This word gets slaughtered.

[SpecialK]

Sumpin' of intrest, praps..

The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt

[OniFactor]

anyone ever wonder why laughter is 'laff-ter' and slaughter is 'slaw-ter' instead of 'slaff-ter'? would make things much more amusing, methinks.

[Arjay Bee]

thorough - through - trough - though - thought

The longer you look at that group the stranger they become. One letter change changes everything.

[Damn Brit]

Originally Posted by SpecialK

Sumpin' of intrest, praps..

The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt

I'm getting a sense of Deja Vu.

[nulla]

The word misspelled is often misspelt.

My worst is a usual typo where I leave off the "r" in "your"

Out of interest to add to this fine thread



Notable misspellings or misspelt words

* Cleveland, Ohio – the leader of the crew that surveyed the town's territory was Gen. Moses Cleaveland, and the region was named in his honor; reportedly the town's first newspaper could not fit the town's name in its masthead without removing the first "a" from the name.

* Cocoa – from cacao. Many foreign languages and foreigners speaking English still use "cacao".

* Google – accidental misspelling of googol. According to Google's vice president, as quoted on a BBC The Money Programme documentary, January 2006, the founders – noted for their poor spelling – registered Google as a trademark and web address before someone pointed out that it was not correct.




* Hebrides is an 18th Century misunderstanding of the classical Latin name Hebudes, where u was read ri (see Hebrides#Name)[4].

* Krakatoa – actually Krakatau in Indonesian. The origin of the spelling Krakatoa is unclear, but may have been the result of a typographical error made in a British source reporting on the massive eruption of 1883.

* Montezuma – erroneous spelling of the Aztec emperor's name, Moctezuma. The commonly used name is more easily pronounced by English speakers.

* Ovaltine, a popular bedtime drink in the UK, came about because someone misspelled the original name Ovomaltine on the trademark documentation.

* Referer – common misspelling of the word referrer. It is so common, in fact, that it made it into the official specification of HTTP – the communication protocol of the World Wide Web – and has therefore become the standard industry spelling when discussing HTTP referers.[5]


* Sequim, Washington, "In 1907, due to a Postal Official's error in reading an official report, the post office was titled 'Seguim' for approximately a month. With the next report, the Official read the letter 'g' as a 'q' and the post office here became known as 'Sequim.' The name change apparently did not worry the residents enough to protest. It has been known as Sequim ever since."[6]

* Quartzsite, a mining town in Arizona, had its name spelled incorrectly. It should be Quartzite, after the mineral quartzite.

* Zenith – Arabic zamt was misread; in Latin letters, at the time, the letter i was never dotted, so "m" looked like "ni".

[monochrome]

Originally Posted by Damn Brit

I'm getting a sense of Deja Vu.

Uh, DB, isn't it Deja Vue?

[Arjay Bee]

In reference to nulla's comments about the changing of place names by later occupiers this is rampant throughout the world by all nations and is as much about colonialistic practices and arrogance and inability to hear foreign languages accurately as it is about misspellings. Same for proper names of people both living and historical.

Bombay-Mumbai; Peking-Beijing; Japan-Jipun-Nippon; and just about every Aboriginal place name in Australia.

And furthermore there have been at least two misuses of 'your' in the 2-3 days since this thread has been running. Perhaps people just don't know the correct usage:
you're - short for 'you are' as in 'you're on the right track'
your - indicating ownership as in 'that is your lens'

"I should've known better." - Should've is the contraction of "should have" not "should of". "You should of told me" is just wrong!
Seems to me these are all mistakes made by people who tend not to read much or not to have read much in their formative years and form ideas of what words sound like rather then what they look like as their reference point when they are engaged in writing.

[gawan]

Not sure who originally wrote this, but post it here still, so funny! It has been circulating the Internet for some years now, I think:

With the implementation of the Eurodollar underway in Europe these last few years, the European Union is trying to find new ways to standardize practices in Europe.

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five year phase-in plan that would be known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of the "k". This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have 1 less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20% shorter.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be ekspekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e"s in the language is disgraseful, and they should go away.

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru! And zen world!

[Peter Zack]

That's a riot!. Somehow German won the competition!

[Peter Zack]

Reading Nulla's post is fun as wll. The word 'referrer' is quite something and a testament to the odd things about English. An 8 letter word with only 3 letters used for correct spelling.

[ryan s]

Originally Posted by nulla

* Quartzsite, a mining town in Arizona, had its name spelled incorrectly. It should be Quartzite, after the mineral quartzite.

My grandparents actually used to live there. We went down a few times and, in fact, it does have the S officially in the name.

We have magnets on the fridge given to us by the town's historiographer, which were misspelled "Quartzite"



That EU paragraph posted is so true. German isn't that difficult to read since there are no weird sounds like soft Cs or random silent Es. If you see a letter, you pronounce it

[Edvinas]

Originally Posted by Peter Zack

That's a riot!. Somehow German won the competition!

Lithuanians also would be very happy with the spelling of Euro-English We write words as we hear them and all this spelling madness drives us crazy!

BTW, should I write LENS or LENSE?

p.s. anyone can tell my why in some cases G is pronounced as J and in some cases as G. C sometimes as S and sometimes as K. And so on and so on

[J.Scott]

Originally Posted by CycloneBandDad

pet peeve word: "nukuhlar" - which gets a "dammit the word is NUCLEAR!" response from me

My own most common mistake: "teh"

And then there are all those silly folks putting extra "u"s into words - stuff like colour, harbour, labour, you get the idea

Jim (grins, ducks, & runs for cover)

As one of the "silly folks" that puts the "u" in the words you mentioned I have to say that that is not a case of misspelling but rather regional and geographical variances. You'll find that Canadians and folks from the UK spell using the 'u'. We are not unintentionally spelling the words incorrectly but rather spelling them the way it was drilled into our skulls in school. I recall with vivid clarity being strapped on the hands several times by a witch of a teacher for failing to spell properly. I dare not omit a 'u' for fear the ghost of 'Old Lady MacRae' rises up from the grave with her black leather strap and smite me down yet again.

[Peter Zack]

This is an area I do take note of all the time. English came from a mix of several languages in England and the added U (or should I say that some drop the U) as well as a few other things that have been changed or dropped in North America has always gotten under my skin. I know a language evolves and changes over time, new words get added (to Google is now a verb), meanings change (gay used mean 'happy'). But the spelling of old words doesn't need to change.

Then there's the mispronounced "Z". It's ZED btw. The letter's origin is from the French and that's the way it's always been said there as well, for longer than we've spoken modern English.

I feel the flames coming...

[ryan s]

English has changed since its roots, through the Middle Ages, up to "modern" English.

In linguistics class, we tried to read an early English paragraph as it was originally written. Might as well have been Russian

Stopping changes in language would be like telling the clouds to hold their rain...

Oh and even the Germans (gasp!) had a spelling reform a couple years ago