I agree with you so much I can hardly put it into words. As you said, most of these annoyances are easily fixed either with by getting a beta or doing five minutes of research on Google. If you truly want people to read and review your fic, you should be willing to make it as good as it can possibly be. I can't count the number of times I've simply had to stop reading a fic because of how often these totally-within-the-rules irritations occurred within said fic. If I were to choose my pet peeve about fanfic, it would have to be distinguishing between your and you're. I know Mynuet touched on this in her essay, but why not outline it here, just in case anyone took her (excellent) advice to read these. 'Your' is possessive - your bike, your fic, your Draco (don't I wish?). On the other hand, you're is a contraction of the two words you are. If you couldn't replace it with these words, you're not choosing the right word. For example, you're bike (you are bike?) and you're fic (you are fic?) don't really make sense, while you're Draco (you are Draco) might make perfect sense (for instance, when role-playing with....nevermind), but still changes the meaning of the sentence. A close runner-up in my fic-reading experience is differentiating between then and than. 'Then' generally can be said to express time - "Back then, we were happy." It can also express time by representing a sequence of events - first I cooked dinner, then I lusted after Draco. Now, to the important part - then is NOT the word you use to make comparisons, than is. For example, I am taller than my mother, but my brother is taller than me. Just one more, I promise - it's 'shouldn't have', not 'shouldn't of'. Like 'then' and 'than', I can understand this (sort of) because in spoken English, we sound as though we're saying shouldn't of, but we aren't. This one's a bit more difficult to explain, but I'll take a stab at it. Let's say the correct sentence is: I shouldn't have eaten that pie. By saying that you shouldn't have eaten it, that implies that you have eaten the pie (the pluperfect verb tense). A similar breakdown doesn't work with the incorrect sentence, I shouldn't of eaten the pie. Wait a minute, you of eaten a pie? That doesn't make sense. Ok, one more tiny, non-grammatical note. If Ginny had a perky, loud best friend at Hogwarts, I think we'd have met her by now. That's all I'm going to say about our good friend Mary Sue. Right, I'll put up the same disclaimer here that Mynuet did - I know I'm not perfect (or even close) but as a writer, you should be concerned about the audience you're writing for and their expectations of you. Please feel free to contact me through my profile or livejournal if you have a question or are looking for a beta. Please DON'T flame me.