a thread for helping people use correct spellings

The Guardian spelt it like that the other day in an article on the new Bettie Page film.

Spectacularly OTM. We have many codenames for data packets in the elec industry (colour me boring) and it winds me up no end when they're written as D0151's or D0217's. Lose the apostrophe, bitch. Grrrrr.

My speeling as atrocious, although hanging around here makes me use the spell-checker more cos I know you lot will pick up on it, so it's improving.

HMHB, "Turned Up, Clocked On, Laid Off"

I could never spell it before that! Thank you, ILX pedants.

i'm never sure if subbing has turned me into a misanthrope, or if i drifted into subbing because of my inherent misanthropy. either way: WORLD, GET ONE DICTIONARY.

threads like this are bad for my health :)

i'm a visual thinker, and i always "see" words in my head either holistically or as a couple of distinct components. things like the "fuchsia" etymology are GREAT for helping me map a word.

I am a spelling Valkyrie, as Ed and Kate know only too well. In school my English teacher once slipped the class a difficult spelling test and thinking nothing of it besides 'ha, will be NAILING this' proceeded to completely nail it, only to have teacher dearest STARING at me as if one or the other was possessed because it was some Mensa test we were only supposed to semi-nail even if one was in a class full of gifted/talented nutters. I have a fairly photographic memory anyway so once I've seen a word, that's it.

Grimly, when I've subbed - because I always turn in letter-perfect copy myself - my main thought when hosing down sloppy prose is HOW ARE YOU IN GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT, YOU STUPID, STUPID SHITBAG? Or its other variant, YOU MAKE MORE MONEY THAN ME. WHY? ASSHOLE!

Huguenot, like fugue is not.

...is useful to me.

Chandler: What if I never meet the one? Or what if I already met her but I dumped her because she pronounces it "supposably"?

This is exactly what I think whenever I make a mistake and the person who corrects it bangs on about it as if they were some kind of superior being.

I have just been disbelieved when I said that the The in The Hague needs a capital T.

HOW ARE YOU IN GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT, YOU STUPID, STUPID SHITBAG?

this is a style choice, but "the" is usually lowercase when such names appear in the middle of sentences.

heheheh. we, suzy, make the occasional mistake because we're too busy being perfect elsewhere. other people FUCK UP BECAUSE THEY'RE LAZY WANKERS.

:)

but yes, you're absolutely right. i mean, i'm not pleading poverty here - i think i'm overpaid for what i do, to be brutally honest, which means that when i do give it up (hopefully within the next few years) to do something more useful with my life, i'm in for a mammoth shock. but when i look at what some people are paid to churn out badly written, badly researched copy that often just manages to be WRONG on several million levels at once, it makes me vomit.

i mean. it's not difficult, is it? digging up stories is difficult. investigations are difficult. pursuing truth and justice is difficult. SPELLING PEOPLE'S NAMES PROPERLY isn't very difficult at all.

the bottom line is simple: if you can't get someone's (or something's) name right, how the buggering fuck do you expect me to trust that you've got anything ELSE right?

odds on grimly changing career before massive anger-induced heart attack: not good right now :)

x-post: yes, that's a style call, i'd say. and it's nothing to do with "superiority". it's to do with just GETTING THINGS RIGHT.

Poor spelling is not really the bane of my life though - terrible research is. G0rd0n Kay3? Make-up artist for one film in 1989, according to the URL helpfully attached by the proofer. Oh, that must be who they mean then, eh? Not the 'Allo 'Allo star after all.

I have a fairly photographic memory anyway

jbr & suzy do you get that thing when you read something and an incorrectly spelled word sort of leaps off the page like it was printed in a subtly different colour or something?

Unless the person is dyslexic or somewhere on that spectrum there is no excuse for the lack of observation that bad spelling signifies to me. My slip-ups are usually simple typos. There is also a special circle of moving-into-impoliteness hell for regular correspondents who spell my name incorrectly despite it being spelled completely differently in an email address.

BTW Peter I'd actually go for 'the Hague' because it's translated from 'den Haag' and Dutch conjunctions in names reallly shouldn't be upper-case AFAIK. Argh. Natalie or Maria to thread?

Me: Argh I've read about him once, what was he called, let me see...
Team: Was it an English-sounding name? French? Spanish?
Me: I don't know! But it's got seven letters, and the first one is pretty wide, so probably M or W! Etc.

all the time. i hate that this happens; it's distracting.

omg this is me.

Besides, how come this is a matter of choice when everything else is a matter of right or wrong?

I was just put Amsterdam instead and hope to get away with it.

I think I misunderstood a Suzy joke earlier on, which is why I got on my low horse.

Why don't you tell them to check stuff? Surely it's in their job description or contract or whatever. Besides, Alba can do it.

Perhaps they are totally demoralised.

Jon Tickle - no aitch.

One-nil.

it's not a choice at the writer's discretion, it's something that editors decide on as an overall policy, typically based on what their trusted style manual/authority recommends. there are right and wrong spellings, but sometimes it comes down to preferred spellings.

molière? ah, but we don't use accents at this paper. unless they're "absolutely necessary", eg rosé wine. which cock, you might ask, came up with this idea? oh: that'd be me. it was a very, very unsatisfactory compromise, but the alternative was hanging myself. having first massacred everybody else. with an AK-47 (subs pls chk hyphen).

x-post: Perhaps they are totally demoralised ... no, that's my job. they can find another role in life.

as for the/The ... it's not a matter of choice, it's a matter of style. our style at this paper is to cap down articles except in newspaper titles (eg The Times). other publications will differ. the same goes for lots of things: diacriti, for instance. personally, i think omitting diacritics is an abomination, but like i say above: i had to compromise. we aim for consistency. and usually miss.

fucking hell, triple x-post now. it's meant to be a grave on the first e.

where did that come from? okay, i shouldn't be in gainful employment either. but that's the grate thing about ILX. i don't use capitals AND I DON'T PROOF-READ MY POSTS. there's one in the eye for the man. hah.

Little reminders like "Fuchsia was named after a bloke named Fuchs" and "the consonants in license go in alphabetical order" are helpful.

Just shouting about idiots who can't spell only makes us feel worse. And would be more likely to keep us out of threads, like this, where we might learn things to make us better spellers. Aren't there enough threads for pedantery already?

so, so OTM.
i doff my cap to thee. in fact, just take it. it'll look good on you.

yeah, as i said upthread, i want us to use our collective pedantry to be helpful!

It's got a rat in it.

sentence/sentance - which is right?

this way, it stays in your head.

xxxpost

My problem is that they check stuff and completely fail to appreciate that they looked up the wrong thing (which means immediately losing confidence in all of their research notes and having to do the lot again).

Sometimes this is completely understandable, e.g. a joke about having "never been to Spain but I did watch El Dorado" - this is almost certainly a reference to the early '90s BBC soap (one word) and not the 1966 movie cited but if you're not from the UK... A lot of the time the context is so screamingly incorrect that the error is baffling.

Perhaps they are totally demoralised.

Which, when you think about it, might be more helpfully spelled "demoraleised". Or not, in our case.

Kate is right though - I'm sure there are multiple threads for moaning about yr job.

wikipedia says:

The name is said to come from "más que bueno" (Spanish for "better than good"), or from "mascarpa," a milk product made from the whey of stracchino or aged cheese or it may come from "mascarpia," the local dialect for ricotta; however, it is not made by the same process, nor is mascarpone made from whey as ricotta is.

Mascarpone is often mispronounced as if it were spelled "marscapone," and also often misspelled that way.

I had a similar test with similar results. I was accused of cheating by the teacher having got 19/20. The wrong word? "Misspelt" - I'd put a dash between the two s's. Actually now I wonder if it was "Misspelt" or "misspelled".

both are acceptable, but "-led" is the preferred spelling.

Also, basalmic vinegar.

I was too, once. I remember at primary school the class was given a sheet of words to remember for the next day's spelling test. I glanced at it and carried on drawing spaceships or whatever. The teacher said I'd better study the words if I wanted to pass the test. I said I'd pass it anyway and she was all "you'll regret that tomorrow". Got full marks. Ha! Take that!

Unfortunately somewhere along the way I lost the knack, although I'm still not a bad speller I do get stuck occasionally.

haha OTM.

xpost

in a cheez whiz can, maybe

ok, i've been looking at this for five minutes and it STILL makes no sense to me. please to explain how "l, c, n, s" is alphabetical? and what if you mean the other one, the "l, c, n, c" kind of licence?

The teacher said I'd better study the words if I wanted to pass the test. I said I'd pass it anyway and she was all "you'll regret that tomorrow"

i got given shit for that too, for not writing the words down we were having in the spelling test the next day. "why aren't you writing the words down? think you know them all, do you?" "well... yes..." this was all shit like "market" and "pavement" iirc, that sort of level. "so, do you want your own test, with different words in?" "yes!" said 6-year-old-emsk, brightening up considerably, and got sent to stand outside. god that teacher was such a BITCH. none of the other teachers even liked her. same lipless total waste of fucking oxygen who made me go through EVERY SINGLE BOOK in whatever dick/jane series we had before letting me take any of the proper ones home, roald dahl and whatever. and she wouldn't even let me take more than one home a night, so i couldn't like blast through 15 or 20 a day - THEN she had the audacity to claim to have been the person who taught me to read. bitch.

Pet hate: people who say "pacific" instead of "specific".

Isn't Acapella now a recognised term though?

also that there's no x in the modern italian alphabet!

perhaps, but if you want to look like a proper classical ponce you'll spell it as two words.

(I think expresso has a thread to itself somewhere.)

Brainiacs again?

> a capella

needed this recently (it's misspelt on a spiritualized cd (see also 'lazer')) and found that 'a cappella' is also ok (but not "Accappella" which is what they had)

No, the letters that I get confused - the c and the s. I was forever spelling it lisence!

FWIW, Italian has plenty of double letters, whereas Spanish, except for the combinations "ll" and "rr," which traditionally were considered letters in themselves, doesn't really have any. So for the Spanish speaker, a camel is a "camello," but for an Italian he is a full-blown "cammello."

Sometimes the double letter can make a different word, so a "capello" is a hair, but a "cappello" is a hat. I think chapel is "cappella," so I might go with "a cappella" for full-blown pedantry.

no, you're right. i was just checking on that while you were typing! SORRY FOR MISLEADING YOU, ILX.

Here is how I learned how to spell "espresso"- there was an episode of My Three Sons in which the new young King Family bride was going to perform at place called "Bar Osserpse," which was "espresso" spelled backwards! I guess this wouldn't be a useful mnemonic for most people- it's a mnemonic of one.

yes. i am ducking out soon for breakfast and caffeine.

the US prefers license
the UK prefers licence

I remember freaking out a little once when in England because I saw all the signs that said "licenced premises," but I couldn't figure out what my Septic brain wanted the correct spelling to be.

If you want to spell it *lisense* or *lisence* I can't help you.

-- rudy huxtable can't fail

this sounds like something off of the dream game shut-in kid's website

It's got a rat in it.

When I was a nipper, the way I got myself to remember this was that it had two 'a's and two 'e's. In the full blown Captain Kirk Explains It version I added "there is a balance of power between the vowels, separate but equal," but I quickly ditched this.

I actually just looked it up, and ten minutes later, I'd forgotten which way around it was. :-(

Is there any difference between comlpete and compleat?

Sentance just looks... righter.

http://img.epinions.com/images/opti/5e/7c/165867-resized200.JPG

Both "-ents" and "-ants" are acceptable, although the latter seems to be preferred -- but because of the band, I usually have to think about it for a second.

US prefers "practice"
UK prefers "practise" for verb, "practice" for noun

OK, ledge is right
US prefers "license"
UK prefers "license" for verb, "licence" for noun

I could swear I saw both the preferred and unpreferred British spellings of "licen[sc]ed," just like I see all the signs saying "ca[p]pu[c]cino"

"Compleat" is a Creative Anachronism, and as such is suitable for Sci-fi/Fantasy titles and RPGs.

The one where he walks on custard.

-- rudy huxtable can't fail (theundergroundhom...), August 4th, 2006.

If only I could find the characteristic or the blessed posts thread!

Today I looked up processible, which is spelled processable in the Oxford English Dictionary and processible in Webster's Unabridged.

One could always try to employ the paddle of course. IT IS SENTENCE *whack*.

Oh jeezum. I've spelt it right but been saying it wrong all this time, and I've had two italian boyfriends! I feel like a dolt.

JEEZ LOUISE

i bet the poster TOTALLY knows how to spell "premise," too.

Well done, Waterstones.

I also wrote an email of complaint to a women's clothing chain once, because they had spelled "sandal" as "sandle" on every one of their posters. It's one thing if you can't spell. It's another thing if you can't spell and you write for a living and you know you can't spell and you don't check things, and you don't run them past anyone in the office who can spell before you send them to the printers.

; )

What's even worse is that where I work, the spell checker is so inconsistent that it questions words even when they're correctly spelled. I had three attempts at "initiative" on Friday before I checked it with one of the other writers just to be sure. I felt like my brain was melting a bit.

When A is removed, and B is put in its place, then you substitute B for A, not vice versa. Mnemonic: in (eg) a football match, the substitute is the one that enters the pitch.

A facist would be supportive of faces, surely

And independent! Ent! Ent! I don't think I have any helpful advice on how people should remember that though.

Also, a man cannot be a masseuse.

http://lauriesplanetofsound.tripod.com/adam-ant.jpg

the adverb is "predominantly," not "predominately."
― rudy huxtable can't fail (Jody Beth Rosen), Friday, August 4, 2006 3:07 AM bookmarkflaglink

actually predominately is an acceptable alternative for "predominantly".

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-pre2.htm

see u in 13 years