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One does run across them in one’s reading. I’m particularly fond of phonetic near-misses.
For a while, I was adding new-found specimens to the collection in item #4, “Author is on bad terms with the Muse of Language,” in Slushkiller’s list of reasons for rejection: hare’s breath escape, plaintiff melody, causal/casual, clamoured to his feet, a shutter went through her body, his body went ridged, empirical storm troopers, ex-patriot Englishmen, et cetera; but there came to be too many of them, so now I just keep a list:
I’m loathed to do it
spurn him to greater effort
have the since to come in out of the rain
steak tar-tar
passed history not with standing
kids-our-us
the illusive details
malice of forethought
pre-imminent expert
he was the hunter, and she his query
he was too forgone to hear him
fox paws
And, from the comment thread:
What puzzles me is how many of the words and phrases are uncommon in spoken English, and thus were probably picked up from reading, where the readers would have seen the correct forms. I can only hypothesize that their ears remember better than their eyes do.it’s a doggy-dog world (Maud)
their cloaks bellowed behind them (Renee)
for all intensive purposes (Tara)
Wallah! (TexAnne)
Viola! (TexAnne)
reign in one’s enthusiasm (Lizzy Lynn)
treat this client with kit gloves (Paula Helm Murray)
baited breath (Chryss)
pealing paint (Dirty Davey)
on the lamb (Deborah Roggie)
speak my peace (ksgreer)
she balled her eyes out (Mris)
the succession to the thrown (Pedantic Peasant)
two sense worth (Lloyd Burchill)
Earth fell under the alien yolk (Lisa Goldstein)
he had the patients of an angle (Lisa Goldstein)
the point is mute (Mike Jones)
to wreck havoc (Renee)
would that be exceptable? (Janet Croft)
a Flamingo dress, as worn by a Flamingo dancer (Linda Fox)
what the hay (Renee)
to hit the hey (Renee)
he brooched the subject (Emma)
she wore his broach proudly (Emma)
yay, verily (Owlmirror)
I’m siked about that test (Owlmirror)
he poured over the textbooks for hours (Robert Legault)
just desserts (Scraps)
he put his hands around her waste (Mrs. TD)
Post-Dramatic Stress Disorder (Ariella)
that medieval system of government … called Futilism (Ariella)
rabid typist (Harry Connolly)
Democracy has been running rapid in the Middle East (Fragano Ledgister)
low and behold (Writerious)
she galloped passed (Writerious)
nauseous/nauseated (Writerious)
it peaked/peeked his curiosity (Writerious)
they stood in a cue (Writerious)
“Bare with me,” said the stripper. (Writerious)
they excepted his application (Writerious)
he makes boo-koo bucks (Writerious)
I’ll have it for you toot sweet (Writerious)
don’t rein in my parade (Xopher)
this has lead to … (Xopher)
forward (as in part of a book’s frontmatter) (Kate Nepveu)
misquote spray* (Ann Rose)
broad soldiers (Ann Rose)
peachy king (Ann Rose)
the automobile’s breaks (—E)
taught muscles (Aquila)
writhing under his administrations (Myles Corcoran)
faze/phase (Jen Roth)
wreckless driving (Jen Wroth)
serendipitous/surreptitious (Miriam Beetle)
in intimate danger (Miriam Beetle)
Cleopatra memorised the Roman men (Candle)
Pompey and Crassus sited their views in public (Candle)
the first Roman sea exhibition outside the Mediterranean (Candle)
Suetonius’ Life of the Defiled Julius (Candle)
compose/comprise (Mike Ford)
he gave her organism after organism (galley slave)
Why are you her? (Vicki)
stay within earshout (Melissa Mead)
enormity/enormousness (Scraps)
fortuitous/fortunate (Scraps)
composer/compositor (TNH)
marquis candidate (Julia, quoting TBogg)
the human gnome project (ley)
straight-laced (The Grauniad)
the literary cannon (Aquila)
hair-brained (mk)
struck a cord (mk)
the judicial and penile system (Tom Recht)
cup of chino (Steve Taylor)
Straights of Hormuz (John M. Ford)
straight-jacket (John M. Ford)
Tor Nay Does (John M. Ford)
Surtsey was formed by undersea fishers (Sharon Mock)
Don’t tell Jane—shed freak. (Renee)
hammy downs (Kate)
back round (Kate)
poke-a-dotted (Kate)
prime Madonna (Kate)
one nation in a dirigible (Serge)
conscious/conscience (TNH)
dually elected (Candle)
the underlining principles (Dana)
quaffed hair (A. J. Luxton)
since time in memorial (Michael Croft)
they think they’re such a laugh ride (Kip W.)
rain of terror (Zingerella)
self-depreciating (TNH)
prehensile tissue (referring to nipples) (Sarah S)
climatic battle (NelC)
flaunted/flouted (Lori Coulson)
vice grips (Claire)
enclosed is a synapse plus three chapters… (BetsyB)
beckon call (pb)
they went out shooting peasants* (Xopher)
gantlet/gauntlet (Ledasmom)
cavalry/Calvary (Ledasmom)
discreet/discrete (Jerry Kindall)
founder/flounder (Marilee)
a right of passage (Clark E Myers)
extracting vengeance on him (TNH)
he gave a look of otter confusion (miwahni)
the body cannot with stain, what the mind does not understand (Fragano Ledgister)
take stalk of (Sara)
sewing her wild oats (Lisa Goldstein)
dragging his heals like a child (Sharon Mock)
teachers, formally enthusiastic about their subject… (Dave Luckett)
rod iron (Ulrika)
in tact (Ulrika)
last vestibules of fun and merriment (Fragano Ledgister)
it is a tenant among evangelical Christians (David Goldfarb)
Symphony in A Flat (Jasper Milvain)
gradually the spirit solidified into corporal form (Eleanor)
I had the bad luck to see this autrocity (TNH)
our hospital was in the mist of a project (Bill Burns)
a fine tooth-comb (Ajay)
mid-evil style jewelry (Maximus)
music played on queue (Maximus)
I can’t be asked to do that (UK) (Eleanor)
low-and-behold (Mary Aileen Buss)
rot iron (Glen Fisher)
thirty yacht six (Greg London)
he couldn’t believe how well she was fairing (TNH)
she was fiberglasted (Suzanne)
it doesn’t pass mustard (L.B. Lidsky)
taking the United States as a hole (Eric Nelson)
she was still milling over it (TNH)
wholistic approach (Susan)
on tenderhooks (abi)
a whole nother thing (Xopher)
I was apart of the group (rm)
the Klux Klutz Klan (rm)
pneumonic/pneumatic device (i.e., an aid to memory) (rm)
a grizzly crime (Cassandra)
it exuberates the problem (Steve Taylor)
boil a cup of rice and through in some saffron (jennie)
“I don’t like it a bit,” he grossed. (TNH)
how do we diffuse the bomb? (TNH)
stars in the fundament of our genre (Dave Langford)
it played on my mind (TNH)
democracy is running rabid in the Middle East (0qwerty0)
died-in-the-wool (yucca)
photogenic memory (avva)
he washed the ruminants of sorrow from her face (TNH)
the experience had wizened him to the ways of the world (TNH)
he was sword to protect them (A. J. Luxton)
a bellweather borough (Fragano Ledgister)
seeing her naked was a peek experience (nalo)
she’s a teatotaller (nalo)
bubble bees are not aerodynamically equipped to fly (elise)
don’t scratch it, you’ll only excoriate the problem (Joanne)
your gentile organs (elise)
pornographic memory (P J Evans)
moral/morale (P J Evans)
knit one, pearl two (Melissa Mead)
wring the changes (Lisa Goldstein)
scolding hot water (Xopher)
bearfooted Carmelites (pip)
biopsy/biography (Karen Funk Blocher)
public sediments on the issue (Xopher)
a regiment of diet and exercise (Lisa Goldstein)
people had to live on their own reconnaissance (Fragano Ledgister)
the voting ballads where unreliable and contained falsies (Fragano Ledgister)
hand’s on training (rm)
safe confinds (rm)
randomality (rm)
fender binders (rm)
a three-foot ring tale diamondback rattlesnake (P J Evans)
Seattle Odyssey is an incredulous journey… (TNH)
the Dodge of Venice (TNH)
the Republicans are a shoe-in (thank you, Raw Data)
farbeit for me to refuse… (TNH)
cast a pallor over the occasion (TNH)
malice of forethought (Dave Langford)
his necktie was slightly eschew (TNH)
muttering explicatives under his breath (TNH)
descention in the ranks (TNH)
they put out a want for his arrest (TNH)
with all the strappings of state (TNH)
surviving the eminent holocaust (dagny)
do un to others as you would have them do un to you (David King)
KU Med. Center Defends Its Brain-Dead Tests (Paula Helm Murray)
declare it a federal disaster (Fragano Ledgister)
embroidered in battle (Jing Mei)
he slashed cream across her new dress (Jing Mei)
the girl’s new outfit was electrical (Jing Mei)
he wants to ring the author’s neck (Deborah Roggie)
it’s like an Alcatraz around my neck (Scraps)
he is not aloud to say a word (Xopher)
an outer body experience (Xopher)
“succame”, past tense of “succumb” (Erik Nelson)
annunciating each word clearly (TNH)
the total annihilation of all assistance (TNH)
snuff said (Alex Halavais)
the gapping whole their departure left in the group (TNH)
piss pour timing (TNH)
he was weekend by the loss of blood (TNH)
psycho tropical drugs (TNH)
cow towing to the powers that be (TNH)
root tail quartz (also: retaliated quartz)(TNH)
they chorused their ascent to the question (TNH)
he took a skewered view of things (TNH)
The Magesterian gives the Pope teaching authority. (TNH)
in a fracture of a second; he leaned forward a fracture of an inch (TNH)
if he ever wizened up to what you’ve been doing (TNH)
nothing in this world is real; it’s just an illustration (TNH)
the surgery was much more evasive than I expected (TNH)
at a more desecrate distance, he followed her in (TNH)
how dare they try and sensor him? (TNH)
face-to-face with the nozzle of a gun (TNH)
a none disclosure agreement (TNH)
looking a bit worse for the wearer (TNH)
standing in the face in danger (TNH)
the two of you have been playing at a crossroads (TNH)
apples to apples, dust to dust (TNH)
we could just let the robots fight the war on our behalves (TNH)
loud scream of furry (TNH)
He’s diluted if he thinks that! (TNH)
That jives with most of the commentary I’ve heard. (TNH)
quote un quote (Kyle Armbruster)
I don’t want to sound like a no-it-all, but … (TNH)
trying to illicit sympathy (TNH)
that’s mox nix (Om)
I’d dishone you (TNH)
the project whithered on the vine (TNH)
it’s just here-say (TNH)
This specimen was deposited by glaziers on the Holderness Coast. (TNH)
Addenda: Michael gives us “Similar-Sounding Cousins: A Comedy of Manors”
Earnest is an ex-patriot Englishman, escaping from his sorted passed in New York. Jack is his wealthy American cousin (a reel blew bloodied type, to the manner borne). When Earnest looses his job righting insincere rejection letters for TOR Books, he moves in with Jack in his stately sub urban home.Hijinks insue.
We had practically simultaneous posts from Sarah Sabine, Naomi Parkhurst, and Grant Barret, explaining that over at Language Log these are known as “eggcorns,” and that there’s a database devoted to them. I recommend it. A sampling:
trite and true, ad homonym, eurologist, scarlet teenager (a bird), lazy fare, lack toast and intolerant, from the gecko, go at it hammer and thongs, pigment of the imagination, Cadillac converter, bumpetta-bumpetta, outer body experience, whoa is me, pre-madonna, Southern brawl, fair to midland, don’t know buttkiss, a posable thumb, she got her ten-year at the university, in lame man’s terms, eggtopic pregnancy, come to not, pigment of the imagination, get one’s gander up, like a bowl in a china shop, at lagerheads, Hobbesian choice, put the cat before the horse, cut to the cheese, cyberstocking, pier-to-pier network, post-pardon depression, nip in the butt, by enlarge, and what in the sand hill were you thinking?
Finally, GLD gave us an unnerving specimen collected in the wild (i.e., a church bulletin):
[A]s the priest preyed over the elements on the alter, they were altared into the real presents of the devine.
Addendum: The reason the main list ends with a long string of examples credited to me is that I’ve continued to add new specimens I’ve collected in the wild. —TNH, March 07
Or it could just be homonym replacement when typing. I know I'm very prone to it.
he was the hunter, and she his query
ROTFLMAO!
This gives a whole new imagery to query letters.
Woot!
One of my former law school professors recalled a student handing in an essay test answer that included the line, "It's a Doggy-Dog world."
The professor didn't count this observation against the student, though. "After all," she said, "it *is* a Doggy-Dog world."
Then she sighed and took another sip of her drink.
From one of my fellow members of the local writing group:
"Their cloaks bellowed behind them."
Given a strong enough wind, that might happen....
At the top of my list is the ever-popular:
"for all intensive purposes"
"Wallah!" in tones of triumph. Or "Viola," ditto. This led to my current favorite, "VYE-OH-LAH!" But she'd just finished her first sock, so I forgave her.
I suspect that many of these are caused by spell-checkers-gone-horribly-wrong.
The phrase which always makes me wince is "very unique".
(Which I realise is not a phonetic near-miss; I just had to vent.)
One I have started to see more often: "reign" for "rein", as in "reign in one's enthusiasm." (I never see "rain" in the same spot, however. Interesting.)
These kinds of phrases are a huge source of amusement to the linguistics & language blogging communities. They're usually called "eggcorns" - a common near-miss for "acorn". There's now a database with a short history included. Endless linguisticky fun!
Actually, I kind of like the sound of "empirical storm troopers." We could use some butt-kicking fact-checkers like them if we ever hope to expand the borders of the reality-based community.
I suspect some of these (passed history not with standing, the illusive details) fall into the category of what the folks over at Language Log call "eggcorns". You might enjoy the Eggcorn Database.
Sorry! Forgot to check if someone else had posted the same thing while I was typing mine up.
Some of these qualify as eggcorns. That database is a think of beauty.
(spelling intended!)
Can I put in a vote for "forward," used as a heading for the bit in the front of a book? Published books, by major presses?
Gah.
"Who told you you're allowed to rein in my parade?"
This actually led to a pretty good pun when Diana Ross's concert in Central Park was rained out. She told everybody she was going to have to stop, and to please leave the park in an orderly fashion, but she kept singing while they did. Getting soaked the while. The Post, which I normally hate, headlined the story as "Diana Rains Supreme." Now that's just brilliant.
I'm driven crazy by the little common ones, like "This has lead to..."
I so want someone to write me a story titled:
"he was the hunter, and she his query"
It makes me giggle every time I read it.
JK
When I just started out, I made few of those typoes. The more I write, the more frequently I see them.
My most common is inserting "eyes" instead of "eye". I honestly cannot get rid of it. At least I'm not the only one - for awhile there the misspelling of idiot as didot was so common, didot actually became a slang word among OWW writers :)
When I started where I work now, they had advice to "treat this client with kit gloves..." ARGH. It was even put into our project outlines.
And the Kansas City Star can be counted on to use the wrong homonym almost every time they use one. (hair, hare, heir; there, their; etc.). When she retired, my mother-in-law, took it upon herself to write correction letters to them. Good hobby, it isn't helping.
One can never have too much support for Language Log or the Eggcorn Database! I think my favorite eggcorns are the ones that, to modern speakers, make *more* sense than the originals. While mistakes like these can be annoying, some of them make me marvel at the flexibility of our language. For example, "deep-seeded" for "deep-seated":
And in terms of the current ordinary-language meaning of the words involved, “deep-seeded ignorance” makes sense, while “deep-seated ignorance” doesn’t. Ignorance can be planted deep and thus have deep metaphorical roots, but deep-seated ignorance would have to be ignorance cut with a lot of room in the crotch, or maybe ignorance sitting in a badly-designed armchair. - Mark Liberman, of Language Log
Add 'tow the line' to the list (unless someone's pulling the rope around).
Oh, I pulled one of these my first year in college. My sin? "Baited breath."
When the mistake was pointed out to me, I wanted to die. Fortunately I got over it enough to laugh hysterically.
Oh, I could give you a whole lot more:
She galloped passed his manor.
The arrival of a somnambulist peaked/peeked his curiosity.
The mummies stood in a cue.
"Bare with me," said the stripper.
"I should of brought my trebuchet," Melvin said.
"I should never have excepted his application as viceroy," Bitsy mused.
And not that I expect everyone to spell perfectly in French, but:
Vlad makes boo-koo bucks.
I'll fetch your arsenic toot-sweet.
I also get testy about the confusion between affect and effect (since I teach science, this comes up a lot), or the misuse of nauseous (which means "to induce nausea") and nauseated. So if you say, "I'm nauseous," (meaning "I induce nausea") expect me to give you a funny look and to slowly back away.
More good 'uns on my site here:
Self Editing
Oh, and we must not forget the ever-popular, "low and behold."
"Copywritten." Although, for some reason, I hardly ever see "copywrite."
I suspect this will happen moor and moor off in as speech recognition softwear seize wider usage.
James wrote: I suspect that many of these are caused by spell-checkers-gone-horribly-wrong.
Reminds me the time I wrote a response to a yearly review and my spell-checker asked about my manager's name whether it should be replaced by valuator or violator.
Oh, I don't know, Tim. There are people who write copy. Aren't they copywriters? And isn't their finished product copywritten when they're done? I mean, like, "I have that ad all designed and copywritten; now we just need the artwork."
Yes, I'm kidding.
Writerious, I'm pretty sure the boat has sailed on 'nauseous', much as I sympathize.
Chryss, I learned that one before I learned what the expression meant. I had a joke book containing the line "the cat ate cheese and waited beside the mousehole with baited breath." By the time I figured out why that was funny, I was pretty much vaccinated against that particular error.
plaintiff melody
This sounds like something from Trial by Jury.
Reading the paper last week I saw a bit about the "pealing paint" in downtown Chapel Hill.
Fragano - Or a leitmotif from any civil-law movie.
My favorite was on the evening news. The story was about a prison escape, and the graphic over the newscaster's shoulder showed bars and the phrase, "ON THE LAMB."
I kid you not.
The following come from student essays:
It is incontinent to vote.
Love is something everyone indores.
The ration desires for knowledge and national eros.
Democracy has been running rapid in the Middle East over the past fifty years.
African Americans fall at the button of this category too.
Everyone won’t to live comfortable.
plaintiff melody - a musical by Busby Berkley...
Xopher: You're right.
Dirty Davey: The editor should have had his neck (w)rung.
I still find myself typing speak my peace, despite having been corrected many times now that it's piece.
Then again, I have family in Mississippi; no matter how much I get told otherwise, my fingers automatically type it mischevious — because there IS an extra vowel in there if you were raised on the Gulf Coast. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
The one that makes me shriek is when people proclaim that they balled their eyes out. That's not an image I wanted, whether it's with a melon-baller or in a more off-color sense. "My grandfather died, and I balled my eyes out." Well, we each deal with grief in personal ways, I suppose....
Similar-Sounding Cousins: A Comedy of Manors
Earnest is an ex-patriot Englishman, escaping from his sorted passed in New York. Jack is his wealthy American cousin (a reel blew bloodied type, to the manner bourne). When Earnest looses his job righting insincere rejection letters for TOR Books, he moves in with Jack in his stately sub urban home.
Hijinks insue.
I teach senior English in High School, the usual BritLit assortment, but with a focus on tying it all together with the history and sociology of the time. While it is shocking the number of these "near-misses" that show up, I'm convinced that, as James D. Macdonald mentioned at the beginning, these are spell-check related.
Unfortunately, I feel it's not "gone wrong" but "gone away". The prevailing attitude among my students (especially coming in) is that it doesn't matter, 'cause spell check fixes everything. So none of them even try to remember.
What I have found particularly horrifying in papers all through this year is the substitution of "thrown" for "throne". As in, "Hamlet reflects the uncertainty about the succession to the thrown." Or "The Victorian era is named after Queen Victoria, who sat on the thrown throughout this period."
These give a whole new perspective to the old "I trust him about as far as I can throw him", but are not words I'd have expected 'easily confused'.
I'll just add my two sense worth.
Frequent reader, new poster here... and I can't quite belive I'm piping up to disagree with JMD and other honored regulars here, but I just don't see how these can be spellcheck mistakes. If you choose the wrong homonym, it's still a valid word... thrown/throne, shuttered/shuddered, etc. The ony way the spellchecker can be blamed is if the author had a near-miss typo for the wrong word in the first place. (The one exception is prostate/prostrate; the former is mysteriously absent from most software dictionaries.)
It's neat for me to see you professional writerly-type-people enjoying these eggcorns (and thanks! I hadn't known of that site either), because from my POV as a complete amateur, they're really wince-worthy. I read a lot of fanfiction (hey, it's free) and homonym abuse is everywhere, even in stories that are otherwise pretty good. I've tried puzzling out the reason, but I think Theresa has the likeliest idea... those of us who grew up with arual saturation from TV/radio just remember sounds with more clarity than words. I know I find that snippets of songs can bring up memories just as powerfully as certain smells.
'Eggcorns' is a new one on me.
Aren't these also malapropisms?
I see these while proofreading all the time. My favorite so far is "Earth fell under the alien yolk" -- well, no, not unless the aliens are birds, as I wrote in the margin. Second favorite -- "He had the patients of an angle" -- though this had to be the result of too much reliance on spellcheckers.
And what's with "because" spelled "becuase"? I've even encountered in professional publications! Why doesn't spell check pick up that one? Or does it and people override it?
(yes, pet peeve; for some reason it grates on my nerves!)
Spellcheck only knows if it's a real word. It can't tell which one was intended if there are multiple possibilities. If the user doesn't know which one is correct, they'll probably pick the first one (or the one they think is right), even if it turns out later to be wrong.
I still find myself typing speak my peace, despite having been corrected many times now that it's piece.
Well, this gets into another kind of confusion with English usage, but could that be influenced by the fact that you "hold your peace" when you've decided not to "speak your piece"?
The "reign" for "rein" one drives me up a tree.
Another one I see all the time that makes me want to kill things is "diety". As in, "Artemis is the diety of the hunt."
THAT'S NOT EVEN A WORD, GENIUS. *sporksporkspork*
First off, I love Making Light. Thank you!
This is from the U.K. Guardian paper this morning:
Imagine how many more copies Jane Eyre might have sold in its first run if Brontë's publishers had run a campaign featuring a smouldering Jane and Rochester and a burning Thornfield.
The Guardian, Monday 1st May
It's not really a dreadful phrase (homonym/spellcheck mistake) like the others posted, but I really liked the idea of Thornfield actually setting Jane and Rochester on fire.
One from spoken Engish that drives me up the wall is "the point is mute"; the CEO of a company I used to work for said that regularly. I don't think I've ever seen it in print, though.
I'm surprised no one has yet mentioned the ever-popular 'to wreck havok'.
Incidently, I blame this on people hearing the phrase, but not reading it often enough to get the correct spelling implanted in their memory. So, when they pop up with it, they pick the spelling they think is most right.
And ditto for the reign/rein transpositions. I still boggle whenever I see a phrase like 'He took the reigns of the situation'.
Harry -- yes, I remember a librarian who applied for a job with a line on his resume about his Lexus/Nexus skills. But he got the job anyway, which still rankles me.
Oh, and here's a new one I got in an email today -- from a grad student, no less:
"I'll try an see if I can start later. Would that be exceptable or not?"
And this is someone we are allowing to work as a teaching assistant? The mind reals!
I'm a Sims 2 Addict (not in recovery). Today I came on custom skin called a Flamingo Dress. As, it is further explained, worn by a Flamingo dancer.
And a couple more...
'What the hay' and 'to hit the hey'.
Okay, they're colloquial, but still.
Amusingly enough, "flamingo" and "flamenco" derive from the same source: the dazzling outfits worn by Flemish soldiers in Spain's armies.
Yeah, but they're completely different English words. The same can be said of 'rape' and 'rapture'—both come from a root meaning 'carry off'. I maintain, however, that I'm quite willing to drive a man to rapture, but not to rape!
Janet, apologies for my profession. Lexus-Nexus???? I presume some sort of law librarian?aaaieeeee!
And how about "broach" and "brooch"? I once had the un-luck to come across "he brooched the subject gingerly." AND "she wore his broach proudly." I know in technical terms "broach" is considered a variation of "brooch" but, since I had always encountered either as the verb or with the meaning "chisel" it gave me a bad feeling about her dress sense!
Spelling peeves: I've noticed that all too often, "yay" is used where "yea" ought to be. And speaking of not even being a word, "sike!" seems to be the common spelling of "psych!".
I was going to post about eggcorns, but I see that several zillion already have. So instead, I will point to the book of the Anguish Languish
I'm guilty of more of these than I'm willing to admit. Just last week, I was caught with "peak their interest." To say that I'm embarrassed by my spelling is an understatement. I keep a dictionary around and check it often. (I’m a big fan of dictionary.com.) In spite of that precaution, too many mistakes slip through.
I could blame a number of different bad influences, but I’ll just say it’s my fault now. I need to take responsibility and work to improve my writing.
This post is a good example of why I read this blog. I don’t feel as though I’m smart enough or experienced enough to be posting here, but I know that if I hang around I will learn something and, I hope, improve myself.
Teresa: This brings back those halcyon days (which I'm tempted to call Halcion days) when mystery novelist Nancy Atherton used to freelance for us and I'd get a call from the receptionist: "I have Nancy African on the line."
L. Pullers: Now that's a malapropism; some eggcorns would qualify, some would not. A lot are just mistakes involving homonyms. A malapropism involves a words that is similar in sound, but different, like "professional" and 'professorial."
Of course I see this sort of thing all day long, but I can't recall a lot of good ones right this minute. There are a bunch of homonyms such as leach/leech and sheer/shear that even good writers have trouble with.
Oh yeah--I do see:
He poured over the textbooks for hours.
all the time.
One of the most frequent mistakes: "just desserts".
From an short story read online:
"He put her hands around her waste."
Um, eww?
While marking this week's crop of exams I discovered that one student had written about World War One vets suffering from Post-Dramatic Stress Disorder.
A TA for a history course on Western Civilization found an even better one: "The medieval system of government was considered pointless and ineffective. That is why it was called futilism."
As I become tired, I become dangerously prone to homonym typos, and even more embarrassingly, near-but-not-quite homonyms. Such as transposing "are" for "hour" and other similar abuses. It is as though my hands are taking dictation from my brain, but after a certain point they cease paying attention to the context of what is being written, and instead type out rough approximations of what they think they heard my brain say. It is very odd - my brain very clearly knows which word I intend to use, but something gets very broken in the process of nervous system transliteration. I have to stop and look at my hands as though they are completely mad. I occasionally fear am suffering from some kind of a Strangelovian disorder and my hands are going to one day run away with my text altogether.
Emma-- Nope, just a garden-variety librarian. The other members of the search committee somehow didn't think it was too alarming that a librarian couldn't spell the name of a database he said he'd learned to use. Personally, I hold members of my notoriously nit-picky profession to pretty high standards and feel they have even less excuse than other people for typos on their resumes. And catalogers even more so!
I've heard somewhere - and I can't believe I don't have a link for it, but I'm firing up Google and trying to find the right search terms - that memory as it relates to spelling is more linked to sound than to sight. So I would say these have less to do with spellcheckers and more to do with hazy recall.
Here's a pet peeve I've nursed for years. In the 70s/80s CBC radio news announcers started pronouncing "junta" with a j as in James. I complained. They explained to me that this was a new corporate policy as Canadians weren't familiar with Spanish pronunciation and to say it correctly would be much too confusing for us to cope with.
I suppose it prevented spelling mistakes, but I still twitch when I think about it.
"I have Nancy African on the line."
Coulda been the spider calling.
This discussion *almost* makes me miss teaching undergraduates, from whom I received the following in essays:
misquote spray
broad soldiers
peachy king
The one mistake which most rankles me is defiantly/definitely. I would issue a blanket condemnation of the use of "definitely" as a wek intensifier at the start of every semester -- it never seemed to help.
enjay: As someone who speaks Spanish well, I'm not fond of that pronunciation either, but it is acceptable per Web. 11. I console myself with the thought that it did inspire the great song by the Monochrome Set, "The Jet-Set Junta."
I guess if these things are set to music, they become mondegreens.
I don't find myself accidentally typing homynyms, and I avoid spell checkers. But I do have one personal howler to relate.
It doesn't make any difference in spelling, but I took it for granted that the expression "the die is cast" referred to the process of making a mold.
In the Devil's Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce wrote that the die is not cast, it is cut. For some reason missing the context of "dice", I emphatically agreed. After all, a die is USED to cast, so I assumed the original expression about casting the die had been garbled somehow.
These things don't phase me at all -- I would of spelled them correctly, had I known.
:: aaarghghghhhahhh ::
Another thing that is disappearing fast is correctly formulating conditional tense -- if it were [to be].
Where I work, we are dealing with 'outsourced' copyediting, and whether it is an autochanger or a person, correct usage -- 'if it were [to be] found that ...' -- is invariably replaced with 'if it was found ...'.
A book crossed my disk recently wherein the author had persistently referenced the breaks on the protagonist's car. This would have been less annoying if the CE had actually corrected it.
I once was the third person in an email chain where the first person spelled it "chord" and the second person spelled it "cored." Unfortunately, the word they wanted was "cord."
"passed history not with standing"--perhaps he just got a C-minus?
A shutter went through my uncle's body once, but those are the hazards of tornado country.
Oh yes: At least one of these has more or less entered the language now: "butt naked."
Is there any psych research that could shed some light on Teresa's observation: "I can only hypothesize that their ears remember better than their eyes do"?
Because I just can't imagine making any of these mistakes. It's impossible - reading them makes my eyes hurt. Maybe that's just a matter of practice, for I've been a fanatical reader for many years. But I also wonder if it's because I don't hear words as I read them. They feel like abstract shapes to me. (I believe, from the sort of verbal slips I make, that words are filed in my head by approximate length, and by first letter - like a Scrabble dictionary. Unfortunately, even if this is true, it doesn't make me good at Scrabble, because I can't anagram worth a damn.)
If I want to hear words as I read them, I have to consciously turn the sound up in my mind. I used to avoid doing this, because the sound in my head slows me down. At some point I figured out that good writing gets a lot better if you listen to it in your head instead of just reading it, so now I read novels a bit more slowly - but with a lot more enjoyment.
I've also had to practice listening to my own writing as I type - that's a learned skill for me.
Does everyone read this way, or just some of us?
Oh, man. I really want some misquote spray.
From what I have seen of manuscripts in the past few years, one of the primary jobs of a proofreader is to wipe out the symptoms of what I call Homonym Disease.
So many writers choose the wrong read/red where/wear the other belongs. No doubt you have seen this epidemic yourself. It's one that spell checkers can't prevent.
Mike B: You may be treating written English as a heiroglyphic system (you remember the shapes of words, rather than merely their phonetic components). There is research to support this; it is one way of treating the most common form of dyslexia.
I do this myself. The wrong word is a physical wrench to the reading process. Certain common mistakes (teh for the, for instance) I've learned to gloss over, but most still make me wince.
I also tend to typo real words--thing for thin, for instance, or this for thin. Bah, humbug.
cmk:
I think the tendency to type 'speak my peace' is possibly influenced by the confluence of 'peace of mind' and 'give you a piece of my mind'. I've taken to using 'speak my peace' as a type of written pun that, if spoken, simply wouldn't register.
We watched shutter spread memetically through one fandom's fanfic, and then out into others. At one point it seemd like every second sex scene had someone shuttering. It was often associated with taught muscles.
I also like "writhing under his administrations".
You are nearly responsible for my wife choking to death, luckily jello isn't too good at blocking the airway. I suppose I have to share some of the blame for my part in relaying the bellowing cloaks line.
When I was a grader/TA/instructor, I counted off on papers if it was obvious that the student had not used a spell-checker. I also counted off when it was all too clear that the student had trusted the spell-checker implicitly.
murgatroyd: Worse, I've seen people actually correct "faze" to "phase" as in your first sentence.
On a local news broadcast, I once saw a graphic listing charges that had been brought against someone, including "wreckless driving".
spoken malapropisms are different, of course, but those are the ones that seem to grate on me worst.
i had a teacher in high school who always said "serendipitous" when he meant "surreptitious". & he said it more than you might imagine, too.
i was listening to a radio program about the state of mental health care in the us yesterday, & it would have been a very interesting program, except the speaker kept saying "intimate danger" when he meant "imminent danger." aaaargh. & this was a former writer for the new york times.
I learned from a non-Wiki reference source that Reggie White reeked havoc on the field.
During my university years, one prof specifically advised against trusting spellcheckers--he'd found a study where one group of students was given a page of text with twenty spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes and told to correct it, while another group was given the same page and allowed to use spellcheck to correct it.
The spellchecked version had half again as many mistakes in the final count, including some that were not in the original piece.
If I weren't at work, I'd google-fu a reference for this.
(guiltily ducks back under her rock)
No-one seems to have mentioned one of the ones that really annoys me. Somehow, in recent years, the practice has crept in of saying (and writing) e.g. "If I would have known that, I wouldn't have bought the squid." Isn't the correct form "If I had known that..."?
It is actually all too easy in a long spell-checking job to hit the wrong option and authorise a misspelling. I've done it, and I'm about the most pedantic speller I know, though less so about other solecisms.
Because I just can't imagine making any of these mistakes. It's impossible - reading them makes my eyes hurt. Maybe that's just a matter of practice, for I've been a fanatical reader for many years. But I also wonder if it's because I don't hear words as I read them.
I always hear words when I read them, but I'm still stunned by spelling mistakes like these. I think there must be an additional component in the filing system, though, because "rein" and "reign" definitely (indeed, defiantly) occupy different parts of my brain. I tend to think it is more of a meaning thing than a visual thing, because I don't think of myself as a visual person at all. That said, I always have trouble pronouncing a name or a new, complex word until I know how it is spelled; after that, I generally have little trouble. Beats me, then.
As for student essays, most of the ones I've kept have contained sentences amusing mostly for their bathos. But there were a few of these things too:
“[Caesar’s] invasion of England was looked upon in awe as it was the first Roman sea exhibition outside the Mediterranean…”
"Cleopatra ... memorised the Roman men."
"Both [Pompey and Crassus] sited their views in public..." and (from a different essay) "were dually elected".
And my favourite student citation, of Suetonius' Life of the Defiled Julius.
Those are all from the same set of exams last year.
Relly, some people spell visually, and others spell aurally. You can tell which way they spell by watching how their eyes move when they try to spell a difficult word.
People who spell visually are generally better spellers than people who spell aurally. "Sound it out," which is how I was taught spelling in grade school, is terrible advice for anyone who is trying to learn to spell English! Only when I discarded it did I become a good reader; and a good reader is (barring neurological problems I don't know about) a good speller.
The more times you see a word spelled correctly, and see the correct choice made between homophones, the more likely you are to get it right when you write...so I'd say "read, and having read, write right, and your paper will be read, but less red."
BTW I think children (as opposed to adolescents or young adults) should not be taught the word 'homonym' at all. Appallingly, it's used for both homophones AND homographs, which are entirely different things. This makes it virtually impossible to explain the situation of 'red', which is homophonous with 'read' (past), which is homographic with 'read' (present), which is homophonous with 'reed'.
Not that I believe in using 'homophone' and 'homograph' in grade or junior high school either. If your goal is to teach them Greek, sure. If your goal is to improve their spelling by getting a concept across, no. Call them 'sound-alike words' and 'look-alike words'.
Doesn't anyone have any damn SENSE any more?!?!?!
OK, end rant. This has driven me crazy for decades.
I'm surprised that many of these things *aren't* caught by software. Or, rather, that Google hasn't already invented the software that would catch them.
For instance: I doubt that the word "shuttering" occurs very often in the wild. If it turns up in a paragraph it's probably a typo. Or consider "excepted his application": surely it wouldn't take a very sophisticated computer program to know that "accepted" and "excepted" are phonetic cousins, and that "accepted his application" is a common phrase while "excepted his application" is rare.
Of course, once Google gets bored making real money and decides to invent this software, a lot of pro writers will probably turn it off, lest it surround every novel turn of phrase with a swarm of dialog boxes. Terry Pratchett wouldn't be able to see his own prose for all the underlining.
On the unintentional pun front, the next site I visited after Making Light just now had this in a record review:
the two sides often stay as distant as rival cliques at the high school reunion. Without a guiding principal, the dud tracks sound even weaker
I'm pretty sure that was unintentional, anyway.
On a local news broadcast, I once saw a graphic listing charges that had been brought against someone, including "wreckless driving".
I'd define 'wreckless driving' as 'driving without ever totalling a car'.
"Cleopatra ... memorised the Roman men."
Well...I'm sure she tried.
You may be treating written English as a heiroglyphic [sic*] system (you remember the shapes of words, rather than merely their phonetic components). There is research to support this; it is one way of treating the most common form of dyslexia.
Which is interesting, because within living memory that is how reading was taught in a great many American elementary schools -- the infamous "look-say" system, which was later denounced as the primary source of American illiteracy, phonics being touted as the Only True Way to do it. (The issue is anything but simple, and as you'd expect with something involving public ed, has political components, and I'm not trying to start a fight about it.)
Most of the examples I remember have already been cited, though not "comprise" for "compose." I would put "comprised of" in the same category as "I'm nauseous;" it's not usually an issue of the person mistaking one word for another ("compose" and "nauseated" are not particularly esoteric words) but of someone who assumes they are synonyms and is trying to sound elevated.
An invented one does come to mind,** though it's more of an in-joke, as I can't imagine the people who would use the phrase making this error:
"Speech is privilege."
You know, there's at least one F/SF story in that.
*Speaking of popular typos. . . .
**Come on, you knew I would do this.
I only have one, but it's a doozy:
"He gave her organism after organism."
To which I can only say that they should have been using protection.
One that threw me completely out of a story a while back: "Why are you her?"
After a moment I realized that, rather than suggesting one person turning into another, or in disguise, it was supposed to be "Why are you here?" But by then it was too late.
(I am also very tired of muscles being described as "taught"; even if spelled correctly, that's a cliche.)
I'm with Xopher on "wreckless driving." How can one not be for it?
I'm an auditory reader, and I make these kinds of mistakes because I spell by sound. A lot of them look like the sort of mistakes speech recognition software makes, too.
Re: when the "mistake" sounds more accurate than the real term-someone close to me says "stay within earshout."
Makes sense to me, since we don't have to fire a rifle 'cross the holler to get in touch with our neighbors.
i am a visual speller, i always have been. i have a primarily visual mind, perhaps linked to the fact that i am a visual artist.
so i've always been a very good speller. if i've seen a word a couple of times, i can usually spell it. i thought it was a silly skill to have past elementary school, what with spellcheckers.... but it does make one feel smart on the internet.
That said, I always have trouble pronouncing a name or a new, complex word until I know how it is spelled; after that, I generally have little trouble.
I can remember words once I've seen them written down, but I can't remember spoken words well. I have a friend who collects folk ballads, and she can learn lyrics by ear, which to me is an inexplicable magical skill. I can pick up tunes by ear, to some extent, but the words fall right out of my head. I have better luck if I translate the spoken words into typewritten text on an imaginary piece of paper in my head - but that's so slow and mentally taxing that I usually prefer just to forget.
A side effect of remembering words as they appear on a page: when I read a book, and then read a different edition of the same book, I am occasionally distracted because the line breaks have moved and now the book is different.
John Ford: I was taught phonics in first grade. Fortunately, although phonics seems to have made no impression on me whatsoever, my growth does not appear to have been stunted!
Galley Slave: *doubles over in hysterical laughter*
Janet: a CATALOGER made that mistake? And they hired him? Ouch.
Mike and John: it's nice to know that there's something real about visual language skills. I learned to read when very young and can, by now, manage several languages well and others not-so-well. I've noticed that even at the early learning stages, I visualize the words and will pick up on those that look "wrong". I've had teachers insist I couldn't possibly know from the shape of the word alone, but I do!
It's a problem when I am dealing with Romance languages, where there are close-enough words, and I have to remind myself which language I am using.
I make the distinctions between comprise/compose and nauseated/nauseous that Mike does, but mostly for pleasure in making the distinctions (and desire to not appear illiterate to pedants); Web 11 disputes the correctness of both distinctions.
Writerious,
A while back a friend of mine did some etymological research on the nauseated/nauseous thing and tells me that the two have swapped meaning several times over the years.
Enormity/enormousness is another one. And fortuitous/fortunate.
Mike B: "accepted his application" is a common phrase while "excepted his application" is rare
OTOH, applications and exceptions go hand in glove in my world - software.
Another thing that is disappearing fast is correctly formulating conditional tense -- if it were [to be].Where I work, we are dealing with 'outsourced' copyediting, and whether it is an autochanger or a person, correct usage -- 'if it were [to be] found that ...' -- is invariably replaced with 'if it was found ...'.
if clauses—the traditional rules. According to traditional rules, you use the subjunctive to describe an occurrence that you have presupposed to be contrary to fact: if I were ten years younger, if America were still a British Colony. The verb in the main clause of these sentences must then contain the verb would or (less frequently) should: If I were ten years younger, I would consider entering the marathon. If America were still a British colony, we would all be drinking tea in the afternoon. When the situation described by the if clause is not presupposed to be false, however, that clause must contain an indicative verb. The form of verb in the main clause will depend on your intended meaning: If Hamlet was really written by Marlowe, as many have argued, then we have underestimated Marlowe’s genius. If Kevin was out all day, then it makes sense that he couldn’t answer the phone.Remember, just because the modal verb would appears in the main clause, this doesn’t mean that the verb in the if clause must be in the subjunctive if the content of that clause is not presupposed to be false: If I was (not were) to accept their offer—which I’m still considering—I would have to start the new job on May 2. He would always call her from the office if he was (not were) going to be late for dinner.
murgatroyd opined:
Another thing that is disappearing fast is correctly formulating conditional tense -- if it were [to be]
English is losing syntax more basic than the conditional tense: Participles are vanishing. For instance: "carry handles", "shave cream", and "bake time". And, of course, "spell checkers".
Granted, English has a history of jettisoning the "complicated" parts, but it seems we're starting to lose some of the essential bits,
Granted, English has a history of jettisoning the "complicated" parts, but it seems we're starting to lose some of the essential bits,
N dbt vwls wll b nxt t g.
I don't recall when "was graduated from" completely disappeared, but it was a good while ago.
Owlmirror: Well, the shift toward text-messagese has already started.
73, JMF
found a really good one
By way of TBogg, Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist wants to be the "marquis candidate" for the Constitution Party.
Unless Tancredo runs, of course.
If we're getting into mangled spelling, a local chain of flower shops regularly advertises "bokays", at least on their store marquees.
Julia: If Gilchrist wants to be the 'marquis candidate' he may have to duke it out with Tancredo.
candle -- "Cleopatra ... memorised the Roman men."
The first semester I was a grader, one of the students wrote: "The head of Nefertiti has long been arousing to archaeologists and art historians." Fortunately this was not in the fall, when the first grading time tended to correspond all too closely with ArmadilloCon.
I'm with those who boggle at these mistakes, because they always instantly jump out at me. I don't know if I'm a visual speller or not, because the same applies to grammatical errors; an incorrect subject/verb agreement or a misplaced comma bugs me just as much, which doesn't seem to lend itself to a "shape of the word" style recognition.
Then again, I learned how to read and write the same way I learned to play the piano, which is to say I cheated. I figured both things out not by studying the rules, but by imitating what I heard or read repeatedly until they were ingrained and unbreakable sets of pattern recognition. Or something.
So, in the same way I barely remember how to read music, but can still play Mozart from muscle memory, I remember virtually nothing about the rules of phonics and grammar (subjunctive mood? Mine eyes glazeth over), yet very rarely seem to make mistakes in sentence structure.
Other than the unfortunate propensity for run-on sentences, of course.
Scraps: Yay subjunctive! It's perfectly clear to anyone who grew up using it, and was taught to use it by people who did so correctly. My mother says that if you don't have the subjunctive by the tim
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