Most of you here have been surfing the net for years.
You've seen countless typos.
Tell me...
What is the one single word that you find misspelled (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mispell) the most in your online adventures?
For me, it's the word "DEFINITELY (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definite)".
Why is it that no one and their grandmother can seem to get the spelling of that word right?
I swear, every forum and message board I visit, almost every single person spells it wrong.
I always think of the I's in it and the last part which sounds like "Telly". As in "Telly" Savalas minus one L in his first name.
DEFINI-TELY.
It's so easy!
Why do people screw that word up more than any other?
How about you?
What word or words do you see misspelled almost every time?
What words do you personally have trouble with?
You nailed it, Ash!! As a teacher, I get so tired of my students writing "defiantly" when they mean "definitely". "I would defiantly recommend this book to other students . . ." Yech!!!
Of course, there's also the classic rendering of "allright" as one word when it is two, and (a real pet peeve of mine) writing "prejudice" instead of "prejudiced", as in "I think the author is somewhat prejudice against Nazi rodeo cowboys . . . ."
I also notice someone in another thread today kept typing "Briton" instead of "Britain".
Mine would be:
1. Definitly (I just use another word most of the time)
2. Unfortunately (I just think of tuna)
3. Final (For some reason I always put "fianl" by accident)
Quote from: Goji_girl on July 05, 2007, 12:03:13 PM
1. Definitly (I just use another word most of the time)
See what I mean?
Not a misspelling but using it's in place of its.
It's = it is. It's hot out there
Its = possesive. Its keyboard is dying.
Quote from: Ash on July 05, 2007, 12:33:40 PM
Quote from: Goji_girl on July 05, 2007, 12:03:13 PM
1. Definitly (I just use another word most of the time)
See what I mean?
did I spell it wrong again? dang...
definitely
experiment
and oddly, villain
whenever I'm writing a review its a given they will come up in red on microsoft word...matter of fact I just spelled check all three before posting and they were all wrong...theres others but they seem to escape me at the moment...
Just look at the postings on youtube. The amount of misspelled words there could make a whole new planet.
I see "alot" of typos way to "offen."
Language is dynamic and if a mistake is common enough it is absorbed into the lexicon. Recent examples that come to mind:
+ judgement (with the E)
+ alright (as one word)
+ arbitrator (as opposed to arbiter)
+ irregardless (? haha)
A lot of people seem to confuse homilies with apostrophes, particularly:
+ you're / your
+ it's / its
People also have a lot of difficulty translating commonly spoken expressions to type.
+ play it by year (versus ear)
+ chalk up/full (versus chock)
+ of (versus have, as in "could have" or "would have")
+ pantie Annie (versus penny-ante haha)
Do you have a hour or two to read my response? As an English teacher, I can say with some authority that the mistakes that are happening more and more often come from two main sources: ignorance and apathy ("I don't know and I don't care"). People in my classes offer such effective excuses for lack of proofreading as "You know what I meant" or "The spelling checker missed that one." Mistakes will happen; I understand that. But when people consistently misspell or misuse a word, it does tend to get a bit annoying, particularly when the right word is so simple to remember.
My biggest pet peeves are currently:
"Everyday" as one word when not used as an adjective (i.e.--"Lower Prices Everyday!"). This shouldn't really bug me, but when multinational corporations like Toyota and Sprint (I think) can't hire a competent proofreader to catch such a basic error, it irks my poor little mind.
"Women" used as a singular noun. People don't seem to have any problem with the man/men rule, but when you put that "w" and that "o" in front of "man," all bets seem to be off. This is a recent development, and it is just silly to me.
I'll stop my inane ranting with this one: The switching of "than" and "then." It's "more than," folks, not "more then." Four is more than two, not more then two.
I always start my classes by giving them a list of my pet peeves like these (and many of the ones already covered). They, in turn, usually ignore me and continue making the same mistakes.
Oh, and just so you won't think my head is really about to explode over this kind of thing, here's some clever smileys to let you know that I'm (mostly) only kidding around: :twirl: :tongueout: :teddyr:
And the ever-popular exploding turd smiley (am I the only one to think this one looks like the 7-Up spot ate too many jalapeno Starbursts?) to let you know that, while I don't lose any sleep over these pet peeves, they are irksome: :hot:
Quote from: Derf on July 05, 2007, 03:51:15 PM
Do you have a hour or two to read my response? As an English teacher, I can say with some authority that the mistakes that are happening more and more often come from two main sources: ignorance and apathy ("I don't know and I don't care"). People in my classes offer such effective excuses for lack of proofreading as "You know what I meant"
Teachers share a common lot in life - to constantly battle mental laziness.
In my chemistry classes, I was always confronted with "this is not English class" when I announced to my students that worded responses on homework, quizzes, tests and exams were to be in complete, grammatically correct sentences and yes, spelling counts.
I often countered with "A bit of ethanol can be fun to drink, but ethanal will kill you. Now you tell me, does spelling count?"
The other counter I offered was "If you don't want to meet the standards required to pass this class, I'll be happy to sign your withdrawal slip."
It irks me in general how mentally lazy our society is becoming. Spelling is only one part of the manifestation of this. It's clear in speech, too. Names get shortened to one or two syllables (a la J-Lo, etc) and soon we'll all be speaking in grunts. And don't get me started on the lack of logical skills from a supposedly educated society. Yes, our technology is improving, and more people know more about more stuff, but mental discipline seems on the decline. :bluesad:
And don't get me started on science text books/textbook authors - that's for another thread. :hatred:
/me gets off soapbox now
Quote from: ulthar on July 05, 2007, 04:36:18 PM
It irks me in general how mentally lazy our society is becoming. Spelling is only one part of the manifestation of this. It's clear in speech, too. Names get shortened to one or two syllables (a la J-Lo, etc) and soon we'll all be speaking in grunts. And don't get me started on the lack of logical skills from a supposedly educated society. Yes, our technology is improving, and more people know more about more stuff, but mental discipline seems on the decline. :bluesad:
While it pains me (as a pretentious intellectual), I think monosyllabic discourse and Prince-speak is part and parcel with our advancing technology. Type has all but destroyed penmanship. Dig up some love letters written between your grandparents then compare them with your own. :teddyr: The public school system I attended never even bothered to teach me cursive. Legible handwriting simply isn't necessary anymore.
Spelling will soon be much the same. Or rather, the need to remember the correct spellings will vanish. Used to be one would have to turn to a dogeared dictionary to lookup a word, which could take quite a while. It made sense to remember the word for future reference so as to save you the trouble. But now with rapidly improving spell- and grammar-checking routines the effort is moot. Why waste the precious mental real estate on
abecedarian when Microsoft will do it for you?
I just happen to have an obsession with language so I take the time to remember spellings and meanings. But phone numbers and addresses? Ha! If my cellphone should die I'd lose everything. Goodbye family and friends, jobs and pizza. :lookingup:
I've got one that really annoys me: "rediculous." I see that at a lot of message boards and it drives me nuts. I even went on a rant at one BBS about it. Curiously enough, it was spelled correctly thereafter.
Another one is more a language issue: when people screw up the saying "for all intents and purposes" and say "for all intensive purposes." I know that technically it may still fit, but that's not the expression!
Over the years in my job as a delivery driver, I have dealt with people that...shall we say, only went to school in order to eat their lunch. I still recall the one guy who spelled "partial" as "Parshol." :lookingup:
I don't know where to start. I misspell stuff all the time. probaley, probelaly, dDAMMIT! probabaly...that ain't right....I'm asking Tara Sue right now...she spells it probably...that looks kinda right.
Quote from: RCMerchant on July 05, 2007, 06:21:31 PM
I don't know where to start. I misspell stuff all the time.
I think almost everyone has demon words. One of mine used to be necessary. I could not spell that for ANYTHING - then one day, I started getting it.
I know a physics professor who runs the planetarium here in town who cannot spell. He often tells of the time he asked his wife how to spell some word and she told him to look it up on the dictionary. He did. A week or so later, he asked her again. She said, "didn't you just look that up last week?"
He said, "Yes. I don't remember how to spell it, but I do remember that it was on page 1132 of the dictionary."
My beef is not with those who misspell words, but with those who refuse to even try. When corrected, they offer excuses rather than putting forth the effort to better themselves.
Fortunately for me I'm using Firefox and it has a spell check plug-in I use that underlines misspelled words in red as it does in MSWord. For a dyslexic this is a magical tool, as it's simple as a right click to correct, provided I haven't butchered the spelling so bad that even spell check has no idea what I meant.
Oh that's one of my peeve words that even a bad speller can spell but use the wrong word in the wrong place like "ideal and idea" as in "I have an idea." and they type "I have an ideal." it's about as bad as the misuse of "there, they're and their"
For me, as with ulthar, it's not the misspellings themselves that are so terrible; it's the attitude of the speller. My students often just depend on Bill Gates's spelling and grammar checker and never even glance over their essays, even when I have demonstrated how ineffective that approach is. Yes, spellcheck is a wonderful tool, but it cannot tell if you are using the right word. And the Office grammar checker would be laughable if it weren't so completely incompetent. I know some of my friends have told me they don't want to write to me because they think I'll grade their letter/e-mail. I honestly don't. The English language is my strong suit. I have my own set of weaknesses in other subjects and hope that when I make an honest effort to understand something that doesn't fall into my area of expertise, the experts will cut me some slack. In return, I try not to measure a person's competence/intelligence by their spelling and grammar skills. The peeves I mentioned earlier mostly bug me when they appear somewhere in a publication that should have been better edited. In an informal setting like this forum, I couldn't care less if someone misspells a word, as long as what he or she is saying makes sense.
My spelling problem gets worse as I get older. And asking me to look it up in the dictionary sometimes isn't any help, because, "I don't know how to spell it". Plus typing causes little boo - boos on the way. As long as I can understand what someone is writing misspelled or not it doesn't bother me. If it did I wouldn't write anything at all or read anything at all. Now I'm going to use spell check and see how many misstakes I've made. :question: :smile:
Unbelievably noooooooooooooo boo-boos. :smile:
I've got dictionary.com in my toolbar on Firefox -- Even when I'm just typing in this Forum I wind up checking to see how to spell a word.
Quote from: Poogie on July 06, 2007, 12:08:12 PM
Now I'm going to use spell check and see how many misstakes I've made. :question: :smile:
Unbelievably noooooooooooooo boo-boos. :smile:
Just to be a pain in the behind ... (I'm good at that)
'Mistakes' as one "S"
and 'No' has one "O"
:teddyr:
Quote from: Ash on July 05, 2007, 11:12:27 AM
How about you?
What word or words do you see misspelled almost every time?
What words do you personally have trouble with?
You know, believe it or not, I actually keep a LIST of words I've misspelled. Not just once or twice, but words I'd try over and over to spell right and just couldn't figure it out, have to use the spell checker and I go, "Okay, that goes on the list."
Then I occasionally look at the list, practice the words in question and sometimes delete or add words when I feel I've mastered (or, in the case of new words failed) them.
(Does some digging with the file searcher)
Ahh, found it! Neatly enough, I believe a lot of these are on the Commonly Misspelled Words list//, so I don't feel too bad.
One thing I do know is I have trouble with the "-êbl" problem.. that how some words end with -ible, sometimes -able (like acceptable).
My Commonly Misspelled Words!analytical auxiliary (keep thinking it's two "l"s)
*
availability (not sure why I starred some of these, guess it because I'm REALLY having trouble with them, with with one I probably keep wanting to end it wrong.)
claustrophobicembarrassed*fluctuating igniter *inadvertently Oh, I know this one.. keep wanting to end it with an "antly"
Incapacitated - ha, this is one of those fun "fifty-cent" words :)
Inexplicability (ha, even Firefox says I spelled this wrong, but I didn't!)
miraculously
phenomenon keep thinking there's an "a" in there somewhere
premiere the damn "i" throws me
*presence keep wanting to put a "c" in there after the "s".
Principal I don't confuse this with principle, but I keep wanting to pronounce it "Princ ca pal" and put in a second a
*recipe - keep wanting to put an extra "e" after the I
rhyme *sandwich Dammit, it
should be "sandwhich" but it's not!
*scenario - this time I want to replace the a with an e
similar - keep adding an extra "i" after the "l"
souvenirs spectacular - keep wanting to pronounce it spectaclur
Ventriloquist verifying
Damn! As I was writing this, I keep misspelling "pronounce" (keep leaving out the second "n". Guess I need to add that to the list!
"Rediculous," "alright" and "teh" are the ones that get me the most. It's like, I can at least understand the first two since not everyone's a great speller (but still, you'd think you'd pick up on these things after a while), but "teh" just floors me. People don't have enough patience these days to correct their typos before they move on to the next word, I guess.
Now watch, I've probably overlooked some obvious typo in my own post up there...
Quote from: CheezeFlixz on July 06, 2007, 03:55:22 PM
Quote from: Poogie on July 06, 2007, 12:08:12 PM
Now I'm going to use spell check and see how many misstakes I've made. :question: :smile:
Unbelievably noooooooooooooo boo-boos. :smile:
Just to be a pain in the behind ... (I'm good at that)
'Mistakes' as one "S"
and 'No' has one "O"
:teddyr:
:bouncegiggle: :bouncegiggle: :bouncegiggle: LMAO That's a good one CheezeFlixz.
Quote from: The DarkSider on July 05, 2007, 02:40:10 PM
definitely
experiment
and oddly, villain
Let me guess, on villain, you want to switch the a and i and spell it villian? :)
And I'm also guessing you want to put an "a" somewhere in definitely? That's how I'd misspell it...
You know, this isn't really spelling, but to me, it bugs me when people use double negatives.
Like when they say, "I don't have no..." or (even worse) "I ain't got no..." or "We don't have no..." whatever. I always want to say, "Any. We don't have ANY." I'm like come on, people, I know you're from Southern Illinois, but you can do better than that!
:smile:
Quote from: Derf on July 05, 2007, 08:24:35 PM
For me, as with ulthar, it's not the misspellings themselves that are so terrible; it's the attitude of the speller. My students often just depend on Bill Gates's spelling and grammar checker and never even glance over their essays, even when I have demonstrated how ineffective that approach is.
You know, strangely enough, I've always had this weird problem where I'm be typing something and, I suppose, thinking about something else, and then I look back and there are different words typed than what I meant to say. And the spell checker doesn't catch them because they're not incorrect and (usually) they're okay grammatically. Good example: Typing "something" for "sometimes" (which, neatly enough, I did while type this, but caught it.) Often I'll even type several words twice without realizing it.
Dunno, what the deal is, I suppose part of it might because I'm trying trying to type too fast, but part of me can't help but wonder if I have some form of dyslexia they haven't IDed yet....
I don't mind occasional spelling and grammatical errors in every day usage, nobody's perfect, but some things just drive me crazy. People who change a saying, example "I couldn't care less" has become "I could care less" which means the opposite of what the speaker actually thinks it does. Made up words, irregardless, this is not a word, the word is regardless. People who constantly use the phrase "was like" "were all like" or any of the variations of this.
This can drive me right up the wall, but I hear it so much now that I sometimes find my self saying it. Finally the idea that because the recipeant of the message more or less knows what you meant any spelling or grammatical errors don't count. I have actually called customers to confirm what I think their order or price quote says and been told "Well, you know what I mean don't you ?" and I respond with "If I did why do you think I called you ?"
I'm not really sure what the cause of this is, could be more dependence on computers and cell phones, or it could be that I'm turning into the old fogey I said I'd never become.
Quote from: BTM on July 06, 2007, 07:52:51 PM
You know, this isn't really spelling, but to me, it bugs me when people use double negatives.
Like when they say, "I don't have no..." or (even worse) "I ain't got no..." or "We don't have no..." whatever. I always want to say, "Any. We don't have ANY." I'm like come on, people, I know you're from Southern Illinois, but you can do better than that!
:smile:
I don't correct folks that say that, I just ask them if they have any 'double negatives.' If they ask what that is I say "Look it up." LOL
Not a misspelling but a peeve is when people use "can" in place of "may" as in "Can I barrow your saw?" I ask "I don't know 'can' you?" it's 'May I borrow your saw?' I over look in on line, I think I have to hear it to really notice it.
'May' is permission and 'can' is ability.
Any time people use similar sounding words in place of each other. Especially bad with contractions, like "Your coming to dinner tonight, right?". I've even seen "throw" replaced with "through". My old English professor always got a kick out of some girl who once replaced "prima donna" with "pre-madonna".
I've got another one.
The word "lose".
It seems that most people never learned in writing class that the word "lose" has one "O" and not two.
All the time, I'll see people write, "I'm loosing patience." or "That business is loosing customers because of bad customer service."
AHHHH!