Because I am seeing this all over the place: the usage of “taught,” which is the past tense of the verb “to teach,” when the writer meant to use the adjective “taut.” For God’s sakes, don’t make me come over there and hit you with a dictionary. They are two totally different words despite being pronounced the same. I’m not even going to bother putting links to definitions — look it up yourselves.

Other examples of misused words: "gambit" to mean "gamut" (aaargh! they're not even pronounced the same!); "baited" for "bated" (when someone writes a romantic scene where the heroine waited "with baited breath" for the handsome man to kiss her, all sorts of images come to mind, none of them particular romantic); "flaunt" for "flout" and vice-versa (aaargh! They aren't even pronounced the same!); then the not-so-obscure-anymore (not in these days of ten thousand tv shows about lawyers) the confusion between "tort" and "torte." One is a kind of dessert. The other isn't. (All examples in the above paragraph are from reader correspondence.)