Posted on 04/11/2012 12:22:30 PM PDT by rightwingintelligentsia
For no reason in particular, I thought it would be helpful (or irritating, depending upon your point of view) to post a list of words that are commonly misspelled or improperly used on FreeRepublic.
Feel free to add any of your own.
I realize that this will open me up to greater scrutiny of the orthographic composition of my own future posts, but alas; so be it.
Aid = help vs. Aide=assistant (as in “an aide to Congressman Frank”)
Anointed (NOT “annointed”)
Border (as in the line between U.S. and Mexico) (NOT “boarder” as in the guy who gets a bedroom in your house and dinner for a fee)
Gauge (NOT “gage”)
Huge (NOT “hugh”—yes, I know it’s a running joke, but FReepers still misspell it accidentally.)
Loose = opposite of tight. Most of the time, FReepers mean to type “lose.”
Martial Law (NOT “Marshall Law”)
Tenet (as in “principle”) (NOT “tenant”)
Existence (NOT “existence”)
Existent (NOT “existant”) Remember: “The ‘a’ in existent is nonexistent.”
Poll (as in “survey”) (NOT “pole” as in a stripper's primary accessory)
Principal vs. Principle: Principal = 1) First, or highest in rank; 2) Head guy (or gal) in a school; 3) Main portion of money in finance, e.g. principal of a loan.
Principle = Moral rule
Your vs. You’re:
Your = possessive. "Your mother doesn’t approve of your spelling skills."
You’re = Contraction of “you are” "You’re not likely to pass English."
> Gauge (NOT “gage”)
Sorry but both forms, “gauge” and “gage”, are correct.
Just like “grey” and “gray” are both correct.
I see some people using “to” instead of “two” and others who will use “no” or “now” instead of “know”.
Some of the problems could be typos, but some are repeated so often that they are obviously not.
The I before E rule...something to think about next time you find yourself on an ancient glacier.
al your spelligs ar rong!
I agree about “its/it’s”.......I did that once by accident and wanted to smack myself, LOL.
Thanks for the response about my problem. I’m beginning to think it’s just me, because I haven’t seen any other complaints.
LOL
definitely, not definately...
as in..
I definitely want to die hittin’ it, just like ol’ Lazamataz.
It’s “pedantic” not, well whatever...
LOL!
Achtung! I vill play!
“complement”(adds to) v. “compliment”(saying something nice)
“tough row to hoe”, not “tough road to hoe”(can’t hoe a road)
RINO, NOT Rhino Republican In Name Only
Mormon, NOT MorMAN Mormon issues are discussed often.
These have been perhaps addressed already. I didn’t go through every post
Doh!
Or should that be Dough!?
Or Doe!?
The one that makes me crazy, and I see it on FR:
The poles vs. the polls.
I keep envisioning some berzerk Eastern Europeans running about lifting people up and down. “He’s up in the poles!”
Also, peak vs. peek.
Tenet (as in “principle”) (NOT “tenant”)
thank you,
Here is one:
Cannot is one word unless followed by the word only
I cannot swim, means you can’t swim.
I can not only swim, but I can dance. You can swim and dance.
Anyone is one word unless followed by the phrase of us.
Anyone could tell any one of us how to write correctly.
Ok I am in:
web site. Not web sight
gun sight. not gun site.
A site is a location. A sight is something you look at (or through). You do not aim a firearm with the ‘sites’.
“President” vs. “Race-baiting Tyrant”
8:}
I have no problem when the average person slips up on one of these. I led a school board at one time and an applicant for a teachers position stated on her app. “I where glasses”. She did not get the job. I do see, here on FR, so called educators, professionals, government people, etc. make those silly errors.
It's helpful but it won't protect you from the "dreaded homonyms," words that sound the same but have different meanings. "Rein, reign and rain" for instance. If it's a real word spell check will OK it even it it's used improperly, as in "to reign in government" instead of "to rein in government."
I won't even start on the topic of misused apostrophes. Their proper use seems lost forever. The "rule" these days seems to be to toss them in randomly and as often as possible.
I’m stuned.
I’m stuned.
haha, so many misuse advice and advise, that I focused there rather on the “ea” problem.
¿seriesly?
“Existence (NOT “existence”)”
Perhaps you met “existance”?
[Heil Salamander!]
;D
CC, I give you the lowly comma:
“The comma is a very small punctuation mark. It somewhat resembles a period with a dash attached to the center right and then turned underneath into a hook shape. Despite its small size, it holds incredible importance. There is an old story of Czarina Maria Fyodorovna who once saved a man’s life simply by misplacing a comma in a notice written by her husband Alexander III. The note was supposed to read “Pardon impossible, to be sent to Siberia.” The man was set free after the Czarina misplaced the comma to read “Pardon, impossible to be sent to Siberia.” His life was saved, simply due to a thoughtlessly misplaced mark of punctuation.”
Read more: What Is a Comma? | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/about_4572294_what-comma.html#ixzz1rlZ2NsMz
Eat, shoot, and leave. ;>
I’ll leave that to the politicians and the presstitutes!
I'll never figure out the mysterious behavior of the Preview Pane here on FR. Even with the fine spell check feature (which, of course, won't catch the "its/it's" misuse), I have a tendency to not see mistakes until after the Post button is pressed and my botches are then published to the whole wide, wide, wide world of sports and webocracy. Strange that. :-)
As for the problem with FR sluggishness, I presume that you're using Windows and possibly Internet Explorer. As a Linux geek, my knowledge of Microsoft products is close to nil (or more apt, NULL, as in the pointer of that name). In the immortal words of Brian Kernighan and the late Dennis Ritchie: check with a local expert.
LOLOL
[petard hoist]
Yep, you got number two.
But I lied — there were actually *three* grammar errors in my post (intentional ones, anyhow).
One more! :-)
rein in spending....NOT reign, which means to rule.”
This is Obama’s problem - he thinks we’re saying reign when we are saying rein...
Love that!
[stole it]
;]
Who aksed you?
8:}
‘nekkid’ not ‘naked’.”
Only when preceded by the word “buck” or “butt”
Hay...nobody requested you’re presance, hear.
Go aweigh.
:-P
>> If it’s a real word spell check will OK it even it it’s used improperly, as in “to reign in government” instead of “to rein in government.”
What do you mean “instead of”?
“Newt Gingrich intends to rein in government.”
“Barack Obama intends to reign in government.”
BOTH OF THOSE ARE CORRECT USAGES! :-)
Using “then” for “than.” Drives me nutty.
Alli oop!
From “Non-Campus Mentis”
Anders Henriksson
http://www.amazon.com/Non-Campus-Mentis-According-Students/dp/0761122745
(Rebranded as “Ignorance is Blitz: Mangled Moments of History From Actual College Students”)
Various quotes:
“Zorroastrologism was founded by Zorro. This was a duelist religion.
The history of the Jewish people begins with Abraham, Issac, and their twelve children. Judyism was the first monolithic religion. It had one big God named “Yahoo.”
Moses was told by Jesus Christ to lead the people out of Egypt into the Sahaira Desert. The Book of Exodus describes this trip and the amazing things that happened on it, including the Ten Commandments, various special effects, and the building of the Suez Canal. Forty centuries later they arrived in Canada. This was the promise land of milk and chocolate.
Pythagasaurus fathered the triangle.
Augustus (a.k.a.Octagenarian) founded the Roman Catholic Empire.
When they finally got to Italy, the Australian Goths were tired of plungering and needed to rest. Italy was ruled by the Visible Goths, while France and Spain were ruled by the Invisible Goths.
During the Middle Ages everyone was middle aged. ... Power belonged to a patriarchy empowering all genders except the female. Nuns, for example, were generally women.
In a Romanesque church the stone roof is held up by a system of peers. The usual design was a long knave split by a crosshair. Without the discovery of the flying buttock it would have been an impossible job to build the Gothic cathedral.
Finally, Europe caught the Black Death. The bubonic plague is a social disease in the sense that it can be transmitted by intercourse and other etceteras. It was spread from port to port by inflected rats. ... Victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. ... Death rates exceeded one hundred percent in some towns. ... The plague also helped the emergance of English as the national language of England, France, and Italy.
Ferdinand and Isabella conquered Granola, a part of Spain now known as Mexico and the Gulf States.
Calvin was born a generation after Luther and is seen as one of Luther’s greatest predecessors. He accepted all Luther’s ideas except that of birth. Calvinists were the only ones who believeed in pre-detonation. It is not surprising that their preaching consisted mainly of dogmatic explosions.
The Popes, of course, were usually Catholic.
Henvry VIII survived an assault from the Papal bull.
The Thirty Years War began with the Defecation of Prague. ... Prague was the capitol of Bulemia.
These good times ended when England suffered Civil War between the Musketeers and the Round Ones. Oliver Cromwell solved this and other problems by removing prominent things from people who disagreed with him.
Next time you hear Porter shout, Queen of Hearts-like, “Off with their prominent things!” you will know why.
East of the back of the beyond were the Russians, who knew nothing at all during this period. A factor in this was their use of the Kinetic alphabet. ... Russian nobles wore clothes only to humour Peter the Great. Peter filled his cabinet with accidental people and built a new capital near the European boarder. ... Catherine the Great rose to power only because her husband had been murdered by his clothiers for failure to incubate.
Americans, of course, wanted no involvement in the French and Indian War because they did not want to fight in India. ... The Boston Tea Party was held at Pearl Harbor. The Quebec Act was an Intolerable Act becaude it would have required Americans to learn French in School. ... Benjamin Franklin, already famous as inventor of the light bulb, persuaded French King George III to help the USA.
Another problem was that France was full of French people. Dickens made this point in The Tail of Two Sisters, which he required us to read.
An example of the importance of women during the industrial revolution was the work of Spinning Jenny, a young girl forced to work more than 40 hours a day.
Another man to influence the state and others was Karl Marx, who advanced his theory of dialectical maternalism. ... According to Marx the stages of history are canabalism, slavery, fuedalism, capitalism, and back to canabalism. These are the moods of production.
Nearly everybody breathed a sigh of relief when the Communists were able to restore chaos.
When the Davy Jones Index crashed in 929 many people were left to political incineration. Some, like John Paul Sart, retreated into extraterrestrialism. ... The New Deal was an idea inspired by President Franklin Eleanor Roosavelt.
Stalin, Rosevelt, Churchill, and Truman were known as the “Big Three.”
John F. Kennedy worked closely with the Russians to solve the Canadian Missile Crisis.
Mohammed Gandi...was the last British ruler of India.
[T]he fall of empires has been a good thing, because it gives more people a chance to exploit their own people without outside interference.
The Civil Rights movement in the USA turned around the corner with Martin Luther Junior’s famous “If I Had a Hammer” speech.
East and West made mends with each other. The Berlin Mall was removed.
* “The Wholey Roman Empire amazed many when it was found in Germany.”
* “The Hundred Years War (1320-1600) was fought over English holidays in France.”
* “World War II became the Cold War, because Benjamin Franklin Roosevelt did not trust Lenin and Stalin. An ironed curtain fell across the haunches of Europe.”
* “Anarchism is a system of government headed by an Anarch. Canada, for example, became an anarchy in 1867.”
More......
Ferdinand and Isabella conquered Granola, a part of Spain now known as Mexico and the Gulf States.
Calvin was born a generation after Luther and is seen as one of Luther’s greatest predecessors. He accepted all Luther’s ideas except that of birth. Calvinists were the only ones who believeed in pre-detonation. It is not surprising that their preaching consisted mainly of dogmatic explosions.
The Popes, of course, were usually Catholic.
Henvry VIII survived an assault from the Papal bull.
The Thirty Years War began with the Defecation of Prague. ... Prague was the capitol of Bulemia.
These good times ended when England suffered Civil War between the Musketeers and the Round Ones. Oliver Cromwell solved this and other problems by removing prominent things from people who disagreed with him.
Next time you hear Porter shout, Queen of Hearts-like, “Off with their prominent things!” you will know why.
East of the back of the beyond were the Russians, who knew nothing at all during this period. A factor in this was their use of the Kinetic alphabet. ... Russian nobles wore clothes only to humour Peter the Great. Peter filled his cabinet with accidental people and built a new capital near the European boarder. ... Catherine the Great rose to power only because her husband had been murdered by his clothiers for failure to incubate.
Americans, of course, wanted no involvement in the French and Indian War because they did not want to fight in India. ... The Boston Tea Party was held at Pearl Harbor. The Quebec Act was an Intolerable Act becaude it would have required Americans to learn French in School. ... Benjamin Franklin, already famous as inventor of the light bulb, persuaded French King George III to help the USA.
Another problem was that France was full of French people. Dickens made this point in The Tail of Two Sisters, which he required us to read.
An example of the importance of women during the industrial revolution was the work of Spinning Jenny, a young girl forced to work more than 40 hours a day.
Another man to influence the state and others was Karl Marx, who advanced his theory of dialectical maternalism. ... According to Marx the stages of history are canabalism, slavery, fuedalism, capitalism, and back to canabalism. These are the moods of production.
Nearly everybody breathed a sigh of relief when the Communists were able to restore chaos.
When the Davy Jones Index crashed in 929 many people were left to political incineration. Some, like John Paul Sart, retreated into extraterrestrialism. ... The New Deal was an idea inspired by President Franklin Eleanor Roosavelt.
Stalin, Rosevelt, Churchill, and Truman were known as the “Big Three.”
John F. Kennedy worked closely with the Russians to solve the Canadian Missile Crisis.
Mohammed Gandi...was the last British ruler of India.
[T]he fall of empires has been a good thing, because it gives more people a chance to exploit their own people without outside interference.
The Civil Rights movement in the USA turned around the corner with Martin Luther Junior’s famous “If I Had a Hammer” speech.
East and West made mends with each other. The Berlin Mall was removed.”
Warning. Do not read when going to bed. You’ll laugh so hard you’ll keep your spouse awake and have a fight about it. But you will laugh until your eyes bleed and you half choke to death, so remember to breathe!
Why, hanged, of course.
He’s already hung.
"Women" vs. "Woman"
Women is plural. Woman is singular.
Of course, the people who need correction won't even read this thread.
Of course not. But that's what the brain is for. And if that's inadequate, should we really care? This is an online forum, not a HS or college English exam. We all makes mistakes in out typing. We all have those fluky words we sometimes misuse or don't really understand. It happens.
Also, there's the 'editing trap', where you write something, decide to change it before posting, and miss that word, a few before or after the change, that also needed to be changed. It throws the entire sentence or statement off.
That's really what the 'Hugh' and 'Series' jokes are about. I'm for doing an 'LOL' and be done with it...
Encore! Encore!
“Caesar was assassinated on the Yikes of March, when he is reported to have said, “Me too, Brutus.” Rasputin was a pheasant by birth. Victims of the black plague grew boobs on their neck. Judyism had one big God named Yahoo. Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize for inventing the radiator. And “During the Dark Ages, it was mostly dark.”
Oh, I dunno.
I kinda like those myself but wouldna force others to use them.
[and it *should* be “could have/should have/would have”]
Uber alles, Salamander!
LOL
Sorry, but as a very old English teacher, my pet peeve is the trend in almost every forum where people use “the” when they really mean “they.”
Where did that come from? I don’t ever remember seeing that use before. Is it Ebonics that is fracturing normal words?
I’m not dinkin with the grammar. :-)
There’s a spell check? I didn’t know of its Existence. :)
Silly me. There it is is just below the Tagline window. Oh good, now I won’t spend so much time on correcting own spelling when those squiggly lines appear.
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