Wonderful stomping-and yet,I'm an excellent speller,but only on paper-when people ask me to spell words for them-I have to write them down-I can't spell at all really,orally.
If this was some sort od a spelling test to,I don't know,get into Oxford or something,I could see it-otherwise,that list is ridiculous for testing everyday spelling. TNH,your list is good because they are in actual use.

Posted March 20, 2007 1:00 AM by Nina Armstrong

Nope, this isn't precisely on topic, but somehow seemed related.

Q: How many art directors does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Does it have to be a light bulb?

Q: How many copyeditors does it take to change a light bulb?
A: The last time this question was asked it involved art directors. Is the difference intentional? Should one or the other instance be changed? It seems inconsistent.

You're right. A stronger prescription would be a good idea.

Posted March 20, 2007 1:12 AM by Claude Muncey

I'd get "supersede" wrong according to you; my West Indian upbringing refuses to be entirely superceded by the influence of the American high school system. ;) Great list though.

Posted March 20, 2007 1:16 AM by Cairsten

Sign me up for "liaison". I always want to leave out the second "i".

Posted March 20, 2007 1:19 AM by Larry Brennan

Weird is most often correctly correctly spelled in this manner: wierd^H^H^H^Heird (at least on my keyboard).

Posted March 20, 2007 1:32 AM by eric

Is the word dislexic above a test to find the copyeditors among the people who comment on Making Light, or does it describe a person with a little-known learning disability that isn't dyslexia?

(It might also be a legal but uncommon variant spelling of dyslexic, I suppose.)

Posted March 20, 2007 1:47 AM by Rymenhild

Wow. I was going to get all snarky and note the typo in "restaurateur", leaving out the N before the -teur, but I figured I ought to ask the internet first.

I did not know that that word was spelled that way.

Posted March 20, 2007 1:50 AM by Tom Scudder

privately pronouncing things wrong was always my spelling secret weapon. so i do say fuchhh (velar fricative) see ah, in my head.

that & my visual memory make me a pretty good speller. my knowledge of how a word is spelled affects my pronunciation ever so slightly, because i often see the word when i say it, like people were saying about "grey/gray". i don't misspell millenium as millinium, cause i can hear the difference between e & i when i say it.

the everyday word that gives me the most problems is separate. i think of lepers to remember it, but then i forget whether it is like leper, or not like leper.

Posted March 20, 2007 1:52 AM by miriam beetle

Miriam, #8: Here's the trick for "separate"--remember that it's got "a rat" in the middle of it. (Courtesy of a Laura Ingalls Wilder book, I think--it's been a while.)

Posted March 20, 2007 2:00 AM by Mary Frances

"fount"

Posted March 20, 2007 2:02 AM by j h woodyatt

Anecdote alert!

When I was in first grade I had a spelling test where one of the words was "emperor." I spelled it "emperer," and my doddering old bat of a teacher marked it right by accident. The mistake was corrected soon enough, but apparently the damage was done, because when I was in fourth grade I made it to the citywide spelling bee--and got out on the word emperor. Guess how I spelled it?

And goddammit, I knew every single word after that.

Posted March 20, 2007 2:11 AM by ethan

Great stomping!

I love the spelling reference very much, but one thing confuses me: I honestly can't imagine how anyone misspells Asimov. Can anyone enlighten me with a plausible wrong spelling of that name? To my eye, it's written exactly as it sounds.

I'm generally good at spelling (which claim probably guarantees there's a typo in this comment!) The types of spelling challenges exemplified by the bad OED list I always do well on. I have a decent vocabulary, and enough Latin and Greek and general sense of etymology to guess most deliberately obscure words. There are a few relatively common words that always trip me up though: fulfil (in its various parts) and focused I think are the worst.

Posted March 20, 2007 2:19 AM by Individ-ewe-al

Like Nina, I wouldn't be able to spell out words orally if my paycheck depended on it. I've never heard of a spelling bee in Swedish.

Many of the words on your list is on my "always look it up on dictionary.com" list.

Posted March 20, 2007 2:20 AM by Therese Norén

A foreign word that would appear to be hard to spell...

Isn't it somewhat of a rule, that, in natural languages, the most commonly used words are the exceptions to the most rules of that language?

So, for example, to be and to have are irregular verbs in French and English.

Posted March 20, 2007 2:28 AM by Keir

Excellent, excellent list. Way better than dumb old Oxford's. I was especially struck by how many of the words on your list have double letters, with easy mistakes to make about how many pairs of double letters there should be. I'm generally a good speller, but that's absolutely my nemesis. I used to joke about how it was a sign of my crappy relationship skills that I couldn't spell "commitment"... until I realized that I couldn't spell "professor" either.

There's just one more I'd add to the list -- "cemetery." Everyone wants to put in an "a."

Posted March 20, 2007 2:41 AM by Greta Christina

Spelling hates me, and not in the dyslexic way. I'm just not particularly good at it and I don't fully understand why. My comprehension and use vocabulary is good enough that I can mostly keep up with this crowd, so I know it's way above average. I just tend to not spell well and in unpredictable ways. Not a writing session goes by that I am not grateful for spellcheck.

If there is one word I consistently kill, it's silhouette.

As for English stealing its vocabulary like a big stealing thief person, I was surprised to find out that the word shark does not have old-world linguistic origins. OED says it's first usage was on some sort of shipping expedition in 1550. The book I'm reading on Maya says the word comes from the Mayan word xook (pronounced shok) which means 'a shark'. I'm guessing it's ultimately onomatopoetic. It's easy to imagine frantically screaming the word while being eaten by one.

Posted March 20, 2007 2:41 AM by Zak

Teresa, I'd say your list (and your very entertaining jeremiad against the OED) give some strong evidence that there are several different skills involved in spelling: visual recognition of a word by its spelling, ability to detect a misspelling visually, and ability to spell a word (with subflavors involving whether your memory of spelling is primarily visual or auditory). Maybe all that means maybe you're a wee bit hard on the OED, since they clearly don't realize there's more than one skill, although it's also clear they're rather fuzzy on what that is (and a resounding "for shame" for that).

Posted March 20, 2007 2:46 AM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Individ-ewe-al @ #12:

"Azimov" is reportedly common (by some accounts, that's how Asimov came to write his classic story "Spell My Name With An 'S'").

Also, famously, the magazine Planet Stories once published correspondence from a certain "Isaac Asenion". (Hint: cursive handwriting.) That one made it into his fiction, too: in one of his robot stories, "Asenion" is the name of the guy credited with developing the Three Laws.

(There's also a story, set far in the future, in which one of the characters reiterates a vaguely-recalled factoid about a twentieth-century chemist named Azimuth; but I think he just made that one up.)

Posted March 20, 2007 2:47 AM by Paul A.

The single most misspelled word in most of my recent (last several years' worth) reading is "definitely." It drives me nuts, because many otherwise decent spellers simply cannot seem to get this word correct.

Posted March 20, 2007 2:51 AM by Bruce Adelsohn

Add to "cemetary" and "silhouette" this bugaboo: camouflage.

Excellent list.

I have to admit I've got the copyeditor's eye. Worst case is when I'm running a roleplaying game and people hand me character sheets which I hand back copyedited. Accounting errors don't bother me half so much as misspelled words.

Posted March 20, 2007 2:56 AM by Kevin Andrew Murphy

Bruce, I definitely cannot regularly spell definitely. Don't let the correct spelling here fool you. My copy of Firefox has a spellchecker for all input fields.

I have no doubt whatsoever that this will get me into trouble.

Both the spellchecker and the indefinite definitely.

Posted March 20, 2007 3:00 AM by Zak

Denizens of this blog may enjoy the "Typo of the Day" blog at http://typooftheday.blogspot.com/. This is compiled by a librarian and catches common errors in library catalogs. (We really did have a book in our catalog -- from another library in our county -- listed under "Untied States". And yes, it *was* about the Civil War.)

On the GOVDOC-L mailing list, for librarians that deal with government documents, we've had long discussions of "supercede" vs. "supersede." The Federal Depository Library Program prefers the latter, of course, and their Superseded List is what we who are in charge of FDLP collections at our libraries are required to go by when weeding our collections, because the collections are, legally (U.S. Code Title 44), government property and therefore there are regulations to be followed.

(And sure enough, I had "regulatiosn" there, but caught it just in time.)

Posted March 20, 2007 3:17 AM by Lois Fundis

My mnemonic for the word "weird" is "wired weird". I can remember the spelling of "wired" with no problems, and if I remember that "weird" has the i/e order switched from "wired", I'm all good to go.

"weird" is weird in that it violates "i before e except after c", anyway.

Posted March 20, 2007 3:20 AM by AzureLunatic

ah yes. I'm one of the lucky ones as far as spelling goes - unless I'm asked "is [word] spelled [alternative one] or [alternative two]?" and then I have to write it down to see which spelling it is (sometimes it'll be a third). If I'm not given a choice, I'm fine. Used to be the tech pubs department's walking, talking dictionary...

two that it took me a long time to not be confused about:

satellite
dilettante*

*The Dilettante makes excellent chocolate delights here in Seattle, and that's where I finally got "one l, two t's" into my head

Posted March 20, 2007 4:05 AM by glinda

Darnit, I've sat here a good five minutes trying to recall which words I habitually misspell, because none of them apart from miscellaneous are on your list, but can I?

Course not.

Posted March 20, 2007 4:06 AM by Martin Wisse

Regarding "supersede" in Teresa's list, I used to use the variant "supercede" due to the similarity in meaning between it and cede, and had to train myself out of that.

Anecdote warning: I used to edit an online magazine years ago, and the owner was setting up a calendar page for the staff regarding due dates and the like. It began as the "Calandar" page, and after I corrected him, he changed it to the "Calander" page. I decided that it wasn't going to work, so as a joke I sent him another memo reminding him that it was spelled "Colander," which he promptly got right, as it were. To my knowledge, the staff at that magazine continued to sift through their assignments to the day it closed.

Posted March 20, 2007 4:06 AM by Steve Zillwood

T's list of words sure look like LJ account names. And yes, indeed they are. There are two community names and three deleted accounts. (One of the deleted accounts has not been purged yet, and the user name is moderately funny when inserted into the standard LJ boilerplate.) There is one other name that is not a current LJ user name, but entering it redirects to a different name. I'm not sure what to make of it, but I'm counting it. Of course, most of the words on the OED's list are probably taken too. If you are looking for an internet handle, maybe one of the icecles.

Posted March 20, 2007 4:09 AM by TomB

The beginning of your list ("bazaar, bizarre") reminds me of the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser story, The Bazaar of the Bizarre, by Fritz Leiber. Reading that at 13 probably got at least those two words burned into my memory with no possibility of confusion.

Posted March 20, 2007 4:11 AM by glinda

Now that's a list!

Like Miriam, I tend to pronounce words in my head with appropriate vowel values (no matter what comes out of my mouth), so I'm unlikely to be tripped up by pin/pen sort of issues. (And yes, I do pronounce those two words differently.)

Of your list, the ones that would be likely to catch me are:
supersede (although that one is now on my mental Oh-oh! list)
sorcerer (because there are a number of fantasy books in which it is consistently spelled "sorceror") *
restaurateur (yes, I'd add the n)
prophesy wouldn't be a problem if it was pronounced correctly ("prophecy" ends with a long-e sound)
pharaoh would be a problem orally, but not written
fuchsia (your hints have been noted)
jodhpurs (y'know, I probably mispronounce this too)
frieze should also prompt a call for definition, as it's homophonous with "freeze"
sacrilegious (one wants to put "religious" into it)

I used to have problems with putting an extra o in the middle of "pronunciation", but have since broken myself of that.

* It occurs to me that if one has sufficient French to think of Dukas' piece by its French title of L'apprenti Sorcier, that could be a useful mnemonic.

Posted March 20, 2007 4:22 AM by Lee

"Poetaster"? Why, everyone knows that poets taste like chicken, of course. Yum!

Posted March 20, 2007 4:36 AM by Earl Cooley III

Words ending in -uous or -ious are still a bit hard for me to spell - I must concentrate. But I do not really understand why 'separate' is difficult to spell.

Then again, I am not a native speaker, so I do not count. I still cannot differentiate between 'license' and 'licence' and other pairs of that type, and the English way of double consonants confused my Russian spelling a bit (after writing 'corridor' too often in English it's hard to remember there are no double r's in the Russian version).

Posted March 20, 2007 4:42 AM by Taelle

I nurture ancient bitterness against an elementary-school spelling test that marked "neighbour" as wrong; at the time, I was too bewildered to bring in and brandish the British books I'd been reading. (I think that at that age, I was still convinced that a "lorry" must be some sort of large draft animal similar to oxen, perhaps some sort of weird Scottish yak.)

Posted March 20, 2007 4:47 AM by Julie L.

*de-lurks*

That's a humbling list, that. Meh to accommodation, meh, I say!

You know, I was tempted to gloat a little, thinking that, as a German, I have it a little easier with spelling because we mostly (with exceptions) "pronounce what's there" (there is no GHOTI in German)... and then I got to fuchsia. Proud users of our velar fricative - is it transcribed as [x]? - we go ahead and ignore it. I hadn't noticed before! We say "fook-see-eh" (Fuchsie). I wonder why...

*re-lurks*

Posted March 20, 2007 4:50 AM by Sus

Ummm, I thought the "licence" vs. "license" difference was just a Brit vs. Yank thing.

Posted March 20, 2007 4:55 AM by Earl Cooley III

Bruce Cohen wrote (#17) above on a number of different skills involved in spelling including:
"ability to detect a misspelling visually".

This separation does seem to make some sense to me; in high school I always gave the teachers the impression of good spelling skills, but this was more due to my ability to tell if words were correctly spelled or not. However, sometimes I would look at a word I knew I had spelled wrong, and had no clue how to spell it; I would then usually find some other way of writing what I meant - and thus my teachers would rarely see misspelled words in my work.

Posted March 20, 2007 4:57 AM by chris bond

Kevin Andrew Murphy @ 20

I have to admit I've got the copyeditor's eye. Worst case is when I'm running a roleplaying game and people hand me character sheets which I hand back copyedited. Accounting errors don't bother me half so much as misspelled words.

As an engineer I've had to write and review more technical documents than I like to think about. Because technical writing is very much about the details, reviewing and copyediting can sometimes become inextricably intertwined. So when my wife first started writing, and asked to help out by reviewing early drafts, I'm ashamed to say it took me quite a few go-rounds before I'd broken myself of correcting the spelling and the grammer before I commented on the character development or the plot.

Posted March 20, 2007 5:12 AM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

I believe I have never actually spelled 'fuchsia' correctly. (So much so that it took me three tries to type it the right way above.) I'll have to try to remember to check that one in the future.

Most of the rest of the words on your list wouldn't give me a problem, but I see a few:

frieze: Unless you pronounce it some way I'm not used to, I'd assume you said 'freeze' (but if you defined it I could spell it)
sorcerer: I would probably spell this with the (incorrect) -or because, darn it, so many roleplaying games do
harass: I often put in an extra r, alas
prophesy: I spell this with a -cy and was under the impression that was correct -- what am I missing with that one? Verb vs noun form?

Posted March 20, 2007 5:19 AM by Tina

Oh, and how I remember 'separate' is my brain relates it to 'paring down'.

(Darn it, why do I keep doing this thing where I think I've typed everything I want and then remember something else afterwards? Is it the sleep dep? I blame the sleep dep.)

Posted March 20, 2007 5:26 AM by Tina

I missed marks on a third grade spelling test because the teacher wanted "futile" and I gave her "feudal".

I argued that I had spelled what I heard. She argued that we had had a list to memorise, that "futile" was on it, and that "feudal" was not.

Then I think she heard herself trying to take points off of me for going beyond the assigned coursework and thought better of it. I got the mark back.

Posted March 20, 2007 5:48 AM by abi

The word I always have the most trouble spelling is mrfliglipzikzim.
(Fortunately, it's not often I need to discuss Minnesotan winter sports.)

Posted March 20, 2007 6:06 AM by Stephan Zielinski

Tina@37

Re: Prophesy, you're absolutely right, verb vs. noun. When you tell a prophecy, you prophesy. Not elegant, but there you go.

Posted March 20, 2007 6:08 AM by Steve Zillwood

"License/Licence" is a tricky one; in British English you are "licensed" to kill, but you carry a driving "licence". I believe that it is different in American English.

icthyological is difficult because the h in fourth position makes you want to put in an h following the initial ic.

I realise how foolhardy this is, but I think this is wrong; there should be an h after the initial c.
Three reasons;
First, it's pronounced "ich-thee-o-lo-ji-kal", not "ik-thee..." with the voiced ch as in loch, Bruichladdich, Mach, Rachmaninov, Nagorno-Karabakh, etc.
Second, it would make sense given the root in Greek, which starts iota-chi-theta, not iota-kappa-theta.
Third, that's how the dictionary spells it.

Posted March 20, 2007 6:15 AM by ajay

Individ-ewe-al #12:

Asimov might be misspelled either:

(1) Asimoff or

(2) Assimov/ff or

(3) Asimow.

Posted March 20, 2007 6:19 AM by Fragano Ledgister

Hey! That list is unfair on dyslexics! (And I mean yours rather than the OED nonsense). There are reasons I'd never make a good copy editor...

But if you want some more ideas, I'm reminded of this horrible poem, the first verse of which I've copied below for a sample.

Dearest creature in creation,
Studying English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
It will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Pray console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it.

Posted March 20, 2007 6:20 AM by Francis

verb/noun thing

Same with license/licence, at least in the UK: when you license someone or something, you issue a licence. My mnemonic involves advise/advice.

And as a classicist, I'm with ajay on "ichthyologist". The Greek word has a chi, which should be transliterated with a "ch". Remember that the fish is the Christian sign because the second letter in ichthus was taken to stand for Christ.

Iesus
Christos
Theou
uios
soter

Posted March 20, 2007 6:22 AM by candle

If this is some fiendish plot to look for proofreaders, can I point out that in your notes on the list, you are missing an a in Pharaoh.

Posted March 20, 2007 6:23 AM by Spike

#46: Spike, if you mean this:

Some words are only hard because their pronunciations screw up our ability to remember how to spell them; thus: calander, strategem, sorceror, restauranteur, pharoh, fuschia, sacreligious.

- they are all (deliberately) misspelt, as examples of how pronunciations can be misleading.

Posted March 20, 2007 6:30 AM by ajay

Fair enough. My fault for not reading the rest carefully enough. Apologies all.

Posted March 20, 2007 6:38 AM by Spike

I remember "fuchsia" using Teresa's first method, with a side-order of the famous British newspaper headline:

SIR VIVIAN FUCHS OFF TO ANTARCTICA.

Supposedly genuine: and he did call his book "Of Ice and Men".

Me, I've never been north of Schenectady. Although I did just have to check if there was a second 'h'.

Posted March 20, 2007 6:43 AM by candle

legionnaire is hard.

Posted March 20, 2007 6:45 AM by Arthur D. Hlavaty

I had a hard time with "weird" for years, until I read Dune. Seeing "weirding" a zillion times made the i-e reversal stick in my head...particularly because my brain decided to pronounce it "weyrding" to give it more of a vibe. My brain does its own thing.

When I was a kid my journalist grandma taught me this helpful version of "I before E:"

"I before E, except after C, and when sounding like A as in 'neighbor' and 'weigh.'"

Posted March 20, 2007 6:46 AM by Mary Dell

I just had a telephonic conversation with my wife, in which I misheard her say 'combination' as 'commination'. She claimed never to have heard of the latter term, so I just emailed this to her.

Posted March 20, 2007 6:48 AM by Fragano Ledgister

Re ic[h]thyological:

"Ichthyological" is the more common spelling (e.g., 186,000 Google hits vs 16,300 for "icthyological"), and the only one in the couple of dictionaries I have on hand (including the American Heritage Dictionary, which is one of the better ones). And, as ajay and candle pointed out, it's more faithful to the standard transliteration of ancient Greek.

A little further poking around suggests that many of the Google hits for "icthyo-" really are misspellings of "ichthyo-". E.g., this page for the Ichthyological Society of Japan uses "ichthyological" all over the page, except once where they refer to their journal, "Icthyological Research". But then if you follow the link to the publisher's page, it's clear the journal really is Ichthyological Research.

Posted March 20, 2007 7:19 AM by Peter Erwin

There are rules?

Indeed, there are.

Posted March 20, 2007 7:20 AM by Shane Stringer

Not entirely related... but I recently hada talk with my bank, where the helpful woman explained that my debit card was being replaced because the data had been calm-promised.

Yes.

//shudder

Posted March 20, 2007 7:24 AM by Q

Miriam Beetle@8: How are you on "millennium"?

(I too have the proofreader's eye. Working in a copy shop, I find this to be occasionally good, occasionally just annoying.)

I once psychically divined the spelling of a word. I was playing in a Quiz Bowl practice round, and a tossup question involved the deciding word in one year's national spelling bee, "kaolinic". Naturally, for ten points you had to spell "kaolinic". I'd never seen or heard the word before, but somehow as soon as the question was finished the spelling popped into my head and I knew it was right. (It was, too.)

Posted March 20, 2007 7:27 AM by David Goldfarb

I can never remember "bureaucracy". My general approach is to just throw a bunch of vowels in, and hope I get lucky.

Posted March 20, 2007 7:32 AM by Zzedar

Ajay (42): You're right!

It hadn't occurred to me that the original story wouldn't have spellchecked its own wordlist backward, forward, and sideways, so I decided the word must be on the list because one so naturally wants to spell it ichthyological. Ten out of ten for spelling; naught out of ten for execution.

Posted March 20, 2007 7:37 AM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

It is probably a bad sign that I can't figure out how people can write love letters without being able to spell poetaster.

Posted March 20, 2007 7:39 AM by Mris

Some words are only hard because their pronunciations screw up our ability to remember how to spell them; thus: calander, strategem, sorceror, restauranteur, pharoh, fuschia, sacreligious.

I'd also suggest that in a couple of cases, we can be misled by the fact that closely related (and more common) words are spelled differently than the words in the list: i.e., strategy vs stratagem, restaurant vs restaurateur.

(I now have to confess that while I have little or no trouble with most of the words on Teresa's list, I had absolutely no idea that "fuchsia" and "restaurateur" were spelled the way they are...)

Posted March 20, 2007 7:41 AM by Peter Erwin

Zzedar #57: I've had students write 'beaurocracy' for 'bureaucracy'. I presume that they mean government by the beautiful people.

Posted March 20, 2007 7:52 AM by Fragano Ledgister

I don't know if you're familiar with Taylor Mali, but your comments about the fallibility of spellcheck reminded me of one of his poems: The Impotence of Proofreading.

"...I myself was such a bed spiller once upon a term
that my English teacher in my sophomoric year,
Mrs. Myth, said I would never get into a good colleague.
And that's all I wanted, just to get into a good colleague.
Not just anal community colleague..."

Posted March 20, 2007 7:52 AM by Annalee Flower Horne

Francis@44: Thank-you! I went looking for that poem just now, too, but I couldn't find it.

Posted March 20, 2007 8:00 AM by colin roald

I was told by the head of my children's elementary school years ago when despairing of my daughter's spelling that it was an ability one is born with (though some training helps.) Somehow genetically encoded, like being able to wiggle one's ears or roll up one's tongue.

My husband and son Adam can spell. Son Jason can sort of spell. Daughter Heidi and I are hopeless, though she is much worse than I am. Yet the writers in the family are Heidi, Adam, and me.

However, once we bought a house in Scotland and began living there half the year, no one in the family could spell. Has to do with all those s/z combinations. When to put in the ou and when not. And even some actual words or combinations that are Brit-o-centric or wholly American.

So, as I used to tell kids, good write no spell--that's me. (I know lots of terrific copyeditors, though, who need to keep their hands off my prose.)

Jane

Posted March 20, 2007 8:17 AM by janeyolen

There's an a cappella band whose third album defeats one of my biggest spelling problems: the Ithacappella album "Two 'p's, Two 'l's" gets me through a cappella, as long as I remember the a space.

Posted March 20, 2007 8:18 AM by Michael

When I was in college, there was a time when people wore buttons with clever sayings (much like they now wear t-shirts). Some friends and I starting making buttons to sell and 4th or 5th one we came up with was "This button supersedes all previous buttons". We'd paid to have 250 made before we realized the error. That was the end of our button project.

As a fan historic note, the company we used to make the buttons, Hodges Badge and Button, has become the major supplier for decorative ribbons for science fiction conventions. We used them for the early Boskones and the news spread. Currently located in Rhode Island, at that time they were near Fresh Pond in Cambridge.

Posted March 20, 2007 8:22 AM by Leslie Turek

Oops! The button read "This button supercedes all previous buttons". Aparently I've learned the lesson so thoroughly that I can't spell it wrong now even when I try.

Re bureaucracy: I use the piece of furniture and think bureau-cracy.

And I just noticed your very neat "spelling reference" aid for commenters. I don't think I've seen that elsewhere.

Posted March 20, 2007 8:27 AM by Leslie Turek

Claude (2), why are you quoting my lightbulb jokes?

Cairsten (3), supersede is super + sedere, which I always remember as "to squash something by sitting on top of it." It's the only -sede ending in English. So many people substitute the commoner -cede ending that dictionaries have taken to listing that spelling.

Rymenhild (6), I've never spelled the word dislexic in all my life. I'll blame that one on Titivillus, who in modern times has left the scriptorium, and instead works to insert nonsensical typos into posts and comments about spelling. Who among us hasn't had that happen?

Miriam (8), some people (like Mary Frances) remember separate via "there's a rat in separate"; but IMO, the logical mnemonic is that it shares a root with parity.

Zak (16), it's not your fault; spelling's part of the hardwiring. Some people spell easily and automatically. Some can't spell to save their lives. And in the midrange, there are people who have greater and lesser difficulty remembering spellings.

Bruce Cohen (17): There are indeed a bunch of different skills involved in spelling. That's one of the reasons I always asked wanna-be proofreaders for accommodate: their reaction to it would tell me a lot about what kind of spellers they were.

I was irked by that story and spelling list because it was full of assumptions about the way spelling ought to work, and wrong about the way it does work.

Note to self: minuscule, liaison, camouflage, cemetery, silhouette.

Posted March 20, 2007 8:31 AM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Ha! Jejune.

I have a theory that this word only exists as word that gets talked about as an awkward word (although I way have stolen that theory from someone else). The obvious way to misspell it is to think it's french and try and make it "jejeune". Where this misspelling mostly occurs is in instructions not to spell "jejune" that way.

That said, I just googled "jejeune" and it seems the Internet has got a lot more pretentious/stupid since I last tried to claim this.

It still seems to be a word that's more talked about than used, though, and there should be a word for that.

Posted March 20, 2007 8:33 AM by Paul Herzberg

If someone spells "pharaoh" as pharoah, ask him/her to spell "coal train".

Posted March 20, 2007 8:35 AM by Jon Meltzer

Mary Frances, #9: Regarding "separate," this used to trip me up all the time, until Teresa pointed out that the middle syllable is the same root as the verb "to pare," as in, for instance, paring knife. I don't believe I've gotten "separate" wrong since. As another example, I no longer stumble on "privilege," because I remember that its origin is "privy lege", private law.

I'm a decent but far from perfect speller. What improvement I've managed in my adult life has largely come from this kind of linguistic approach--getting to know the history of particular words. For better or worse, this kind of historical approach sticks with me better than arbitrary rules like "there's a rat in separate." Most "rules" for English spelling seem to come down to variations on "I before E except when it's not."

Posted March 20, 2007 8:37 AM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Ah, and I see Teresa (#68) beat me to the point about "separate." Time for us to both get off our computers and leave for work!

Posted March 20, 2007 8:38 AM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

I engaged in hand-to-hand battle with 'fuchsia' just yesterday. I won narrowly, but only by squashing it with an unabridged copy of the MW dictionary. I suspect there may be more of them in the walls.

Spelling and writing are unrelated skills.

Thank you! That's something I've needed to hear for a long time. I live in mortal terror of spelling, especially aloud; it ranks with zombies and dentistry.

Or perhaps zombie dentists asking me to spell 'anonymous' out loud.

...I'm gonna be up all night with a baseball bat, now.

Posted March 20, 2007 8:40 AM by L. S. Baird

Is the word "calander" in the penultimate bullet there as a test to see who'd catch the typo, or is that actually the correct spelling of an easily misspelled word? ("Calendar" is Teresa's wordlist two bullet points above "calander.")

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that I used the word "issue" rather than "tissue" in a sentence. This, of course, makes complete nonsense of the sentence. That sentence has been in the story I was writing since, oh, November. *facepalm*

Posted March 20, 2007 8:42 AM by JC

Let's see if my orthography is orthodox. My black-Protestant brain (as Robert Graves would say), insists on a catholic approach:

We see ourselves in separate small spaces,
others see the outline, the plain silhouette,
the liaison between hope and regret
which we have found in the most vacant spaces.
So here we are, the mule's kicked over traces
and made the cemetery into its oubliette;
we might find reason here just to forget,
but we remain in place till we have faces.
Our memories put things in bold and majuscule,
but that's a falsity, some sort of camouflage,
for what we do not know. But still we've tried
to put our words into small space, in minuscule
letters, in our best hand, yet without persiflage;
we told ourselves we'd know when others lied.

Posted March 20, 2007 8:47 AM by Fragano Ledgister

I was going to throw in demon words, but most people have gotten them by now.
I spell in the brain-flash way someone mentioned; if I hear a word and have seen it (and heard it pronounced properly, thank you 'viaments') I know what it looks like and pick the letters out from there. I've lost a great deal of confidence in my spelling abilities; that happened in eighth grade. I think it happens to a lot of people who go to the National Spelling Bee and *don't* win.

I think I am growing up now. I don't get as angry about 'triskaidekaphobia' as I used to. I've seen it spelled at least three different ways. It might be normal for words made up of pieces rather than wholes, though.

Posted March 20, 2007 9:00 AM by Diatryma

#36 "grammer" :-(

Posted March 20, 2007 9:11 AM by Toni

Yarmulke. *shudders* I know it's not technically English but still...

Posted March 20, 2007 9:25 AM by Adam Stemple

About "millenium": One should keep in mind The Millenium Project, of which its founders say

We all know that "millennium" comes from the Latin words "mille" and "annus" and means a thousand years. The word "millenium" comes from the Latin words "mille" and "anus" and means something else. This web site is devoted to the millenium of sites which don't deserve a place on the Web. We are not putting them on a pedestal - we are offering them a stool.

Posted March 20, 2007 9:37 AM by theophylact

By the way, I often see "misspelled" misspelled "mispelled".

Posted March 20, 2007 9:38 AM by theophylact

With regard to the famous James Nicoll quote, and the correction of "rifle" to "rif[f]le", I always thought that "riffle" was what you found on the surface of a babbling brook, or what you did to a deck of cards, and that "to rifle" meant either to cut spiral grooves in a gun barrel OR to loot, plunder, ransack or rob. Teh Intertubes, though hardly authoritative, seem to back me up.

Am I wrong? Does one indeed "riffle" through one's victim's pocketses? Have I been doing it wrong all along?

Posted March 20, 2007 9:44 AM by Berry

The words that give me trouble are those that exist in English and in French, but with slight differences. For example, 'address' and 'adresse'. That extra 'd' in the English version got me for the longest time. But, heck, if Mister Spock can pronounce 'mischievous' as 'mischievious' and not have a nervous breakdown over it, I guess I can live with my own imperfection.

Posted March 20, 2007 9:49 AM by Serge

A few more from a Guardian quiz:

desiccate, ecstasy, address, irresistible, occurrence, embarrass, pronunciation, independent, questionnaire, broccoli, referring, recommend.

Posted March 20, 2007 9:50 AM by Malia

Hm. I think I might have a future in proofreading. The only one of those I got wrong (by having my lovely wife read the list aloud while I wrote) was "desiccate", which I have now added to my mental exceptions list.

The OED clearly has no clue what words people even bother to try to spell when actually, y'know, using the language. :)

Posted March 20, 2007 9:59 AM by Marcos

Let's see... on the oral test I'd probably miss 6-8 on average. If I were allowed to write down my answers, that number would probably drop to 3-4. Something about seeing it in text.

I don't think I'd mess up the spelling of "harass", but damn it, I always mess up the pronunciation! ("Har-rass" instead of "Harris").

And my "separate" mnemonic, given to me by my 5th grade English teacher, Mrs. Fabricant, was "you separate a rat from the pack".

Ooh, and Teresa, thanks for the "supersede" mnemonic.

Posted March 20, 2007 10:05 AM by Malthus

In the past week and a half of Making Light, our heroes have encountered vampires, zombies, and spelling demons (Teresa: "Your word is... Beelzebub."). This episode they face an even greater challenge: ice-shoggoths.

Sorry, I couldn't resist. Admittedly, I didn't try very hard.

Posted March 20, 2007 10:12 AM by Malthus

I have a couple that always bother me.

Sovereignty
Bureaucracy

However, some depend on one's occupation. Being a corporate writer for many years, I never have a problem with.

Necessary
Accommodate
Miscellaneous
Commitment
Committed
Committee (duh!)
Calendar
Stratagem
Receive

Some others just come naturally to me. I can't explain, but often words just "don't look right" to me.

Posted March 20, 2007 10:28 AM by SPIIDERWEB™

The word that used to get me every time was "temperament." I've never heard anyone pronounce the 'a' -- it sounds like "temperment" to me, so that's how I spelled it. The problem is that there's an excellent parenting book that I sometimes recommend to friends called "Temperament Tools," and for the longest time I could not find it on Amazon, because I was spelling the title wrong.

Posted March 20, 2007 10:30 AM by Naomi

Shoughoughl ough tough Boughoughlough

Posted March 20, 2007 10:35 AM by Erik

I'm surprised nobody else has commented on the presense of "shibboleth" in the original list. Am I the only one who finds that funny?

Are we supposed to kill the people who misspell it "sibboleth"?

Also, if you want to see how un-noteworthy foreign words in English are, read some passage in which they are deliberately not used. Uncleftish Beholding is the best example I know of, but there are probably others.

Posted March 20, 2007 10:46 AM by Chris

The scariest spelling situation I ever witnessed was years ago. I was at a newstand, checking the various publications. So were a man and his 4-year-old daughter who, being short, was forced to stare at magazines few adults care to peruse. The little lady, upon coming across something titled 'Psychology' asked her dad, without mangling the word, what psychology was.

Posted March 20, 2007 10:46 AM by Serge

And one more thing: my dictionary (Merriam Webster's Collegiate, 10th ed) agrees with #81 Berry on "rifle" vs. "riffle". And I think Nicoll's quote definitely implies the intent to steal of "rifle", not the idle pastime of "riffle".

Posted March 20, 2007 10:52 AM by Chris

I am one of those people who just can't spell. I managed to learn some basic spelling in self-defense -- I shudder at "definately" and "grammer", at least -- but it's all stuff I had to learn by rote. Incorrect and correct spellings of words don't look any different to me until I stop and break them down letter-by-letter. My brain picks up new words easily, but has no interest in learning how to spell them.

When I was in college, however, I once roomed with a world-class speller, the sort of surpremely gifted speller who can hear a word, get a definition, and spell it correctly without ever having encountered it before. She claimed that spelling made sense -- English spelling! -- because once you figured out the etymology of the word and where it came from, the rules of spelling that applied to it were obvious. This is not the sort of thing I could ever learn by rote; it's the sort of thing you're born with, as she was.

Posted March 20, 2007 10:59 AM by G. Jules

I'm a good speller although I suspect I'd fluff it on the phone caught unawares like that. Then there are half a dozen that I'd probably get wrong if I recovered from my initial shock. I might be being overconfident, I'll have to test myself.

"Silhouette" drives me insane though -- I have to look it up every time. Worse, I can't spell it close enough to get the spell checker to spot it.

I end up having to search on "on the shade, what a lovely couple they made" to find out how it's spelt. :/

Posted March 20, 2007 11:00 AM by sylvia

The word "millenium" comes from the Latin words "mille" and "anus" and means something else.

Quite right - it would mean "a thousand old women". Or possibly what they are getting at is "a thousand rings".

Note the spelling of "millenarian", though.

Posted March 20, 2007 11:01 AM by candle

God damn it! Back on the 18th, I had a scathingly original idea and started writing a sonnet using the "spelling reference" words, and life came crashing in on me and I had to put it aside temporarily, and now... goddamnit!

Posted March 20, 2007 11:08 AM by Kip W

I know that proper nouns, especially place names are the wild, wild west of orthography, but I feel compelled to at least mention that I had to work really, really hard to memorize Cincinnati.

Really, who came up with that one?

Posted March 20, 2007 11:17 AM by Larry Brennan

Has anyone here become a worse speller over time? I used to be a decent copyeditor, and I could spell quite well. I find myself making more mistakes every year.

I just applied for a job to write for PBS. On my resume, I misspelled "English." I actually said my major was "Enlgish."

Of all the words to get wrong! I almost didn't get the job, but I did and now I have a freelance gig which I enjoy, but it was the best stupid mistake I've ever made.

Posted March 20, 2007 11:18 AM by Sean Sakamoto

That is a brutal, brutal list. I think of myself as a fine speller of words and the like, and a compulsive corrector of other people's written mistakes, but I would never be a real copy editor.

My personal bugaboo is 'sargeant.' No, wait: 'sergeant.' Um... trying not to look it up... um... failing... OK, it's the second one. But I have to look it up every time. It bothers me both ways.

Posted March 20, 2007 11:31 AM by Jeremy Hornik

#97

Who came up with that one?

The Romans, damn them.

Add it to the aqueduct...sanitation...roads...medicine... education...health....

Posted March 20, 2007 11:43 AM by Sarah S

No one has mentioned that spelling used to be much more casual until someone (Enlightenment-era dictionary writers?) tried to make it all One Way Only. And even after that, casual spellers weren't necessarily looked on as idiots -- check out Lewis and Clarke's journals for examples of such writing.

Spelling also morphs over time, along with word usage -- Chaucer to Shakespeare to Hemingway is a long, twisty "evolutionary" path! And one sector's dialect or one era's slang may be another's perfectly acceptable language. (I was taught that using "stuff" as anything other than a verb was totally incorrect, but it seems to be making its way into respectability now, even if it hasn't quite arrived.)

Posted March 20, 2007 11:55 AM by Faren Miller

Patrick, #71: Etymology helps me, too, sometimes. Especially since a good many of exceptions to the "rules" for English spelling are based on historical development of different words/spellings.

To add to the "these are my personal problem words" lists, the ones I always have to stop and think about are the "ent/ant" ones--independent, dependent/dependant, and so on. Maybe some British influence there--I also have trouble with the doubled consonants for participles, like traveling/travelling. Finally, I have never been able to spell "occurred" or "occurring" without a dictionary. I've no idea where that one came from.

Apropos of not much, a friend of mine just reminded me that there are (she remembers reading somewhere), 13 different ways to pronounce the "ough" spelling in English. Not counting "ghoti." We tried, but we couldn't come up with more than five or six offhand.

Posted March 20, 2007 11:56 AM by Mary Frances

One item on OED list that you dismiss but that I see misspelled on a regular basis is plagiarism. For some reason, people cannot seem to accept the presence of that first i, thus rendering their forum and blog posts instantly painful to read.

Oh, and I also throw in a vote for liaison as difficult. That's another word I often see spelled incorrectly.

Posted March 20, 2007 11:57 AM by MsC

Are we supposed to kill the people who misspell it "sibboleth"?

Yes.

Posted March 20, 2007 12:05 PM by Adam Stemple

Words like "accommodate" (and "necessary" and "occasion," to add a couple) I can spell correctly once I pause to recollect their etymological derivations, because Latin -- albeit bad Latin; I'm nobody's classicist -- is one of the languages in my collection.

"Bureaucracy," though, throws me every time, because French is most definitely not one of my languages. It's something about all those words with bunches of consecutive vowels most of which are silent and the one that's left doesn't sound like you'd think it should. It's almost as counter-intuitive as Gaelic.

All in all, though, I'm a fairly decent speller. I make up for it by being a poor proofreader and a lousy typist.

Posted March 20, 2007 12:12 PM by Debra Doyle

Don't forget such words as "grammar" (ironically) and "altar." An astonishing number of people tend to spell them as "grammer" and "alter."

Posted March 20, 2007 12:14 PM by Leo

Can I just mention my own [not strictly spelling related] vocabulary horrors:

"Running the gantlet" vs. "Running the gauntlet"

The former seems to have been created out of whole cloth several years ago when it was used in relation to some sexual harassment at a military academy. This in spite of the fact that the latter spelling has been a preferred "team building" exercise in the [British] military since at least the 17th century.

"First world, Second world, Third world" vs.
"Old world, New world, Third world"

I'm not sure when the former became the preferred formulation, but it isn't historically accurate. Neither form is particularly welcome in the Third World (since they both recall the earlier colonial times).

And don't get me started on what is the first year of the Millennium...

John

Posted March 20, 2007 12:16 PM by John Peacock

candle @ #49: Me, I've never been north of Schenectady. Although I did just have to check if there was a second 'h'.

I _live_ next to Schenectady and I still have trouble spelling it--though my error is different, I always want to leave out the first "e."

However, living in Rensselaer was a lot worse.

On the general topic, I can usually just write and the correct words will come out of my fingers if I don't think about it. (Disparate, separate, and supersede are exceptions.) I can't spell out loud, however, if I'm not allowed to write down the word first; so I would flunk TNH's test, no question.

The downside is when my fingers decide to substitute commonly-typed words for similar ones without consulting me. As a lawyer, for instance, I have a hard time writing about representational sculptures without turning my comments into a discussion of laws enacted by a legislative body.

Posted March 20, 2007 12:18 PM by Kate Nepveu

MsC @ #103: plagiarism! The best thing to come out of the last round of Internet kerfluffle on the topic was that I got lots of practice typing it--though I still checked it against the Internet every time, because it refused to look right regardless. (Still does.)

Posted March 20, 2007 12:23 PM by Kate Nepveu

Larry Brennan #97: Since I live in a town with a "Cincinnati Avenue", I'm required to know how to spell the word from time to time. When I lived for a while in the city in Ohio, I noticed that the locals nearly always spelled it "Cinti".

Posted March 20, 2007 12:24 PM by Rob T.

Saskatoon Saskatchewan...

Posted March 20, 2007 12:24 PM by Serge

Walla Walla, Washington...

Posted March 20, 2007 12:26 PM by Serge

Spelling bees were never my idea of fun, although I was good at them at a child, and I don't regard spelling as much of an ability to celebrate unless and until mis-spelling gets in the way of understanding. The Mare of Casterbridge springs, unwonted, to mind.

Still, it is all good, clean fun and I stopped having problems with 'millenium' a few years back when it was rediscovered.

One thing, though. Why so down on the Oxford English Dictionary? Don't you have a fount of frustration of your own to pillory? As Spike Jones sang, speak American, boy, American. Leave us English pedants (and God knows, there are enough of us) to mumble into our beards about that particular ivory tower set in its silver sea.

Calander? Even in Scotland, where they occasionally spell it Callender if they live there, it is usually spelled calendar.

Posted March 20, 2007 12:29 PM by martyn

Serge #112: Wagga Wagga, New South Wales.

Posted March 20, 2007 12:54 PM by Fragano Ledgister

--"First world, Second world, Third world" vs.
"Old world, New world, Third world"

I'm not sure when the former became the preferred formulation, but it isn't historically accurate. Neither form is particularly welcome in the Third World (since they both recall the earlier colonial times).--

I thought that "First World" referred to capitalist industrialized countries, "Second World" to communist industrialized countries, and "Third World" to non-industrialized countries.

On-topic: I thought I was a good speller, until I read this post and found out all these words I apparently misspell all the time. Thank Ghod for Firefox! Without it, I'd just embarass--embarrass--well, you know--myself every time I tried to spell those words.
I before e, except after c, and when it says "ay" as in neighbor or weigh--except for in the words science, deity, weird, height, conscience...

I can think of seven ways to pronounce "ough" in the dialect of English I speak: off as in cough, up as in hiccough (granted, I don't see this one as much in newer books), oo as in through, ah as in thought, oh as in dough, ow as in doughty, and uf as in rough.

Posted March 20, 2007 1:03 PM by Gwen

Fragano @ 114... Winnemucca, Nevada.

Posted March 20, 2007 1:12 PM by Serge

24 - Ah, "Satellite". Having spent the last six months working on a magazine covering satellite broadcasting, I still had to ask Mr. Gates whether it's spelled right almost every time.

But proofing a magazine with a lot of Arabic names is its own kind of fun. Is it spelled "hizbullah", "hezbollah", or "hezballah"? How is the Libyan president's name spelled again?

Posted March 20, 2007 1:16 PM by Tom Scudder

candle #49:

It took us thirteen days by stolen car to get this far. Don't say you're doubtful now!

Posted March 20, 2007 1:18 PM by Tim Walters

Serge #116: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, Anglesey (Ynys Mon).

Posted March 20, 2007 1:25 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Fragano @ 119... You win.

Posted March 20, 2007 1:28 PM by Serge

Teresa @ 68

I didn't know they were yours, although it does not surprise me. I stole them from A Prarie Home Companion. It appears that they do get around . . .

Posted March 20, 2007 1:40 PM by Claude Muncey

The only ones that catch me out are "minuscule" and "supersede." It should be "supercede," dammit. Cede, precede, antecedent, supercede. And this is coming from someone who always gets twitchy about typos or misspellings.

(The OED etymology tells me that I am not so much wrong as many centuries after my time:

[a. OF. superceder, later -seder, ad. L. supersedere (in med.L. often -cedere) )

I got knocked out of the eighth-grade county championship spelling bee on the word "butte." I'd forgotten my state capitals, clearly.

And they robbed me in second grade. I was asked to spell "Earth" and was not allowed to ask them to use it in a sentence, to disambiguate the planet Earth and the earth in which plants grow. I chose the planet and began with "capital E." They booted me. They later apologized, but told me "Well, the other kid already won and we don't want to take that away from him, so you understand, right?"

Not that I am still bitter.

yse-shog, yse-shoggle, yse-shogle

I see where "spelling demonology" came from. Aren't most shoggoths yse-shoggoths?

Posted March 20, 2007 1:54 PM by Caroline

Fragano -- but can you say it?

I can, and so can Sasha. All expatriate Welsh people can, because people are always asking them to.

However, it may be worth noting that when there was a murder there a few years ago, and then another murder in Bangor, newsreaders started speculating about the possibility of a serial killer with notable lack of enthusiasm (and indeed, notable deep breaths before they pronounced it), until they started asking if the "Llanfair PG" killer had struck again. Llanfair PG is what everyone who lives there apparently calls it.

Posted March 20, 2007 1:54 PM by Jo Walton

Also -- is "restaurateur" really pronounced with an N? I would pronounce it as written, using French pronunciation rules....

I have the same problem with "barbiturate." Apparently most people pronounce it with no R.

I can spell considerably more words than I can pronounce.

Posted March 20, 2007 2:07 PM by Caroline

Serge #120: Okay! (I wasn't aware we were in a contest...)

Jo Walton #123: I'd say Llanfair PG too, I've heard it pronounced (by Welshfolk, natch) but I wouldn't attempt it myself.

Posted March 20, 2007 2:12 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Minuscule, in my mind, is opposite majuscule. I apply them to letters alone. Miniscule, while technically sort of wrong, is for everything else. I imprinted on miniscule.

Embarrass. That is too many Rs. Some words just look wrong when you spell them right-- accommodate is another, but that may be because all the letters are round. I have trouble focusing on it to count.

Caroline at 122, that is a horrible thing to do to a child.

Posted March 20, 2007 2:16 PM by Diatryma

Tom Scudder said (#117):
How is the Libyan president's name spelled again?

I understand that part of the reason for variance, at least in that particular case, is disagreement over whether one should: a) spell it using the standard transliteration of how his name is spelled in Arabic; or b) spell it as something closer to how it's actually pronounced; Libyan Arabic is evidently not the same thing as classical Arabic.

(How would one spell the English last name "St. John Smith" using a different alphabet, bearing in mind that the first part is pronounced "sinjin"?)

Posted March 20, 2007 2:18 PM by Peter Erwin

I realize I am late to the party, but...

I could cry out of love for this post.

- A Former Spelling Bee Kid, and the person who reads every document that goes out of her company for spelling and grammar.

Posted March 20, 2007 2:21 PM by Wendy

#124 - And don't forget the second month of the year, "Febyooary".

Posted March 20, 2007 2:38 PM by Lexica

You can add me to the list of people who were going to write in about the typos in "icthyology" and "restaurateur" but checked the previous comments and a dictionary first, respectively.

And Jo (123), you was robbed, but I suppose second grade is about the right time to start learning that life is unfair, and that you can get robbed by stupid people.

Me, I washed out of the (8th grade) bee early because my brane melted in the middle of "definition". The whole class's eyes were upon me, and three more is broke the camel's back.

Posted March 20, 2007 3:00 PM by Dan Hoey

I'm glad someone mentioned minuscule. Another one that I've seen in print more than once, in large bold type, is "forward" as a misspelling of "foreword". And I choose to seize this opportunity to tell my light-bulb joke:

Q: How many copy editors does it take to screw in a light globe?
A: I think you'll find that in Australian usage we'd say "light bulb", and mostly we still use boyonet fittings, but since this is intended for publication on a US-based Internet site, the US usage should be allowed to stand. On the other hand, diversity of usage on the US sites can function as a reminder of teh trues internationalism of the Internet (etc)

Posted March 20, 2007 3:12 PM by Jonathan Shaw

Coming in late - what a wonderful thread! I used to be a copyeditor for scientific publications. My brain while working was uptight and engaged in spelling and grammar minutiae. In non-work usage, I make mistakes. Editing for people where English was their third or fourth language, usually acquired in a Commonwealth country, was a blast. I loved that job. Charming people, interesting reading*.

My pet peeve misspelled word on college campuses - roommate.

The only mnemonic I can think of is for weird - we weird. I like it, it's too bad I've never had a problem spelling weird.

Spelling with transliteration is a pain. My languages were Russian and Latin. Latin makes sense, Russian makes sense in Cyrillic.

*one night I had a dream that I was in a spelling bee with the latin names of various animals. I was on stage in front of a microphone, and this disembodied voice would ask me to spell things like clupea pallasi, chionoecetes opilio, oncorhynchus gorbuscha, eumetopias jubatus, and so on. It was strange, but amusing.

Posted March 20, 2007 3:16 PM by Tania

Oops, in my message #130 I meant to refer to Caroline's #122, not #123.

While I'm back, I'll note that I was floored by an NPR commentator saying that they intentionally pronounce the month "Feb-u-ary". Harrumph.

I certainly wouldn't pronounce restaurateur with an n unless I forgot how it was spelled. Which I believe is the only reason anyone does.

I had heard that the given name "St. John" was pronounced sinjin, but I never heard