Grate spelling mistakes of our time

In article , F writes

That too.

The majority of mistakes seem to be where the word is actually spelt correctly and pronounced the same, but the wrong one has been chosen.

would've - would of broach - brooch principle - principal there - their your - you're

Classic example in the Grauniad this morning:

"By all historical precedent, given the figures, Romney should have sown it up months ago."

Grr.

affect and effect are the ones that irritate me.

MBQ

Its the revolting habit now creeping in of talking about something " different than " instead of "different from" or "different to" Bloody Yanks.

And they spell Aesthetics as Esthetic. No one is asking for the diaeresis / umlaut but it just looks so bloody ignorant. Like a childs spelling mistake.

^^^^^^

Oops!

It's people's inability to deal with apostrophes properly that gets me.

-------peoples'----

HTH.

And in this very group (although not pronounced quite the same), 'temporally' instead of 'temporarily'.

Beg to differ.

There is only one people being referred to, so it takes 's as a singular.

The British and American peoples' inability to agree on how to pronounce aluminium is a cause of great distress.

Same as children's toys, etc.

Owain

In article , Dave Baker writes

Point 'em at this:

sis / umlaut but it just looks so bloody ignorant. Like a childs spelling m= istake.

I think it would be an unaccented digraph.

And they have a job title of Esthetician. Never sure whether that's a make-up girl or a cosmetic surgeon.

Owain

fred :

They feel exactly the same about our "different to".

And about our "bloody", come to that.

You jest, surely.

than " instead of "different from" or "different to"

umlaut but it just looks so bloody ignorant. Like a childs spelling mistake.

Similar transitions have occurred in many words, such as Oesophagus / Esophagus (typing that, am surprised it has not yet become Esofagus). Which results in different acronyms for Lower Oesophageal Sphincter - LOS / LES. And the idea of typing LES sticks in the throat.

'Different from' or 'similar to'. Not 'different to'.

Yes.

I think a lot of it is compounded by spell checking, if the wrong word is used but not flagged up as a misspelling it goes through unchecked. And of course if a word is misspelled the suggested replacement may not be the correct term. Behind it lies an oral rather than literate culture: words are spelt as they sound because increasingly people have heard words they rarely write. A contrast to the past when many knew words in print but were unsure how to pronounce them.

And, yet there is also some psychological process at work, I sometimes catch myself typing a homonym, as if the typing part of the brain was taking dictation from the thinking part.

=20

A common problem. Many years ago I was typing an invitiation to a working g= roup on some subject or other, and missed out the k - the spell checker sug= gested addding an h after the initial w. I'm not sure whether I'd have had = more acceptances if I hadn't rejected that! These days many spell checkers just do it without asking...

The number of times you get complimentary offers ARRGGHHH!

And the parking ticket for parking in the PRESCRIBED place!

Oh yes - 'This will not effect your statutory rights'