Monday, March 28, 2011

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

   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:

Joyce Tremel said...

That's a tough one. There are too many to come up with just one!

Laurie said...

How about affect and effect?

C.L. Phillips said...

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.

Gina said...

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?

C.L. Phillips said...

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.

Ramona said...

Your instead of you're. Urg.

If you paint your fingernails red, does that make them gingernails?

Joyce Tremel said...

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!

Karen in Ohio said...

"Lead" instead of "led". So often, even by people who should know better.

Good topic!

Gina said...

Karen -
Yes! The past tense of lead is LED, not LEAD! That one drives me crazy, too.

Patg said...

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?

David said...

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....