Please forgive me in advance for being obnoxious and don't be offended . . . . But there are certain words that get misspelled or misused over and over and drive me crazy.
The word that is bothering me today is "canon."
Everybody knows the word, but they don't understand why it is spelled this way, and they often misspell it.
I don't have the exact dictionary definition, but its most common use in the English language is in reference to canon law--that is, church law, especially in the Roman Catholic church.
In fanfic, it means something like "the official set of facts, as created by the show's writers."
I love word origins, and I get a huge smile when I see the created word "fanon," roughly meaning "an accepted set of facts, as created by multiple fanfic writers."
In contrast, a "cannon" is a piece of artillery used in warfare--although I guess some writers might figuratively use it to hurl insults at each other, or you might use one to blast me for this post.
Please feel free to post your own spelling or usage pet peeves in this thread.
And sometimes you just have to be OLD like me to know this stuff. I once had to explain to a very bright co-worker why email uses the terms "cc:" and "bcc:", because she had never made a carbon copy of a letter, or sent anyone a blind carbon copy (a letter that doesn't show the name of the person(s) getting a copy).
