[The Oatmeal] Ten Words You Need to Stop Misspelling

Weird > Wierd

 

The biggest offense (it drives me up a wall for some reason) on this board is: People do not know the difference between dominant and dominate. Dominant is an adjective, dominate is a verb!

"PlayerX is so dominate" <- WRONG!
"PlayerX is crazy dominant skeet skeet skeet" <- CORRECT!

 

those aren't misspellings. they're misuses.

 

Squad is a commonly misspelled word.

 

I disagree. When someone says 'You are a looser.', they're not trying to say I'm loose but happen to be using the word/terminology wrong. They are actually trying to spell 'loser' and just spelled it wrong. Misuse of the word would mean they intended to use it but used it improperly.

 

I have trouble with choose and chose a lot. Their and there, I do that a lot without thinking. I hardly ever misspell definitely.

 

But, he was the lead singer of Herman's Hermits.

 

Perhaps, but many of their examples are (as Groogux pointed out) words that are used improperly.

If I write "There car is blue", I didn't spell 'there' incorrectly, I used the wrong variation of it.

 

But 'There' is not a variation of 'Their'. When you intend to spell 'Their' and you spell it any other way than the way it is supposed to be spell... you spelled it wrong. It doesn't matter that your misspelling happened to form another word.

 

That DeVry dude needs to read and bookmark this thread.

 

The spelling is not the problem if the person thinks that 'there' was the proper word to use in that case. It is the person's ignorance of the way to use the word as opposed to their spelling that causes the problem.

They know how to spell there and their, they just are ignorant of which one to use in a given situation.

 

I don't have a problem with any of those except for its vs. it's. Sad to say I almost always use it's instead of its.

All the other ones drive me crazy when I see them. Especially then vs. than. I see that one around here all the time.

"If you want to do this, than you have to do that."

Drives me crazy!

 

I'm guilty of misusing effect and affect. Lose and Loose are one of my pet peeves.

 

Whatever. As long as people start using/spelling them correctly.

Hell, its/it's is often found wrong in newspapers. Very often on signs.

 

'occurrence' drives me nuts. I can never remember if it's one or two r's.

 

Agreed. There ARE times when a misusage is grammatically correct, but changes the meaning of the sentence. But in most cases, it's a misspelling.

 

You think that when a person incorrectly uses 'there', 'effect', 'your', 'weather' and 'than' it is because they don't know how to spell, 'their', 'affect' 'you're', 'whether' and 'then'?

I think it is generally because they don't know (or don't care) which one is proper to use.

 

I'd be embarrassed if I did any of these.

 

Me personally, I care. But on a bbs, when I am firing off posts in less than 5 seconds, I am apt to not read anything, or consider grammar at all.

When I am able to, I edit the post, but generally I just cringe at my own lack of dutifulness.

Generally when I mess up a subject-verb agreement rule, it's when I've made major edits to the post beforehand and quickly.

Also, I will say that I was reading the Devil Finds Work, an essay in the Library of America edition of James Baldwin's Collected Essays, last night, and discovered that a necessary word was omitted from the copy. This collection was edited by Toni Morrison.

I have found similar errors in the Vintage International edition of Ellison's Invisible Man. So, mistakes happen in all levels of publication.