According to me this blogathon should have been preponed.

Sue has started a red marker blogathon that goes like this. Follow the chain.
In short this is about common mistakes in spoken/written language that irks you. Well, to begin with, I myself make so many of them and am not even a light year close to perfect. Did I mention that am not a saint either? I do notice and pinpoint mistakes in language when others make them.
Phew, I got it off my chest! Now, let me get to the rant.
Prepone
About ten years or so back and until recently, I used to be really annoyed with the Indian antonym of the English word 'Postpone'. We Indians  used the word 'Prepone' to indicate an advancement of an event to an earlier schedule than initially announced.
The function has been preponed.
I used to gleefully correct people that there exists no such word 'Prepone'. Alas, my pleasure was short lived. One fine morning, I was reading the newspapers that carried a column on newly added words to the English language dictionary. To my utter dismay and horror, the Englishmen had given in and legitimized the word 'prepone' giving it legitimacy and place in the dictionary. I was so angry that day. How dare someone deprieve me off my right to ridicule? :). I would have been one of the few miffed folks in the world to read this news.
I still cannot bring myself around to use that horrible sounding word. Talk about prejudice :)

According to me
The other one is a recent usage amongst even educated folks. 'According to me' is the usage. A friend was giving her opinion on the pricing of a piece of real estate and she went.. 'According to me , this is is overpriced'. For a second, I was left thinking that she was referring to a Chinese friend named 'Mei'. I realized then that she was referring to herself. I then told her to just simply put it as 'The is overpriced is my (humble) opinion' or even simpler. "I think this is overpriced." How difficult is that?

Smileys
Here is another thing I wish to legitimize in English. Smileys! :) :D >:-0 without these smileys. The other day I wrote to a client a reminder to send me a document that he owed me.
The exact words I wrote was 'Hi X, This is a follow up to my earlier email on the subject. I'm writing to just remind you that I need this document by ... date. Could you please ensure that I have it before the said date to help me continue my work'.
I thought this was polite enough for a reminder.However it was not meant to be. The client had complained to my VP that I was being rude. This was a client I have known for more than a few years! I was quite taken aback. After reading my note to the gentleman a dozen times, I concluded that my tonality has been misinterpreted by the client(he was probably having a bad day!) and it had nothing to do with what I had written. So I made a small correction to my email to present here
'Hi X, This is a follow up to my earlier email on the subject. I'm writing to just remind you that I need this document by ... date. Could you please ensure that I have it before the said date to help me continue my work :)'

That would have helped my client a lot in realizing that I was not being rude/stern with him and I was just doing business as usual. One can argue that my mail should have been sprinkled with how are yous and take cares to make it look nice. One can also argue that my client has a problem. There would be no end to this.
The sticking point would still be that such things are bound to happen. I realized that I preferred using smileys in place of unnecessary 'how are yous and hope you are doing alrights.' in a business note. I however realize that smileys may not entirely professional either and hence this rant.