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Our readers have answered the call for rants, and we do appreciate it. Here are a few bees in the bonnets of Skagit County residents:

* Leslie Lang of La Conner is irritated by pedestrians who jump into a crosswalk without watching for oncoming traffic. She asks that they please give drivers a break.

“Yes, pedestrians have the right of way. Everyone knows that. But pedestrians, please use some common sense! … If you decide to cross the street at a crosswalk, don’t just charge out into traffic. Those nice wide stripes on the asphalt can indicate that this is the place to cross, but they can’t save you from yourself.”

* Rogene Hingston of Burlington has problems with drivers who don’t know how to merge into traffic.

“What part of that YIELD sign don’t you understand? I travel over the bridge between Mount Vernon and Burlington several times a week. Nine times out of 10, while traveling north, I have to slow or stop to avoid being hit by a vehicle merging onto the bridge from the east. These cars totally ignore the YIELD sign — as if they have the right of way.”

* Mandy Englund of Burlington responds to a previous rant about shopping carts left to loiter in parking lots.

“I am physically unable to haul six to eight bags of groceries, a squirmy toddler, and an infant in a car seat out to my vehicle without a cart. After unloading my groceries, I have two choices: I could lock my children in the car while I return the cart to a holding area (and have a whole other set of people scrutinize my parenting abilities), or leave them in the cart while I unload the groceries (hoping that some crazy driver doesn’t hit them while I am busy with this task) and have them ride with me to the holding area, and then I’d have to try to lug them both back to my car.

“I have decided that my children’s safety is far more important than a shopping cart so, with much guilt, I lift the front wheels into that planting strip and dive into my car hoping not to be scrutinized by those who do not understand my situation.”

On another topic, it’s clear that the power of words — especially when misused, mispronounced, misspelled or written with incorrect punctuation — is keeping people up at night around the valley.

We have too many word rants to print all at once, so we may dole them out occasionally along with rants on other issues.

We’ll start with Todd Anderson of Anacortes. Todd hates many things about the misuse of language. Before you read this excerpt from Todd’s rant, you should know we admire his sarcasm.

“I also hate it, and dislike it intensely, when folks or people are repetitively redundant, and also when they use run-on sentences (which, for example, might express two ideas in one long sentence when two shorter sentences would be much better), and when people overuse parentheses.

“Don’t, even, get, me, started, on, the, overuse, of, the, comma! Or, the exclamation point!!! That’s it for now, folks!! Thanks for listening!!! (Whew, I feel better!)”

Todd notes that he laughs at his own grammatical intolerance and apparently finds humor with his local newspaper, as well.

“I found it funny that you would run a column commenting on other people’s grammatical errors when the Herald is often guilty of this error in large typeface,” he wrote.

You’re so right, Todd. Perfect we are not, but we do honor the written word, even if we sometimes miss the mark. No one hates it more than we do when we mess up.

But we’re always glad if we can give our readers a laugh. Thanks for reading and sharing. Send those rants by email to or mail to Rant This Space, 1000 E. College Way, Mount Vernon, WA 98273.