9,470,000 people think 'definitely' is spelt 'definately'

Or maybe half of them are just typos.

I don't know why, but this particular common mis-spelling, above all others I can think of apart from maybe "seperate", makes my skin crawl and makes me want to throw a fucking great dictionary at the culprit. JUST LEARN THE FUCKING SPELLING!

Actually, let me try something...

yeah, might have bloody known:

Results 1 - 10 of about 1,760,000 for "should of". (0.82 seconds)

Results 1 - 10 of about 142,000,000 for "should have". (0.93 seconds)

actually, that's a slightly less depressing ratio than the "definately" one.

er, never?

If spelling is basically use

if monkeys are basically dolphins. if cheese is basically fish. if logic is basically fucked. etc.

enrique OTM. millions would bring back capital punishment. are you really suggesting that existing orthographical rules should be changed because a few ppl can't type propprl,yy oNn the internets?

(x-post)

people be morans.

the scholar says "the world is sound"
the sceptic questions that

the scholar says "the sceptic's wrong"
the sceptic calls him "fool"

how easily they could get along
if scholars just skipped school

GET ONE DICTIONARY

Your not wrong their

Ho ho ho...

Well, spelling is basically use. We don't have an academy handing down 'correct' spellings to the masses like the French. Sure, there are dictionaries, lots of different ones, none with any sort of 'official' authority. Some prefer American spellings, some even prefer Australian variations.

Spelling changes. If you don't believe me, go look at the original folio editions of Shakespeare for examples. Spellings have changed not because any authority deemed that they be changed but because of USE. Just as in the same way meanings change with time. So I wouldn't be at all suprised to find the OED or whatever listing 'definately' as an alternate spelling in 10 or 20 years' time.

Actually, 'masterbation' is a more egregious example. It scores 2.5 million, whereas the 'correct' spelling gets around 8 million. A quarter of the population thinks it's spelt with an 'e'.

By the way, here is a photo of me:

http://static.flickr.com/8/7324349_cdc73b081f_o.jpg

uh-huh.

True, but none of them lists "definately" YET! And it offends me sufficiently - borne of pure laziness and ignorance as it is - that I'm prepared to fight for its continuing exclusion by the power of edumacation...

okay. i bet you 50 pounds sterling that in 20 years' time, "definately" will not be listed by the OED as an alternate spelling. deal?

1) that's 50 pounds sterling in 2026 (so the equivalent of about 26 pence today, i guess).

2) actually, i'd bet another 50 pounds sterling that, er, sterling won't exist by then. but "definitely" will still definitely be the only spelling.

Not too sure. But there's an Australian English spellchecker on my version of Word.

i'm not going to accept "definate" as a spelling until people start spelling "finite" as "finate" as well.

The "derivation as authenticity marker" fallacy. I suppose you won't allow 'discomfit' unless people start spelling 'comfort' as 'comfit'.

Here are some more photos of me:

http://www.sitiosargentina.com.ar/fotos/mujeres/fotos/analia_hounie_01-ch.jpg

http://www.sitiosargentina.com.ar/fotos/mujeres/fotos/analia_hounie_03-ch.jpg

actually, that's a slightly less depressing ratio than the "definately" one.

since any instances of "should of" in a passage, should of course be wrong.

Can someone tell me an English word that's been so misspelt in say, the last century, that it's now listed as an alternative spelling?

Definately, but again, that's a slightly different thing. No one exactly calls you a moran if you run together a phrase that's usually two words.

"busses" is the plural of buss, non? as in those things on a recording studio desk?

Bugs the crap out of me. I'd be pretty amused if some rich crazy pedant out there started tracking this stuff down and suing over it.

that's like "traveling"/"travelling." i prefer the US spelling (one l) because it makes sense that the verb "travel" would take the gerund "ing" and not "ling"). but presumably that extra l is in there for pronunciation reasons -- so we don't say "trave - ling" (where "trave" rhymes with "crave").

But those things on an audio desk are spelled "bus" as well.

x-post I do know that that should have been "By whom," though.

if we wanna get REALLY pedantic (too late to stop now), we can say that "travveling" would be the spelling that most closely reflected the pronunciation. "travelling" would sound like "tra - VELL - ing" (rhymes with "smelling," "harvelling").

Not true!
bus P Pronunciation Key (bs)
n. pl. bus·es or bus·ses

In the Greek tradition, the plural of bus should be bi.

"Do humans have evolved homicide modules - evolved psychological
mechanisms specifically dedicated to killing other humans under
certain contexts?"

DAVID BUSS
Psychologist at University of Texas at Austin; author of The Evolution
Of Desire.

Oh, no, you can't talk your way out of this one. The homicide module has been activated.

So my fit of pique had long passed by the time I got home last night, and I realized that when I read over the eggcorns, I somehow imagine them in a worst-possible scenario -- not as natural mistakes during light conversation, which is surely where most of them fall, but as an attempt by a speaker to intimidate & browbeat an audience, to further the speaker's agenda. Yes, I realize this is a silly jump to make, but it took a friend to point out that I was probably remembering someone in particular I used to deal with, someone whose offenses ranged from "fustrated" to confusing "respectful" with "respectable" and a belief that the word "magnanimous" had something to do with the size of an object (was she confusing it with "magnitude"? I'll never know.). Anyway. Blergh.

it is now 'different to'

Results 1 - 10 of about 7,540,000 for "different to"
Results 1 - 10 of about 98,200,000 for "different from"

i think i've found a retirement vocation to which i can look forward.

i think theres a split here in terms of those that deal with words professionally, considering ILX is a haven of journos/editors etc etc, to whom ambiguity and confusion, non-standard use in spelling grammar etc is an irritation and an obstacle to their work, and those that simply take an interest and in my case a certain delight, in the way people change and fiddle with the language, consciously or unconsciously, through spelling mistakes, folk etymologies, derivations etc.

for instance, in a meeting today someone came up with "inminutisimal", which i presume came from infinitesimal. he paused just before it, which suggested either that he was trying to remember the word or get his tongue round, or that he wanted to say that but exaggertae the meaning even further. either way i pretty much love stuff like that.

haha otm.

most language users generally aspire to whatever the "standard" is, even if they get stuff wrong. sure, language is fluid (the phrase descriptivists always trot out, ad nauseam), but if it were THAT fluid, no one would ever understand anyone else.

So, grammarians:
"There are a lot of..." vs "There's a lot of..."

I just realized where the confusion came from (and why Alba and I answered different ways at first). We actually decide singular/plural based on the thing there's a lot of, and whether it's a group of individual items or a numberless abstract. For instance --

A lot of us ARE going to the movie tonight.
A lot of that movie IS just an ape fighting a dinosaur.

So yeah, singular/plural not based on "a lot" but on the thing it's attached to -- a lot of people ARE, a lot of the public IS.

ok this is an epidemic and is seriously starting to bug me

I'm sure it's gotten worse, or maybe I'm seeing it more due to facebook feeds etc. I really, really, really hate it, possibly more than "your" when it should be "you're". But perhaps not quite as much as "should of".

hmmm

English is in desperate need of spelling reform. Were I a billionaire dictionary/newspaper publisher, I'd push something like Spelling Reform 1.

Draw a breth for progress,
Tred abrest ahed.
Fight agenst old spelling,
Better "red" than "read".
Spred the words at brekfast,
Mesure them in bed,
Dream of welth and tresure,
Better "ded" than "dead"

You'll have us on the Esperanto, you crazy man!

Some new restaurant opened near me recently that advertises on its front window "Vegan and Vegitarian."

They paid to have someone misspell a word on their front window.

how many people think the Canada Goose is called the Canadian Goose and shouldn't we just start calling it that when we get tired of correcting them? :-(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XQFPBM9HkM

BENT COPPERS

AC-77 investigating the very top levels of bad music writing

Standardized orthography is good, helpful, and highly convenient. It reduces friction and speeds the deciphering of written communication. But it is not strictly necessary to comprehension. The Elizabethans and their predeccesors muddled along without it.

On the whole, I'm in favor of it.

i say we just replace all written language with emoji, standardized orthography is a half measure at best

I also think standardized orthography is good. I just wish English had it.

We mostly have it Finnish, there's some minor exceptions, but almost always each letter corresponds to one sound only, regardless of where it'd placed in a word. This has definitely made it easier for my wife (who's from Costa Rica) to learn how to pronounce Finnish, but I guess to balance it out, our morphology is very difficult learn, due to the system of conjugations (which are used instead of prepositions) being way different from most other European languages.