I may as well put it out there right off the top...I am a middle-aged woman, or a late blooming nerd, take your pick, with a love of computerized RPG game, namely Dragon Age: Origins, although that series has been sadly neglected for a while. I am attempting to get back into it, however. I'm also a major Mass Effect Trilogy fan (Shenko, with a little Shega one-shot on the side), and I've done a little Skyirm.

Errors I hate to see in writing (so please point to any I make in my own story if you read it, because one should practice what one preaches):

Its versus it's. Its is the possessive, it's is the contraction for it is.

Confusion over plurals and possessives. One Warden, two Wardens, one Warden's armour, two Wardens' armour. I hate seeing stuff like "The Warden's did this..." or "The Wardens blade...".

Compliment versus complement. Think of it this way: if you LIke something, use compLIment. If you mean one thing compLEtes something, use complement.

Then versus than. Then refers to a moment in time, or something in a sequence, as in when. "First this happened, then that happened." Than is a conjunction used in comparisons. "This is better than that."

Their and there. The first is a possessive, the second a location. Hear and here...self explanatory and a silly error to make.

Trust me when I tell you it is grammatically correct to write "try to", not "try and". The second you add the conjunction 'and' you are talking about a second thing or action.

Split infinitives, although I'm not sure why they bother me. The most famous is "to boldly go where no man has gone before" from Star Trek. The marker 'to' has been split from the bare infinitive 'go' by an adverb and should be written "to go boldly...".

People are 'whos' not 'whats'. "They were the people who..." not "They were the people that...". Drives me nuts how many people do that.

With spelling, I use my word processor's spell check feature and use Google Chrome, which also spell checks. Very handy things so it amazes me some people don't use their spell checkers. Finally, sloppy proofreading and editing, to which I sometimes fall prey when I get too obsessive and keep revising. In my case, one final read through without any revising (other than to correct errors) is essential.

That said, errors I've recently found in my writing: hoard instead of horde (dammit, still need to fix that!), lead instead of led (what the...I know the difference, really!), missing or mismatched quotation marks, missing articles, redundant unnecessary repetition ( :-) ).

Okay, grammar lesson is over.

If you read any of my stories, please consider taking a moment to let me know what you think of them. Cheers!