by Gina Sestak
I'm coming up short on both time and ideas today. Life has gotten hectic and I have to be in court at 9:00, so I'm just going to throw out a question: In your opinion, what is the most frequently misspelled word in the English language?
11 comments:
That's a tough one. There are too many to come up with just one!
How about affect and effect?
I love this question! Do we want to include typographical errors, caused when you are typing too fast, or only words that I misspell or misuse?
For typos, I'm going for hte - the..I find this misspelled many times, and my auto correct doesn't find it because many times I've got an extra space in there.
My other recent favorite misuse...ok instead of okay. I do this all the time. Until recently, I didn't know it was an error. Egads.
C.L. -
I think typos can be included. My all time favorite typo was when I typed gingernail for fingernail. Wouldn't having gingernails be cool?
Gingernails? Love it. I'm editing right now, so this is a very timely post for me. I can't believe all the ways I've found to mis-type-spell-use words.
Your instead of you're. Urg.
If you paint your fingernails red, does that make them gingernails?
Actually, OK is correct. It comes from the Greek "Ola Kala" which means "everything's fine." Okay is an Americanized version of OK. Yes, I actually looked this up once. It's also a style thing depending on the publisher. Some want you to use OK, while others prefer okay.
I see receive spelled wrong a lot. Just yesterday, I saw it on a permanent sign outside a business. I was so tempted to stop and tell them!
"Lead" instead of "led". So often, even by people who should know better.
Good topic!
Karen -
Yes! The past tense of lead is LED, not LEAD! That one drives me crazy, too.
I think the correct usage for: to, two and too.
Back for LCC, see me here (not hear) on Monday.
Patg
PS: My word verification is 'nobati', do you think that's a mispelling of nobody?
Years ago, teaching basic writing and composition classes to undergrads, I toyed with having a stamp made that said: "it's/its, your/you're and they're/their/there"; I corrected these so often, a rubber stamp seemed the only way to avoid Carpal Tunnel Syndrome....
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