Commonly misspelled words

[Tom Slick]

One of my favorites to make fun of is "cock"* instead of "caulk": The innuendos are just to good to pass up.





*disclaimer: "cock" is the proper term for a rooster, any thoughts of the use of its slang only makes it inappropriate in your mind, not this post.

[Alex Franke]

A friend of mine that works in city gov't says you'd be amazed how many "Pubic" works projects are displayed to the "Public" at city council meetings on

That's just hilarious!

My #2 language/spelling pet peeve, behind "one of the only." You see "alot" all over the Internet and increasingly in formal correspondence. Interestingly, no one ever writes "alittle."

That reminds me -- just about any tmesis bugs me, too. But that's a whole nother story, I guess.

[radhak]

I could go on about widespread abuse of language, but shall try and focus on just a couple.

Personally, I am willing to forgive misspellings more often than wrongly used words. I.e, not knowing how many 'c's or 'm's are in accommodate is forgivable, but using 'wet' when you meant 'vet' or 'whet' is not. (Please wet these documents, or wet your appetite

First, my own - I used to be careless with the its and it's, but recently my 'supervisor' (lady in Brighton, UK - yeah, a long distance relationship!) gently told me that the possessive does not need the apostrophe. In other words, its dark color and it's dark. As she explained - if you could expand it, then you need the apostrophe. (This is a bit counter-intuitive because the possessive 's' needs an apostrophe in every other situation : Larry's post, or the dog's tail).


But I am shocked to see the oft used (nowadays) "your" instead of "you are". As in, a VP emailed me in response my thanks : "your welcome". Completely different, folks!

How about 'bare with me'? If it's a comely lady, I'm willing, else I'd rather 'bear with' !

[gerti]

Weather, whether and wether... Spellchecker is no help here.

[Norm in Fujino]

"Too" and "to" are two more to add, too.

EDIT: oops, sorry, didn't see the previous messages!

[LarryG]

How about 'bare with me'?

Or how about someone "waiting with baited breath"? That's not a phrase one sees written out often, but almost every time you do, the writer gets it wrong.

My all-time favorite story for a misused word comes from an Associated Press review I read, years ago, for the movie "Witness." In it the reviewer talked about one of the key scenes being the one depicting "an old-fashioned Amish barn razing." Ironic that the wrongly-used word had precisely the opposite meaning of the one the writer actually wanted.

[Black wallnut]

I could go on about widespread abuse of language, but shall try and focus on just a couple.

Personally, I am willing to forgive misspellings more often than wrongly used words. I.e, not knowing how many 'c's or 'm's are in accommodate is forgivable, but using 'wet' when you meant 'vet' or 'whet' is not. (Please wet these documents, or wet your appetite

First, my own - I used to be careless with the its and it's, but recently my 'supervisor' (lady in Brighton, UK - yeah, a long distance relationship!) gently told me that the possessive does not need the apostrophe. In other words, its dark color and it's dark. As she explained - if you could expand it, then you need the apostrophe. (This is a bit counter-intuitive because the possessive 's' needs an apostrophe in every other situation : Larry's post, or the dog's tail).


But I am shocked to see the oft used (nowadays) "your" instead of "you are". As in, a VP emailed me in response my thanks : "your welcome". Completely different, folks!

How about 'bare with me'? If it's a comely lady, I'm willing, else I'd rather 'bear with' !

Perhaps this is nit picking but she is wrong! She being your supervisor. She may be correct in the UK english usage of the astrophe but she is wrong about the US english use. That is what partially confuses some. We actually have dialect, for lack of a better word, differences in not only spelling but also punctuation. The island english is different. They have catalogues while us lazy Mainlanders have catalogs. the possive of it should be its' or at least it was when I was in school. Perhaps It's changed since then. Further adding to the confusion as the contraction of It has is also it's. Unless I'm wrong.

[Norm in Fujino]

Sorry, Mark, but you're wrong. The only i+t+s that uses an apostrophe is the contraction of "it is"; the possessive is simply "its," just as the possesive pronoun of the possessive adjective "her" is "hers" and not "her's." (Same for your -> yours, our -> ours, their -> theirs.)

[LarryG]

Norm has it right. His rules are the way I was taught and comply with every style book I've ever seen.

To my knowledge there is no situation in which its' would be correct. That implies a plural possessive (e.g., the Jones' house***), but that makes no sense because "it" is always singular.

(*** Strunk & White say to always add apostrophe+s to make a word that ends in an "S" possessive, e.g., the Jones's house, and that's the way I do it even though the apostrophe alone is accepted by many teachers and editors as being correct.)

[Black wallnut]

Thanks for clearing that up Norm, just goes to show we all are wrong on occasion, well most of us anyway.

[Ed62]

This should have been titled the "It, it's, or its' thread". Interesting, to say the least.

Ed

[KLF]

I see this one all the time on Craigslist ads: "draws" instead of "drawers". As in:

http://nh.craigslist.org/tls/1409590901.html
http://nh.craigslist.org/tls/1406304420.html

Another one that bugs me: there is no such word as "preventative". It is "preventive".

[bruce hylton]

Are you sure that is the case when you are discussing the Its of the world?

[Black wallnut]

To my knowledge there is no situation in which its' would be correct. That implies a plural possessive (e.g., the Jones' house***), but that makes no sense because "it" is always singular.

.)

Larry plural possessive??? Yeah whatever...... Jones by itself can be either singular or plural, same with Stripes (my last name) and chicken and deer and a whole bunch of other nouns. Jim Jones, see a singular person, once owned a house also called Jones' house.

[OpaDC]

Another that gets on my nerves that was usually only heard and not seen but I have seen in print (no spellchecker?) ..... recognize. Mispronounced all the time by "professionals" on TV. THERE IS A "G" THERE!!!!
One of which I am guilty, gonna, not a word really but I cringe every time I hear myself say it. And you hear it all the time, especially on sports broadcasts.

p.s. Spell check only found three problems with my comments, one of them being, spell check is two words, but spellchecker is one.