146 replies to this topic

[avident]

Let your anger out here and make that difference you so strongly yearn for. We all misspell some words, so it's good for us (bearing in mind our English marks) to finally learn to spell them correctly. And if anyone writes the words previously corrected wrong ever again under this topic, that someone is a dead man. Haha!

Allow me to start:

Definitely. No, not deffanetly nor deffinately, nor defanitely nor any of the million other variations out there - just simply definitely. It's so widely used everyone should learn to spell it correctly, don't you agree? ''Definitely'', you should answer.

Your turn. Go ahead, viva la language revolucion!

[Vvi]

Excited. It's not spelt 'exited'. 'I'm so exited' means what exactly? That you want to leave?

People who mix 'your' and 'you're' up. Basic grammar goes a long way.

I always spell 'surprise' and 'separate' wrong btw. 'Suprise' and 'seperate' don't exist.

[Hyperbole]

Existence is my primary annoyance. There is no a in it!

Also exercise (my French teacher couldn't find this in the dictionary; it took me a while to figure out she was looking at "excercise" instead), perceive (I spent ages in an English mock last year trying to figure out what order the e and the i are in!), effect vs. affect, ect for etc. Et cetera.

Also, when people write "and etc." drives me up the wall: ARGH tautologies, redundancies and pleonasms!

Edited by Hyperbole, Mar 04, 2009 - 21:18.

[Ruan Chun Xian]

Then and than. I die a little when someone writes "A is better then B".
Than is the comparison word
Then means 'subsequently', as in 'I had breakfast then I went to school'.

My bloody NAME! It's four letters, it's really not that hard. What happened to 'i before e except after c'? They spelt it wrong on my freaking Student ID card and I had to go ask for it changed when clearly it was spelt right on the student database.

[Mr. Shiver]

Effect/affect is pretty annoying, yeah.

[Hamtaroo]

Lol, I hate using affect/effect, I can never get it right.
I absolutely cannot ever spell WEIRD correctly, I ALWAYS spell it wierd.
But I hate it when people mix up its and it's. It still happens in my classes.

[Ruan Chun Xian]

Affect/effect
http://web.ku.edu/~edit/affect.html

The sad truth is that you can't speak English properly unless you can tell these apart: it's/its, you're/your, they're/their/there. I don't care if you've been speaking English all your life. Your English sucks otherwise.

[Rawrn3ss]

"Receive"... and other various such words

I never properly learned the "i before e" rule in school... ):

[emmieevans]

Ruan Chun Xian, on Mar 4 2009, 02:36 PM, said:

Then and than. I die a little when someone writes "A is better then B".
Than is the comparison word
Then means 'subsequently', as in 'I had breakfast then I went to school'.

My bloody NAME! It's four letters, it's really not that hard. What happened to 'i before e except after c'? They spelt it wrong on my freaking Student ID card and I had to go ask for it changed when clearly it was spelt right on the student database.

SAME HERE.
ugh.
its soooooo annoying! and my name is the easiest thing ever: Emilie
okay if you spell it Emily, thats understandable....but PLEASE when people come up with things like Emellie or Emmaly its gets frustrating.
Its one of the easiest names out there!!!

[LinuxBeta]

Do proper nous count as 'commonly misspelled words', or are we making a generalization here based on personal experience. Sure, names in general probably get misspelled pretty often, but one person's name is probably not misspelled as often as some of these. One thing that really annoys me is the use of the double superlative ie/ more better or bestest (unless someone is trying to be cute...or that someone is a cat). It's not even the irregular ones like 'good'...but it's the simple ones too that people screw up on, like more faster. When you grow up with English as your first language, you should NOT be making these mistakes.

[Irene]

LinuxBeta, on Mar 4 2009, 10:17 PM, said:

Do proper nous count as 'commonly misspelled words', or are we making a generalization here based on personal experience. Sure, names in general probably get misspelled pretty often, but one person's name is probably not misspelled as often as some of these. One thing that really annoys me is the use of the double superlative ie/ more better or bestest (unless someone is trying to be cute...or that someone is a cat). It's not even the irregular ones like 'good'...but it's the simple ones too that people screw up on, like more faster. When you grow up with English as your first language, you should NOT be making these mistakes.

I've said 'more stupider' before...

[DeStijl]

Two words: "should of".  Gosh almighty.  It's "should HAVE".  Have.  HAAAAVE.

*deep breaths*  Yeah.  There's certainly more that bother me to no end, but I find this one to be by FAR the most aggravating of grammatical errors.

[Mahuta ♥]

Receive...its funny..i used to NEVER spell it correctly.
Weird: same
exercise: always see it as excercise
and yeah the of and have thingie: would HAVE. lol..you're right there.
oh my god, expect have always spelt it excpect and seen people spell it that way

Edited by Ruan Chun Xian, Mar 05, 2009 - 19:33.
*receive, Maha, not recieve.*

[Chelleee]

pronunciation
pro-nun-ci-a-tion
ITS NOT pro-noun-ci-a-tion
THERES NO 'O'!!!
SO DON'T SAY IT WITH AN 'O' AND THEN SPELL IT WITH AN 'O'

*breathes.

[avident]

I can't take this new fad where the phrase ''All right'' is shortened into the form ''Alright''. I guess it's accepted in spoken language, but I've noticed many have started to use it in proper writing, as well. Saw it on MTV the other day, sigh.

Another thing I saw on MTV, was that they wrote ''for awhile'' instead of the correct ''for a while''. Yes, it's allowed to write awhile as one word, but only if it's not the object of a preposition such as ''for''.

[Vvi]

A lot. It's not 'alot'. And 'allot' is another word altogether.

[Capa]

Practise/Practice - drives me mad!!!

[avident]

Capa, what do you mean? In American English the word ''practice'' is always written with a C, but in British English it varies.

[Hyperbole]

avident, on Mar 5 2009, 07:46 PM, said:

I can't take this new fad where the phrase ''All right'' is shortened into the form ''Alright''. I guess it's accepted in spoken language, but I've noticed many have started to use it in proper writing, as well. Saw it on MTV the other day, sigh.

Another thing I saw on MTV, was that they wrote ''for awhile'' instead of the correct ''for a while''. Yes, it's allowed to write awhile as one word, but only if it's not the object of a preposition such as ''for''.

Word on "all right"! So much. But "awhile" is an adverb, whereas "while" is a noun. So there are very specific cases where you use either; it's not as bendable as you describe it.

Capa, on Mar 5 2009, 10:12 PM, said:

Practise/Practice - drives me mad!!!

In British English "practise" with an s is simply the verb form, while "practice" with a c is the noun. So unless people are missing that point, it's not much to be annoyed about? (Personally, I find it more annoying that American English uses only the c version.)

[avident]

Hyperbole, what do you mean? A while is a noun and means a short time. So if you have for or only before a while, you should use this version as it would then be ''for a short time'' or ''only a short time.'' Awhile, on the other hand, is an adverb meaning for a short time and thus you could not use it after prepositions as that would create an incorrect sentence such as ''for for a short time.'' Instead, you would need to use for example the phrase ''I slept awhile longer.''

So:

I slept for a while longer.
I slept awhile longer.


I rest my case.