? ---
**Author:** ![minor7flat5](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minor7flat5/32/258_2.png) [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-things-that-you-are-irrationally-picky-about/710309/29 "2015-01-20T02:35:07Z")
> [@Lorene89095](#): > > The breed/type of horses in movies/tv. Sometimes they’re ridiculous (Frisian used as a rodeo horse) > Saddles&other tack that are the wrong date… Sort of related, I was watching one of the spaghetti westerns earlier today and I noticed modern tool marks (thickness planer) on the beams of the wooden buildings next to Clint Eastwood. Ugh. Now that I have seen it I can’t un-see it. > [@Smapti](#): > > I, for one, cannot do word processing in anything other than 12-point Times New Roman. I’m a two-font guy. Pick one sans-serif font for headings and one serif font for body and call it a day. Can’t stand looking at documents that remind me of the dark ages of desktop computing when people first found out what fonts were–five to ten different fonts in a document in an incoherent unplanned jumble. ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-things-that-you-are-irrationally-picky-about/710309/30 "2015-01-20T02:56:56Z")
> [@kayT](#): > > What does this mean? It seems to me that the scientist quoted in the link is German. I think we can cut him some slack, as far as perfect English is concerned. ---
**Author:** ![j666](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@j666](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j666)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-things-that-you-are-irrationally-picky-about/710309/31 "2015-01-20T03:21:20Z")
“fewer” and “less” “dour” mispronounced Using extra paragraph marks instead of paragraph spacing. ---
**Author:** ![kayT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayt/32/3633_2.png) [@kayT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayT)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-things-that-you-are-irrationally-picky-about/710309/32 "2015-01-20T03:56:23Z")
> [@Leaffan](#): > > It seems to me that the scientist quoted in the link is German. I think we can cut him some slack, as far as perfect English is concerned. I’d agree with that but after all the title of the post is “little things that you are irrationally picky about”. So I’m irrational. Also, unfortunately, a lot of native English speakers say “the reason is because”. ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Downtown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Mr\_Downtown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Downtown)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-things-that-you-are-irrationally-picky-about/710309/33 "2015-01-20T05:08:27Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > Why pick a different font? Quoth the man who specified his post appear in Arial. A whoosh? ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-things-that-you-are-irrationally-picky-about/710309/34 "2015-01-20T05:22:37Z")
> [@Mr\_Downtown](#): > > Quoth the man who specified his post appear in Arial. A whoosh? Yes, yes it was. I changed the font when I wrote that sentence. ---
**Author:** ![Atomic\_Mama](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b5ac83/32.png) [@Atomic\_Mama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Mama)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-things-that-you-are-irrationally-picky-about/710309/35 "2015-01-20T05:38:52Z")
> [@GoodOmens](#): > > Do potato chips count? No BBQ, no cheddar, no sour cream and chives, no vinegar, no nothing. Potato, oil, salt. MAYBE black pepper if I’m feeling crazy. If you need anything you’re covering up bad potato chips. > > Same thing with French fries. Agreed! :smack: I mean, REALLY! ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-things-that-you-are-irrationally-picky-about/710309/36 "2015-01-20T06:50:11Z")
Any Free Beer offered to me _must_ be chilled! No, not really. Truthfulness in Straight Dope posts! D’oh! :smack: ---
**Author:** ![freckafree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/freckafree/32/3050_2.png) [@freckafree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/freckafree)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 11:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-things-that-you-are-irrationally-picky-about/710309/37 "2015-01-20T11:14:58Z")
> [@IvoryTowerDenizen](#): > > Submitted for your approval: > > [What's Wrong With This Snowflake? : NPR](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121827582) Thank you! I am not alone! ---
**Author:** ![Filbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/filbert/32/3433_2.png) [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 11:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-things-that-you-are-irrationally-picky-about/710309/38 "2015-01-20T11:20:26Z")
> [@Scumpup](#): > > Uneven grind lines on cutlery. Even cheap cutlery. Plastic handled cutlery. I won’t use it, unless forced to. We have one knife and fork with plastic handles in the house, and I will eat with my fingers rather than use them. The one exception is sharp knives; for some reason, they’re fine. Oh, and a pet grammar peeve as well; for some reason, local dialect sticks an utterly unnecessary ‘to’ at the end of questions like ‘where’s that?’. ‘Where’s he to?’ ‘Where’s that hammer to?’ If someone asks ‘Where’s the next bus to?’ you have no idea what they just asked. ---
**Author:** ![pullin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c57346/32.png) [@pullin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pullin)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 11:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-things-that-you-are-irrationally-picky-about/710309/39 "2015-01-20T11:42:11Z")
If you measure my truck’s placement in any parking spot, you will find it centered between the lines, almost perfectly. If you park your car over the line into “my” spot, you will still find my truck centered perfectly between my painted lines. How this affects your car does not interest me. ---
**Author:** ![MrAtoz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@MrAtoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrAtoz)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2015, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-things-that-you-are-irrationally-picky-about/710309/40 "2015-01-20T13:57:09Z")
> [@kayT](#): > > And **IvoryTowerDenizen** ’s link reminded me of one of mine: minor errors in usage and punctuation. “The reason is because”. Speaking of “because,” the one that irritates me is “because [reason].” You know, you see it a lot on blogs: “Joe and Sam can’t get along, because history.” “We can’t have nice things, because racism.” Drives me crazy. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-things-that-you-are-irrationally-picky-about/710309.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-things-that-you-are-irrationally-picky-about/710309.md?page=3)