It's also annoying when someone writes "must of" instead of "must've" or "must have", but I guess that's not really a misspelling.
I don't wanna add much to this list, because I myself have a whole gaggle of words that I regularly misspell. Posts: 1595 | Registered: Feb 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
The things that annoy me are Grammar Nazis who actually GIVE A CRAP about this stuff. Seeing threads on hatrack 3 times a week about how "Gee Golly, aren't we superior because we don't misspell any words. Wow, everyone else is SOOOOOO stupid".
Like it really matters. If you can still tell what the word that people are trying to say is, whats the big deal? They aren't any less intelligent than you, in fact, quite possibly they are smarter. Its just that because you are less intelligent, you need to pick on their spelling in order to feel better than they are.
And boy do you LOVE to feel better than them. Thats why you post in these threads every week. You are hoping that others come into the thread, see the words they misspell, and say "Oh man, I misspell words sometimes. Even these words. I must be stupid."
But the truth is that more often they think like I do. That this is just a circle jerk for those who need validation for their miserable little existences. That these threads are the worst form of forum pollution.
That intelligent people really don't give a flying fruit.
posted
I used to win spelling bees in grade school. I used to work as an editor at a newspaper. You would think spelling was my strength.
But I have NEVER been able to spell occassional... ocassional.... occasional.... without finally having to go look it up. It just bugs the heck out of me as to why I can't picture that word (I spell by picturing the word in my head).
posted
All those words that have "ie" or "ei", and break the rules about which way it's supposed to be.
It's and its, you're and your, their there and they're, and Y'all (it's sad to see southerners get that one wrong).
Posts: 4174 | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Four years of posting on Hatrack, countless years of writing in general, and I still cannot spell prejadice or privalege. Prejudice or privelage. Prejidice or privilage. Privilige.
posted
Like katherina I totally rely on spell check. Also like katharine it annoys me when people misspell my name.
Posts: 3243 | Registered: Apr 2002
| IP: Logged |
Oddly, my spelling has gone downhill with my increased reading (it used to do the opposite). But now that I've read so many different spellings of so many words, A spelling will often "look" right when it is, in fact, not. Or more commonly, a number of spellings I try, including the correct one, all look equally right/wrong.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
The smartest and coolest men I've ever met are terrible, terrible spellers. Almost without exception. I think it's because the kind of men I dig have brains that work so spatially that they never develop verbally. And the smarter they are, the less they focus on the spelling. Kinda like an idiot savant. My husband can take a car apart and put it back together again with just his manual, a wrench, a can of Liquid Wrench, and a long, metal pipe. BUT, he still spells the word "know" N-O. I have noticed that the more mathematic, mechanical, and musical a person is, the more they tend to misspell things.
Does that mean that people who can spell are bad at everything else? Not at all. But everyone is different, and being bad at one thing might mean you make up for it with something else. So, it does bother me when people place so much emphasis on spelling and grammar. It REALLY bothers me when I feel like I can't post in certain thread without making sure I haven't made a single mistake, lest my post be considered that of a moron. I'd like to sit those spellers down and have a little math quiz against them, and see how that turns out.
I guess I just can't figure out why people don't understand that good spelling isn't necessarily the mark of a genius.
Posts: 6367 | Registered: Aug 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
This is punctuation, but- putting an apostrophe in front of a pluralization. And unnecessary quotation marks. And cause instead of because and all the chat room abbreviations.
I have a question- is altogether a word? And alright?
Posts: 377 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
I know some people can get entirely too picky and snobbish about spelling and simple grammatical mistakes. That is annoying, and an unsightly character flaw.
However, spelling is important. Practically everybody reads every day, and most people write almost as often. Written language is vital to communication. It is important that written messages be understood.
Spelling mistakes can be very distracting. If they are too frequent or too glaring, they seriously undermine the effectiveness of communication, and the intended message is lost.
Most spelling mistakes and/or typos in this forum are not sufficiently gross to create a real bar to understanding. However, they can still be slight distractions and hard to ignore. I think it can be useful to occasionally point them out. It is even more useful to talk about common errors in the abstract. It is a kind of continuing education, in a subject with respect to which we could all use some improvement.
People who have real difficulty with spelling can still communicate effectively, with effort and paying special attention to clarity and precision of thought. However, they are still at a disadvantage.
posted
Almost nobody uses lie and lay correctly. Tom DAVIDSON uses lie and lay incorrectly all the time. <shakes head in disbelief>
Actually, I love people who misspell lots of words. I think it's a common marker of genius. The two people I know who spell the worst are my baby brother, and my friend and endocrinologist Joey. Both of them are completely off the scale brilliant genius people. Okay and Hobbes who is not nearly as bad a speller as Mikie or Joey is also very very smart. (I remember him explaining a concept from calculus very clearly to someone when he was 14, for instance. I love calculus but when I was 14 I didn't know beans about it. Freeman Dyson did.)
Spelling is very unimportant. At worst it takes a few extra seconds to figure out what's being said, and at best it brings out very cool associations in a word that aren't there in the ordinary spelling. I wish I could give examples of this. I will have to watch and start collecting them. But many times I've been struck by the fact that a nonstandard spelling of a word can enhance the flavor or meaning, or slant it in a direction unthought of. It's a creative tool, people! It's artistic! It's beautiful.
And failing that, it can be good for a good laugh, too.
But really! Get the lie and lay thing straight, please.
(Reiteration of the rule: Lay is transitive, lie is intransitive. I lay the book on the table, my body down to rest, my head on your shoulder to weep. I lie on the bed, and out in the sun, and a dead skunk is lying in the road. The only complication is that the past tense of lie is lay. So yesterday I lay out on the beach (or wished I did), and the book title "As I lay dying" is in the PAST TENSE.)
My mother corrected me for about 30 years before I finally got this right. I still do have to stop and think to be sure. <laughs> (The joke was that we would one day put on her tombstone, "Here lays Elizabeth Ard".) I see correcting people about lie and lay to be a primary responsibility of motherhood. Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
| IP: Logged |
I vehemently disagree with this statement. Spelling is extremely important.
ak:"many times I've been struck by the fact that a nonstandard spelling of a word can enhance the flavor or meaning, or slant it in a direction unthought of. It's a creative tool, people! It's artistic! It's beautiful."
Deliberate misspelling can be, but careless or accidental misspelling hardly ever is.
Posts: 1652 | Registered: Aug 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
UofUlawguy, I don't really know if I can support your stand on spelling being important, though. It depends. Where do you stand on the lie and lay issue? I didn't even mention who and whom but if you could clarify your position on that as well, it might help me to determine if there is any basis for a peace accord between us. Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
| IP: Logged |
posted
If clear communication is important, then spelling is important.
Creative spelling may (or may not) be a sign of a creative mind, but if it is getting in the way of clear communication, and that communication is necessary, then it's a self-indulgence to continue it. It's saying that the misspeller's need to express himself is greater than the reader's need to understand.
If they think that, that's fine, but don't expect the reader to honor them for it.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote: If clear communication is important, then spelling is important.
Only insofar as the spelling actually affects the way you get your point across. Constant gross misspellings that make your writing difficult to read should be fixed. But an occasional misspelled word that doesn't actually make your writing more difficult to understand would probably just be better off ignored.
Posts: 6367 | Registered: Aug 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
The onus of clear communication is on the speaker. That's not to say that in most communication, little inconsisties are not often forgiven, but they are still something to forgive.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
kat, I don't think it seriously impedes communication at all. You have not seen spelling as bad as Mikie's. His brain just works in a completely different way to ours when it comes to processing letters and words. He reads quickly and well, but spelling for him is exactly for me as though I were asked to memorize an arbitrary string of numbers associated with each word, and then be able to spout them back. He could make As on spelling tests, but only by that sort of memorization. And then because to him it was totally arbitrary, he quickly forgot as soon as the test was over. His brain just works differently.
It works differently in other ways as well. He's got a very bizarre sense of humor, and he is extremely brilliant. The idea of berating him for being the way he is, is totally repugnant to me. I adore the way he is. There is no better way for him to be himself.
When he writes official work things he uses a spell checker, yet still things do slip through. You have to know which suggested spelling means the thing you mean to say, and though he mostly can tell that, he sometimes can't.
His handwritten notes are a delight to encounter. They do take a little extra time to decipher, (his handwriting, too, is abysmal, as is Joey's), but they are always worth the effort. Usually there's at least one joke that makes you laugh really hard, and even when the misspellings are not positively artistically brilliant, they are good for a chuckle. His writing sparkles with creativity (the images and ideas conveyed, I mean, not just the form).
I can't imagine why anyone would prefer an ordinary correctly-spelled note to a note from Mikie. Certainly I would not.
[ April 05, 2004, 01:36 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
| IP: Logged |
posted
You do realize that your telling Kat that misspelling words doesn't impede her understanding of the passage is a little, well, stupid don't you?
Unless you two are the same person (like I've always secretly suspected) and you've only just now slipped up.
Posts: 3243 | Registered: Apr 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
Effect and Affect, your and you're, "rediculous" is ridiculous, and I hate all the cheeky, dumbass internet speak, especially that which lacks punctuation and ends with LOL, example:
quote: well i dont think shes that pretty i think she's pretty ugly and she looks like a man LOL
posted
ak, I do agree with you on lie/lay. I find the misuse of those words very distracting. Not as bad as some other quirks, but bad enough. Unfortunately, this is one that I think we will lose. Within 50-100 years, the distinction may be lost. Same with who/whom.
Posts: 1652 | Registered: Aug 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Whether or not misspelling impedes communication, it will prompt readers to make a judgment about the author. It's more of a social convention than anything else, like wearing white socks with dress pants. If you really want to be taken seriously, you have to spell correctly. Griping about the standard isn't going to change it.
Lawguy, it's going to take a lot longer than that for the distinction to die, especially considering the fact that it's almost always a one-way error—that is, lie is almost never used for lay, though lay is often used for lie. It's a problem that dates back centuries, and it will probably continue for centuries to come.
[ April 05, 2004, 02:22 PM: Message edited by: Jon Boy ]
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
It is the teachers who gave Mikie's papers Fs who were being stupid, in my opinion. They never saw past the superficial aspects to the heart of what was there. His writing always sparkles with wit and intelligence. They wanted instead for him to spend all his time looking each word up in the dictionary before he wrote it, I guess. (Computers weren't in schools then and word processors were mainframe-sized dedicated machines that only large corporations owned.) Or maybe they just wanted to punish him for being different. That's what it comes down to, I often think.
I think it's just a shame that people berate people for this entirely silly thing. To some it comes completely naturally, and to others it's a mindlessly boring and ridiculous waste of their efforts. The net effect of berating people is almost never an improvement in communications but a sharp decrease in it. They stop writing stuff to you. I expect a LOT of potential hatrackers, possibly brilliant funny creative ones, just don't post because they are worried if their writing skills are up to our standards.
Editing is a great thing. I love to read good writing, with excellent spelling and grammar, and yet it's the people writing who matter more. What they are saying matters more.
But please do try to get lie and lay right. That DOES matter!
[ April 05, 2004, 03:38 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
| IP: Logged |
quote: Whether or not misspelling impedes communication, it will prompt readers to make a judgment about the author. It's more of a social convention than anything else, like wearing white socks with dress pants. If you really want to be taken seriously, you have to spell correctly. Griping about the standard isn't going to change it.
Do you see that this is the problem? I have as much problem with judging people on their spelling as I do with judging them on their clothing. This is exactly what I'm talking about. I agree that correct spelling is good, and that people should try to do well. But if someone is not a writer or similar, is it fair to judge them by their spelling abilities, when it says almost nothing about their brain capacity? Or character, for that matter.
To say that griping about it won't change it is not cool. The purpose of pointing out the unfairness of it is to prompt people to reevaluate what criteria they use to judge people.
posted
I do judge by spelling, but not their character. If someone has bad spelling in a document meant for communication and the ability to fix that, I judge them to be lazy about communication.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
I, also, have certain words that annoy me when they are misspelled. The one that first comes to mind is rediculous. The stumbling block for me is the fluidity of language. Common usage changes with the times. Those that fight for proper usage are fighting a rearguard action. Language and usage will change, guaranteed. It is also true that occaisional (sp) misspellings may not inhibit understanding but they surely can influence perception of the material presented. Feel free to discard any thoughts expressed herein if there are any misspellings. Posts: 2022 | Registered: Mar 2004
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[ROFL]](graemlins/rofl.gif)
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Evil]](graemlins/evil.gif)
![[Cool]](cool.gif)
