Bad spelling

When I was in college there was a woman who worked in the library, and she pronounced it "liberry" -- really. ld:

janeray1940 said:

Oh, I believe it. In the early 1980s I worked as a typesetter* ...

*Oh gosh. Do people even know what a typesetter was?! Am I really that old?!

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Girl I lived with in the late '70's/early 80's was a photo-typesetter. Her party trick was to be able to read the punched paper tape that the keyboards produced, spot any typing errors and correct them manually!

I fixed the machines, but I could never read the tape!

bunnyf said:

.....My pet peeve is when folks don't learn how to properly spell something that is a prominent part of their lives. One should learned how to spell what they do for a living ("trukdriver") or what they sell ("ukaleles").

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Prominent indeed. I keep telling my wive I need to spell better

JohnM2001 said:

Prominent indeed. I keep telling my wive I need to spell better

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I wonder if you forgot the "s" on the end of "wives" John.

Fun with Dutch spelling!

Incidentally, in Spanish and Dutch all dictionaries point to 'ukelele' as the correct form, regardless of what musicians in those languages prefer.

When I saw this I thought it was an intentional clever play on words - Ukulele crossed with Doolally.

Maybe it was!

Rllink said:

This one was at a festival I attended last fall.

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Built for players, by players.

Not linguists.

Looks like the Chinese to English Spellcheck has a glitch.

Jim Yates said:

I wonder if you forgot the "s" on the end of "wives" John.

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Heck no, I've got all I can handle with one, or as some of my divorced friends say, I'm still on my "practice marriage" ��

I just read, "Most people could care less how your uke sounds," in another thread. This always makes me wince. It means almost nothing.
If you care passionately about something, then you obviously "could care less," but if you care just a little bit, you could also still care less. The only thing "could care less" tells us is that you do care.
If you don't care at all, you "couldn't care less".

There was a warning billboard on the side of Highway 115 in Southern Ontario that pictured a police officer pointing his finger at us. The caption read, "Drink, your fine. Drink and drive, your mine!" I often drove by this sign and winced every time I read it.
Generally I don't approve of vandalism, but it made me smile when, after years of driving by that sign, I saw the apostrophes and "e"s added in black paint to each "your".

Couldn't agree more Jim, it's always ''couldn't care less'' for me. I worked for about ten years in print media. One of the more important team members was always the Proof reader, a job that seems to have gone by the wayside these days. Well remember one article he corrected, about Marilyn Monroe spelled Mariline Munro. I notice you are an Ontarian? (is that a word?) Does your spelling follow English English or American English?

I am a terrible speller. Yet I was a copywriter for years. My degree was a BFA in Graphic Design/Communications. Which explains why I catch more spelling errors because a word doesn't look right to me than because I know the spelling is wrong.

Spell checker has been critical for me, but my spelling has gotten worse because of it. I depend on it. And, as a result, I don't look up the correct spelling as often as I used to.

I used to work with type setters a lot. Funny how the type setting we wouldn't accept from a professional, we think is fine when we do it ourselves on a computer.

One of my favorites was a solo guitarist playing at a restaurant. His tip jar had a label that said: "Tips Excepted".
My wife had to hold me down from explaining to him that what he wrote was the opposite of what he wanted to say.

And of course there is the use of "literally" in the vernacular that has come to mean "figuratively". So we have no idea what the person actually means.

Wooley Bear said:

Couldn't agree more Jim, it's always ''couldn't care less'' for me. I worked for about ten years in print media. One of the more important team members was always the Proof reader, a job that seems to have gone by the wayside these days. Well remember one article he corrected, about Marilyn Monroe spelled Mariline Munro. I notice you are an Ontarian? (is that a word?) Does your spelling follow English English or American English?

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I expect I use a little of both Wooly Bear, but I probably tend towards the English spelling which is what was taught in Canuck schools when I was attending and what I taught during my teaching years. It's still "colour" and "honour" and "neighbour"... I usually use "surprising", but have been known to use "surprizing" just to get rid of that squiggly red line. I'd rather use "Cheque" than "check" or "centre", "fibre", "litre", "theatre"... than "center"...
I use the "practice" as a noun, but "practise" as a verb. I also spell "leukemia" and "maneuver" the British (Canadian) way.
I will never use "aluminium" though. I, and most, if not all Canadians use the American/Canadian "aluminum" spelling. I usually add an extra "L" before a suffix in words ending in "L"; so it's "travelling", not "traveling".

I have no trouble reading and understanding American English and don't consider it "bad spelling", just "different".

And while I still pronounce "Z" as "zed", I've been known to say both "Zee Zee Top" and "Zed Zed Top".

Nickie said:

Ha ha, that's a good one, Rollie!

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Maybe you just think it is bad spelling. It could really be the the "Ucalaly" room.

Rllink said:

This one was at a festival I attended last fall.

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Are you sure it was a spelling error?

I use ukutuner web site every day.

Studies have shown that you can drp ltrs from wrds and people have no problem reading them. And will swear that they looked fine to them.

A favorite book is: "Eats, Shoots and Leaves"* by Lynne Truss. It humorously talks about punctuation and the confusion it can cause.

Oh well, we won't have to fret about it. Emojis don't use punctuation. Or do they?

*The title references a newspaper article about Panda Bears.

Spelling, at the end of the day it’s all about successful - or not - communication. My own schooling was abysmal and spelling has never been my strong point, indeed my lack of spelling strength was effectively used to unnecessarily hold my job and career prospects back. Fortunately technology came to my rescue and via word processing it’s harder - but not impossible - to fall foul of the spelling ‘Police’. Over the decades reading has helped improve my English and so has writing, I also went to evening classes and gained a basic but important English Language qualification.

As I said above my schooling was abysmal, but things could have been worse. A lovely old Lady I know (via my Uke Club) told me that as a child she was literally beaten by her School Teachers because her spelling was poor, in later life she learnt that she was dyslexic. School Teachers, I’ve met some who were wonderful people, I’ve met some who were incapable of teaching and I’ve met some - too many - who were not suitable people to be in-charge of children.

‘Your’ when it should be ‘you’re’ and ‘there’ when it should be ‘their’ are easy enough mistakes to make when you’re someone who has had a poor educational experience or are simply someone who’s intellectually disabled - which to a greater or lesser extent a surprisingly large percentage of people are and they are not necessarily dim witted people either. Is spelling really that important? Sometimes it can significantly alter the meaning of something (so do try to get things right whenever you can), but I mostly find that the intended meaning is conveyed despite incorrect spelling.

What kills me is "could of" when what is meant "could have", as in "I could have learned more, but I was too lazy" and also the incessant use of the word "anyways" to transition a conversation.

Whenever I hear "anyways" or read "could of" it make me cringe.

Then I try to remember that of course, I am not perfect (nor claim to me), and that I should not focus on such mistakes, and try to distract myself with some other thought or activity.

Sometimes it is very hard to let go of the cringe feeling.