Commonly Misspelled or Misused Words Part 1
Who’s job is it too look at there work and truely assess the mistakes?
Obviously the sentence above is riddled with errors and I cringe just looking at it. I am far from an English teacher, but some of the mistakes in common print, writing, signage, etc. are unacceptable. I recently saw a professional sign boasting about the amount of daily lunch specials they offered. The problem? The sign read “MORE THEN 10 SPECIALS.” Just because it sounds like “more then” doesn’t make it so. It’s more THAN.
There are a million little mistakes we all make, so here are just a handful that I see often. I have a feeling this kind of post will resurface in semi-frequent rotation (hence the “Part 1″ in the title).
- who’s/whose: I always see “who’s” instead of “whose.” If you can’t say “who is” in place of the word, then you should be using “whose.”
- to/too: I rarely see “too” used instead of “to,” but the opposite occurs frequently, almost like people are afraid to throw the extra “o” on. If you can replace the word with “also” or “as well” or mean to say “an overabundance” (ex. too much pie), then you should be using “too.”
- truely/truly: The word is spelled t-r-u-l-y. End of story.
- seperate/separate: Always misspelled, it’s s-e-p-a-r-a-t-e.
- yea/yeah/yay:This one makes me furious. “Yea” is the opposite of nay, such as if you are voting for a board of directors in 1913. “Yeah” is an informal “yes.” “Yay” is like “hooray.” The mistake I always see made is people writing “yeah” when they mean to say “yay.”
There are many more mistakes we make every day, but since this is Dinner Topics, I’ll keep it short; this way you can remember these and you too can truly have a great time tonight that makes you say “yay” regardless of whose house you visit tonight!
Read on:
BusinessWriting.com – a GREAT quick quiz about 25 commonly misspelled words in business
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment