# A thread for fun spelling/grammatical mistakes in the wild **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 29, 2026, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-fun-spelling-grammatical-mistakes-in-the-wild/1027144 "2026-01-29T07:52:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2026, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-fun-spelling-grammatical-mistakes-in-the-wild/1027144/41 "2026-01-30T16:38:32Z")
I’ve never heard an articulated lorry pronounced ‘Sem-ee’ until this thread. Anecdotally, (to my ears) I hear the common words with ‘semi-’ as a prefix pronounced as ‘sem-ee,’ but any nonce words using it as a prefix pronounced as ‘sem-eye.’ Of course, YMMV (as well as your ears). ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2026, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-fun-spelling-grammatical-mistakes-in-the-wild/1027144/42 "2026-01-30T16:39:10Z")
Two from my teaching jobs. First, the painful one: I was reading a story written by a White boy. He drew a stick figure in a chair and wrote about “I was at hom waching TV”. The next page showed black stick figures jumping in through a window and said “THEN I WAS ATTAKT BY NIGAS but I kild them all” My blood ran cold when I read that page. I was a first-year teacher, and I had no idea what to do: do I go to the counselor? Do I write an office referral? Do I call parents? Eventually I figured out what to do: I taught him the correct spelling. “N-I-N-J-A-S.” \*\*\*\* Years later, a child was writing about a festival she’d gone to. It was a great paragraph, but I leaned over her shoulder and whispered, “Honey, ‘funk music’ is spelled with an ‘n’, not a ‘c’.” ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2026, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-fun-spelling-grammatical-mistakes-in-the-wild/1027144/43 "2026-01-30T16:41:46Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > Someone held their finger on the shift button too long. Maybe that’s just a particularly potent strain of the virus. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2026, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-fun-spelling-grammatical-mistakes-in-the-wild/1027144/44 "2026-01-30T16:45:55Z")
> [@TRC4941](#): > > Please **Extinquish** Cigarettes Before Entering. To be fair, cigarettes do stinq. ---
**Author:** ![iamatractorboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iamatractorboy/32/21261_2.png) [@iamatractorboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamatractorboy)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2026, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-fun-spelling-grammatical-mistakes-in-the-wild/1027144/45 "2026-01-30T18:47:34Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > parents? > > Eventually I figured out what to do: I taught him the correct spelling. “N-I-N-J-A-S.” That is priceless 😆 ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2026, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-fun-spelling-grammatical-mistakes-in-the-wild/1027144/46 "2026-01-31T01:40:38Z")
> [@Cwturner](#): > > Or die-rear/diarrhea no, no, it’s dire rear. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2026, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-fun-spelling-grammatical-mistakes-in-the-wild/1027144/47 "2026-01-31T01:57:47Z")
That was the standard term in Philly for two houses attached on one side. In fact I lived for 47 years in such a house in Montreal, but I’m not sure what they called it here. To me duplex means a 2 storey apartment building, one on each floor. One of the funniest appeared in the New Yorker back in the days when they regularly used such things as column fillers (they still do them but very occasionally). Someone had written to a columnist like Ann Landers (this was not necessarily who it was) to complain about a late-night host who regularly sign off, “For [cohost] and me”, claiming it should have been “and I”. The columnist commiserated with the writer and added that grammatical standards were in decline, get used to it. I think the New Yorker printed this without comment. ---
**Author:** ![JohnGalt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johngalt/32/184_2.png) [@JohnGalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnGalt)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2026, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-fun-spelling-grammatical-mistakes-in-the-wild/1027144/48 "2026-01-31T04:20:23Z")
The local newspaper had a long story about faith practices of Muslims. The headline at the top of the page was **Muslims Prey on Fridays**. This was just after 9/11. ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2026, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-fun-spelling-grammatical-mistakes-in-the-wild/1027144/49 "2026-01-31T04:40:34Z")
I’ve written here about this one before. My high-school-aged daughter asked me to read over the report she’d just written on the August Wilson play **Fences**. Turn out that spellcheck won’t notice anything amiss if you forget to put the “n” in “fences”. ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2026, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-fun-spelling-grammatical-mistakes-in-the-wild/1027144/50 "2026-01-31T05:47:49Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > no, no, it’s dire rear. Which I _think_ goes all the way back to Art Linkletter’s “Kids Say The Darndest Things.” ---
**Author:** ![fachverwirrt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/94ad74/32.png) [@fachverwirrt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fachverwirrt)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2026, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-fun-spelling-grammatical-mistakes-in-the-wild/1027144/51 "2026-01-31T06:45:34Z")
Many years ago I subbed occasionally in a local school district. At the high school there was a poster laying out the dress code. Among the prohibitions, alongside saggy pants and offensive logos, was a line stating “no mid rifts”. Beside the obvious spelling mistake I found it striking that they weren’t merely prohibiting midriff-baring clothes, but seemingly the entire part of the body. > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > First, the painful one: I was reading a story written by a White boy. He drew a stick figure in a chair and wrote about “I was at hom waching TV”. The next page showed black stick figures jumping in through a window and said “THEN I WAS ATTAKT BY NIGAS but I kild them all” > > My blood ran cold when I read that page. I was a first-year teacher, and I had no idea what to do: do I go to the counselor? Do I write an office referral? Do I call parents? > > Eventually I figured out what to do: I taught him the correct spelling. “N-I-N-J-A-S.” Tangential: my oldest nephew, when he was, I don’t know, eight or so, was obsessed with ninjas (particularly in the context of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) and fixated on, as he called them at the time , “bad dyes” (particularly Shredder). Unfortunately for my sister-in-law, he learned how to say it correctly; as they were standing in line at the grocery store he spotted two women in niqabs and excitedly pointed them out to his mom, yelling “LOOK MOM, BAD GUYS!”. ---
**Author:** ![Railer13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/railer13/32/9742_2.png) [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2026, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-fun-spelling-grammatical-mistakes-in-the-wild/1027144/52 "2026-01-31T18:29:06Z")
I knew I remembered seeing this a few years ago. I found it after a quick search. This headline is from 2017, in a newspaper in Pratt, Kansas, population 6500. **Students get first hand job experience** > **[Grammatical error creates a VERY dirty newspaper headline](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/lifestyle/article-5036643/Grammatical-error-creates-dirty-newspaper-headline.html)** > > The Pratt Tribune, a tri-weekly newspaper out of Pratt, Kansas, printed the headline, 'Students get first hand job experience,' over the weekend, and the publication's grammatical error has gone viral. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-fun-spelling-grammatical-mistakes-in-the-wild/1027144.md?page=2)