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Although I enjoy the english language, I have no problems with folks misspelling things on a group like this....it's kind of like not getting upset when you see all sorts of non-existent words on the newspaper sports page.


The non-sports part of the paper should be checked more closely. Spell checker is a start, but only a start. I can generally find a half dozen or more errors in any daily newspaper. I doubt that much proofreading is done these days.


When I was in the army in Korea, a captain had a sign on the wall "Have you reached your level of incompetance?". I pointed out the wrongly spelled word and he said he had that sign up 5 years and I was the first person to notice it.

Frank

To be honest folks,
the words that catch me out all the time are rather simple ones, especially those that use the letters i and e in them:

• Thier/Their.
• Wieght/Weight.
• Hieght/Height.
• Recieve/Receive.

It's a real nuisance!.

"I before E except after C."

Except, of course, that three out of the four examples Mike quoted are exceptions to the rule!

"I before E, except after C, or when sounded as A, as in neighbor or weigh"

How wierd

I offer another exception (which is admittedly a VERY common typo and I have made it myself): cieling.

One of my German pet peeves is Maschiene instead of Maschine (machine). Schiene means track or rail... if I read that I usually comment: "No, your washing machine is in no way related to railway or any other tracks

@trumpy:

And I already started a thread last year on www.leo.org to figure whether this downunder "thier" is a common variant due to the kiwi vowel shift phenomenon that I had just heard of before (being not a native speaker).

Interestingly though, ciel is the French for "sky," which is kind of related.

Indeed, yet the French word for ceiling is plafond... (which used to be very common in Austria half a decade ago).

Like a lot of you, I surf a variety of forums, covering a range of topics. Many of these other forums (fori? ) have spell checkers for your posts.

I find the one at Fine Homebuilding to be the best ... I used to think I was a poor typist; now I KNOW I am! I can only hope ECN will someday have such a feature.


(Silly typo fixed - thanks TR!)

[This message has been edited by renosteinke (edited 01-17-2007).]

Indeed

On the other hand, on board I frequently use forced(!) a spell check on its users for some time... and most of them hated it! I think this was mostly courtesy of one guy who absolutely doesn't pay attention to what he's typing. Compared to THAT guy, everybody here should get an award for perfect spelling and grammar, so if we had him over here that discussion would be completely pointless... or, in dry words, I don't think we have anyone with real sloppy spelling here.

In the other hand, I absolutely don't mind one or another friendly or funny remark about misspelled words and ask everybody not to be offended by such comments but take it as an appreciation of their work and of language!
To put it in poetic words: if someone is pointing out mistakes in your post at least s/he read it!

Edit: nobody is perfect

[This message has been edited by Texas_Ranger (edited 01-18-2007).]