Grammar things that annoy me

Grammar things that annoy me

"It was an historic day..."
ARGH! Do you say "I wore an hat"? Or "I picked up an history book"??? It should be "It was A historic day...". Unless you're a Cockney flowerseller who happens to moonlight as a television presenter. "It woz an 'istoric' day, 'ullo guvna!"

"This is the reason that we wanted to do this."
Spot a completely unnecessary word in there? Yup, that one. It's "that". "That" is almost always unnecessary in a sentence. Seriously, try it. Read a sentence with "that" in the middle of it, take it out, and see if it reads better. (It will). People constantly put "that" into sentences that don't need them.

"John got the book which he picked up at the library."
MISSING COMMA! If you're using "which" in the middle, it almost certainly comes after a comma. Missing commas are about as annoying as unnecessary commas.

"John picked up the book, from the library, where it was in the history section, on a shelf."
First comma doesn't need to be there, and the second half of the sentence should be rearranged to say "...where it was on a shelf in the history section." (I would remove the shelf bit completely, but hey, whatever).

I don't I need to address possessive apostrophes, do I? And mixed tenses annoy me no end, but they are very complicated to explain because the rules around tenses conflict with the driving principle of simple writing.