Wednesday, January 23, 2008

WFMW: Spelling

Spelling

1. an arrangement of letters that form a word or part of a word.

2. the process of forming words by putting letters together.

3. the violation of which drives Jendeis crazy!



One of my greatest pet peeves is the increasing inability of our population to spell words correctly. Not only are misspellings rampant among the blogosphere, but homonyms run wild!

Now, I'm not speaking of an errant typo or two. I'm talking about chronic, careless misspellings. Readers do judge you and make assumptions about economic class, education and general attention to detail all based on poor spelling.

Below is an easy-reference list for misspellings frequently found on the Internet:


Altar = where one gets married; Alter = change


Calendar = a date book


Definite, as in "I'm definite about spelling."


Definitely, as in "Judge Wapner is definitely on today. Definitely!"


Lose = to not win; Loose = not tight


Separate = divided

It only takes a few moments to hit the spell check and proofread your work before posting. Please do so! Learning how to spell has worked for me; for more tips, see Shannon's blog every Wednesday.

7 comments:

HereWeGoAJen said...

I am terrible at spelling, but I know that so I am good about spell checking. I really wish comments had spell check. It would catch my typos.

Britni said...

One of my pet peeves is when people misuse all of the different options for there, its, to, etc. All of those words that you just need to learn to memorize. They drive me crazy!

Amy said...

I was so glad when I discovered my browser has a spell checker!

Mom2fur said...

I love you. No, I mean it...seriously. You are my best friend for life now. It is so nice to know there are others out there who care about spelling as I do.

Mixing up "loose" and "lose" is my absolute pet peeve of the 'net. When did we learn these? In third grade, maybe? And it's just rampant out there. I get that we all make typos...heaven knows, I do. But this one is just...ludicrous. (Hey, did I spell 'ludicrous' right?)

I like when someone says, "I might loose my mind." Uh...not unless you get in there with a tool and unscrew it! (Acck! I almost wrote 'their'--but at least I caught it.)

Kathy in WA said...

I have to agree - the lose and loose one drives me crazy!! I even corrected a friend one time (on her blog) and saw her make the same mistake a week later. I figure I had best just let it go. :)

Love the spelling tips!

Anonymous said...

Could you somehow help me with my first grader's spelling issues? Thanks for sharing.

Anonymous said...

Excellent picks for the commonly made mistakes. I would definitely add "it's" and "its'" for those who like to add the possessive to a plural its (?!?!?!?). The other day I actually saw "wa-la" for the second time, meaning "voila." Save us!