Non-real poles and irregularity of distribution.

We study the general theory of weighted Dirichlet series and associated summatory functions of their coefficients. We show that any non-real pole leads to oscillatory error terms. This applies even if there are infinitely many non-real poles with the same real part. Further, we consider the case when the non-real poles lie near, but not on, a line. The method of proof is a generalization of classical ideas applied to study the oscillatory behavior of the error term in the prime number theorem. We include several applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]