If it's in red it means this really annoys me. Hey, I never claimed this was something rational!
People who stop at the top or bottom of an escalator (funny thing: it usually seems to happen at the top, when I'm trying to catch a train in the morning). Hey, if you're agile enough to walk to the end of the damn' thing, you're agile enough to walk off it without coming to a stop to figure out what to do next. Likewise, those blithering idiots who stand side-by-side and don't let people by who are in more of a hurry. This is especially bad on the Porter Square T [that's "subway" if you live outside the Boston area, "underground" or "metro" if you live outside the US] station, the second-deepest in the world [the deepest is in Moskva], because you can spend an awfully long time behind someone; time enough, in fact, for your train to arrive in the station, unload, load, and leave. Sometimes twice...
Guys who flip their ties over their shoulders. Do you have any idea what an ass you look like when you do that? At first I thought it just happened when the wind blew them there and rather than keep pulling them down (invest in a tie tack/clip/chain!) they left them there. Then I started seeing guys fling them over their shoulders. Gentlemen, if you're trying to draw some kind of analogy with your endowment, give it up: it's not working.
Spitting. At the risk of sounding like an Old Fart, I don't understand this predilection for spitting. Time was there were "No Spitting" signs all over the place (before my time, I know, but there were). Until recently, they weren't seen much because...people didn't spit in public. I had it explained to me when I was very young that this wasn't something other people wanted to watch you do (kind of like chewing with your mouth open, or making your belch as loud and long as possible). Now I can hardly wait five minutes for a train without hearing someone hawk up a big one. Or, worse yet, stand at the edge of the platform and slooooowly let is dangle out of his mouth onto the tracks, like it was some form of bleedin' artwork. Swallow it, people: it won't hurt you and you'll look a lot more civilized.
People who misuse abbreviations. For example, it's not a "PIN Number," it's a PIN. To say "PIN Number" is, essentially, saying "Personal Identification Number Number. The same goes for "ATM Machine." What do you think "ATM" stands for? "Automatic Teller Machine," dolt!
Their/there/they're and your/you're. It's not that hard to get these right (especially the latter), but people don't seem to care. Some people say this is a consequence of the Internet, and the goal is to get the message across--content over form--but for those of us who were trained to use the language properly, it's jarring. Kind of like being at a soccer game and seeing a buncha lacrosse players come trotting out onto the field. You figure out in a moment that this is not the game because the field's different, but for a moment it's going to throw you. Imagine having to deal with that a dozen times or more a day. Now go type up the correct usage of these words and put it up over your monitor as a gesture of kindness to the rest of us. Besides, when you write your death threats to high government officials, they'll take you more seriously that way. Oh, and I don't believe it's a consequence of the Internet: it's a consequence of failure of educational systems and sheer laziness on the part of some people.
>Tommy Hilfiger and his ilk. OK, not them so much as their slavish followers. The original concept of a "designer label" was a status symbol. You could discreetly show that you could afford a Ralph Lauren jacket or an Armani suit, and had the good taste to wear one. Now, however, when every yutz on the street can wear a sweatshirt that says "TOMMY HILFIGER" at a size that would blow out your eardrums if it were sound, the whole point is lost. I keep wanting to walk up to someone with DKNY (which I sometimes want to believe stands for "Don't Know Nothin'; You?") emblazoned across their body and say "So, how much is Donna Karan paying you to advertise her product? Schmuck."
"I could care less." No, moron. What you're trying to say is "I couldn't care less," as in "There is no way in which this could be of less importance to me." When you say "I could care less," what you're saying is that this--whatever it is--has a certain degree of importance to you; the exact opposite of what you think you're saying. OK, you're not really thinking at all, are you?
"In New York, I'm so-and-so, reporting."This, of course, instantly implies that when you're elsewhere you're someone else. It's called a dependent clause, and I'm constantly surprised that professional journalists don't know better. Sigh.
Misuse of apostrophes As a friend of mine pointed out, when I see "Special Sale on Honda's!", the first thing that I think is "On Honda's what??" And just so you know I'm not the only one, check out Bob The Angry Flower's comments on this.
A related one is when I see a sign in the store that says "Fresh!" or "Genuine". With the quote marks around it, they're saying "Well, we're calling it 'fresh/genuine,' but it isn't really."
Organizations and individuals that use ".com" when they should be using ".org." There are different TLDs or "top-level domains" for a reason. Use 'em! I know ICANN doesn't actually restrict the use of these TLDs, but that doesn't mean we should blithely ignore the proper usage of these terms, just as there are things that aren't illegal that are still wrong.