But there are two things that warrant a full-out bitchfest blog post: Fredericton (and most of New Brunswick)’s horrible store/business hours and Fredericton residents’ lack of common sense when driving.

First: Fredericton (and most of New Brunswick)’s horrible store/business hours. Get this, in New Brunswick, if I want to pick up some groceries on a Sunday night, you know, because I need food to live, I can’t. Why? Because grocery stores are only open from 12 to 5 on Sundays here. Do you know what kind of chaos only being open for five hours on a Sunday causes in grocery stores? The massive kind, that’s what kind. As someone who was a frequent Hartman’s-walker-to-er for some Sunday evening pantry replenishing action whist living in Ottawa, this is really, really hard to get used to. But it’s not just grocery stores, ohhh no!

A few weeks ago I was in Moncton for some training and on Tuesday night upon my arrival I figured “Hey, I’ll go for a stroll to The Bay” (since we don’t have one in Fredericton *sad panda*) only to show up and find out that Highfield Square mall closes at 7 from Monday to Wednesday. Like, what?! What mall closes at 7? To console myself, on my lonely walk back to the hotel I thought “Hey, I know what’ll cheer me up! A Caramel Latte Bene from Timothy’s!” (since I have yet to solve Fredericton’s Timothy’s mystery [I see people walking around downtown with Timothy's cups all the time, yet no one can tell me where the Timothy's actually is - it's all very strange]), but nooooo, the Timothy’s on Main street closed at 8! It’s a coffee shop people – it’s where people go at night! But it doesn’t even end here!

The other week, I got word that some liquidation store in town had bought the stock of a gone-out-of-business wedding dress shop and had really nice wedding dresses on sale for $50, so I rushed there right after work, only to get there at 5:50 and find the doors already locked because they closed at 6. Who closes at 6? Gah! What I don’t get with this whole “closing early” thing is that all of these places are retail-type businesses. How do you expect to get any customers who have day jobs come into your place of business? Sometimes I’d like to know what goes through people’s minds here.

Second: Drivers here are too nice or possibly sometimes just plain old misinformed (I haven’t really figured out which one it is yet). I can hear you saying “Too nice? How could that be?”. Let me tell you how that can be. There are certain rules and conventions, when driving, that make things go smoothly for everyone. A perfect example is a left-hand turn: if I’m waiting to turn left at an intersection and there is a car waiting to turn right directly across from me, he has the right of way as soon as there is a break in traffic due to his proximity to our common desired lane. Last month a motorist kept giving me exasperated hand signals because I didn’t “get” that he wasn’t turning like his signal light indicated because he was letting me go. Dude, it’s your turn, just be on your merry way and I’ll resume looking out for my break in traffic, mmmkay? Another good example of this behaviour is at four-way stops (although with this one I would have to lean towards ignorance as the cause of my frustration and not so much niceness). At a four-way stop whoever gets there first gets to go, right? WRONG! People just don’t seem to “get” the concept of four way/all way stops here. They’re like free-for-alls. Get with the times people! I would really hate to see a roundabout anywhere near Fredericton; it’d be such a gong-show.

To end on a positive note, I will list a few of things that I do love about being back in New Brunswick (because there are lots). Perhaps they’ll get their own blog post some day.
- Being able to say “Good morning!” to people while walking to work in the morning and not get dirty looks.
- Housing prices.
- Seeing our family all the time.
- Fredericton’s so-far awesome restaurants.
- Northumberland Dairy’s various products.
- Being able to buy a house “in the country” and still take the bus to work/drive to work in 7 minutes. (More to come on this house-purchasing business at a later date!)

But just because I’m good at it doesn’t mean that I like doing it. Every once in while is okay, but the days on which I do it really make me appreciate the fact that I don’t do it full time.

I work in the area of student financial aid (think government loans and grants), in an eServices shop, so the things I am often asked to review are: announcements around changes to assistance programs, information guides for students, Web site usability testing reports, Web postings and internal memos.

A lot of crap has come across my desk in the last three years. You know, I don’t care if there are typos or a lot of sentences written in a verbal style in a blog or in informal communications, but when I get something to review that is considered “final” by the original author and is chock-full of grammatical atrocities, I kind of want to go hide in our building’s “multipurpose quiet/sick/nap/prayer room” and cry. Sometimes I wonder why some people can manage to get hired and retain employment. I mean, office jobs don’t require supernatural skills, but I think that knowledge of writing principles and basic grammar should be one of the competencies required.

Below are some of my all time #1 favourite English grammar/usage pet peeves. Alright, here it goes:

Misuse of i.e. and e.g.
I mean, I will recognize that id est and exempli gratia are Latin expressions, and English is not a Latin-based language, but if you’re going to use them, please try and learn what they mean. Id est (i.e.) means that is to say and exempli gratia (e.g.) means for example. I find that more often than not, the misuse lies in i.e. rather than e.g. Very seldom will writers actually want to say that is to say (especially in bureaucratic correspondence). If you find that you’re overusing e.g., try changing it up every once in a while with for example or ex.:. Everyone will be happy and I won’t secretly hate you anymore.

Improper structure in bulleted lists
This one can better be illustrated by an example:

Improperly structured bulleted lists are:

• annoying
• a sign of ignorance on the part of the writer
• piss me off

See what I did there? You can say Improperly structured bulleted lists are annoying and Improperly structured bulleted lists are a sign of ignorance, but you can’t say Improperly structured bulleted lists are piss me off. People often forget how they introduced their bulleted list and then go on starting new bullets however they please, which just makes them sound like idiots when angry QA people like me read their writing. I do recognize the usefulness of bulleted list in this age of immediate access to information and A.D.D., but perhaps we could issue licenses to writers before they are allowed to use them? Just a thought!

Spacing after the period
There is only one space after the period. 1992-Wordperfect-with-a-seizure-inducing-blue-background-and-blinking-mouse-cursor called, it wants its extra space after the period back.

On acronyms
Acronyms are pretty awesome. If you work in the government, you know roughly 96% more acronyms than someone who works in the private sector. Acronyms are like our lifeblood here. So if you want people to understand the 38 different acronyms used in your document, use them correctly! First, make sure you spell out the acronym the first time you introduce it in the document, then you can use the acronym by itself for the remainder of the document. Never assume that everyday readers know your 38 different obscure acronyms, because I can pretty much guarantee you that they don’t.

Consistency is your friend
You know, I really don’t care if you spell Web site in one word or two, if you hyphenate post secondary or don’t, I just want you to be consistent. I think less of you if you vary your spelling in one document.

Well I think that’s about all the grammar-and-style-related anger I have to unleash for the moment.
Stay grammatically sound everybody!