Not to mention "its" from "it's" and "to" from "too" and (particularly onerous) "loose" from "lose." I'd also like to require remedial education for those who insist on putting random apostrophes in plural words: "kid's" instead of "kids," for example.
9 comments:
Hear! hear! I don't see misspelled words anymore but I see a lot of wrong words. The problem is not elitism nor pedantry, but clarity. The wrong word forces the reader to stop and try to figure out the meaning from the context rather than the simple word. And, of course, it greatly undermines the credibility of the writer---that's my favorite irony. I am astonished by the number of people who purport to be writers who don't seem to know how to write.
(The one homonym I haven't seen misused yet is "yore".)
"Mommy, what's an apostrophe?"
"Well, Jimmy, it's a little mark that indicates that the following character is an 's'."
== Michael Höhne
I find it funny that the most common misuse of apostrophes happens on professionally created business signs, like "Mid-Town Fruit Pie's" and the like. I even saw a sign shop sign once that spelled "signs" as "sign's". bleh :P
Word Verification: "5 Econtypi"!
A few folks in the Typosphere often confuse "its" and "it's" in their posts, which surprises me, as in many cases we are a very educated, scholarly lot.
This is a good time to thank Mrs. Armstrong, my third grade teacher, who made sure we understood the difference between its and it's, knowledge I tried to pass along to my own children. If anyone still cared enough about correct grammar and punctuation to pay an editor, my first-born could have put away a hefty sum towards college by now!
Meh, it's all "one in the same" to me ...
Michael reminds me, another mistake I often see is some variation on "Here, here!" instead of (as he wrote) "Hear! Hear!" It makes me cringe.
I can forgive an occasional "its" and "it's" mix-up as a typo if the person more typically uses them correctly, but consistent misuse is hard to take.
Richard, are you saying you "could care less"?
Oh, and while I'm throwing quotation marks around, I have a co-worker who uses quotes to indicate emphasis, seemingly not realizing that in reality it completely changes what she's saying. As a recent example, she sent out an e-mail letting us know about her upcoming "vacation" dates. I've had some "vacations" like that...
Actually, I tend to see a lot of use of the word 'then' instead of 'than'.
"I'm more partial to vanilla then chocolate."
Burns me up. And (yes, I know, you shouldn't start a sentence with the word 'and')given that a computer's spell-checker does most of the work (sometimes badly, I might add) peoplee are getting more and more lax when it comes to editing their own work. And don't even get me started on the errors I find in many magazines these days. Does proof-reading no longer exist?
Oh God, don't get me started! I see so many examples of 'to' for 'too', 'there' for 'their', etc. Then there's my personal bugaboo: using 'presently' (soon) in place of 'at present' (right now).
I can forgive typos, especially in casual situations that are common on the internet. But there is no excuse for the many times I see messages and responses online that are all lower case and have NO punctuation. If they are too pressed for time to write properly, they should stay off the computer. (A remedial course in language might be useful.)
The idea that written language is supposed to be a way to communicate, acurately, their thoughts is foreign to these people. Worse, it shows no respect for themselves and those reading their gibberish. I'm embarrased if I miss a typo in a message. These benighted creatures simply don't care. ARRRRGGGHHHHHH!
Jeff The Bear
Then there are the spell checkers that pass incorrectly placed, but correctly spelled words. Any your floating quotes ""? At least most of the typospherians do not make all the mistakes in their posts as I do in mine.
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