Same hear.
Man, I can actually hear Gaudere’s Law kicking into overdrive.
I just noticed that “misspelling” is misspelled in the OP. What are the odds?
My jaw-clencher of choice is “woah.” I don’t know what the hell that’s supposed to mean. I think it’s the word that some people think you’d say to make a horse stop. But that word is “whoa” and I will harp on this for a long time, because “woah” is not only stupid, if you have ever heard of Noah, the dude with the boat, you’d have to know that “woah” would end up being a two-syllable word, the last sound of which would not be a long O sound.
A minor irritant, to be sure, but so is that grain of sand that gets trapped in the little fold of skin between your big and second toes. 
Loose for lose drives me crazy too. I always have to re-read it. I can forgive a non-native speaker, but everyone else should have learned that in third grade. Don’t get me started on people who say off-ten.
Now, now… thats no way to behave.
Bah, that’s nothing, try having one of your superiors actually describe your behaviour as…
get this…
and i’m not kidding…
ludacrisp.
I laughed so hard I almost puked.
But it was when I asked “That the new breakfast cereal?” through my howling laughter, that HIS superior called the meeting on account of stupid.
This is the same chap who uses, on a regular basis “theirselfs” mixed in with a chorus of “dees” “dems” and “doze” (which I can properly attribute to the Chicago dialect, but still).
DanBlather: How do you pronounce often? “offen”?
It is pronounced as you described–at least it is in British English.
To be fair, this is probably the fault of Ludacris the rapper; it’s not entirely surprising that some might see his name and think that’s how the word is properly spelled, as opposed to inventing the spelling from scratch. “Ludacrisp” is still magnificent, though. 
My peeve of the moment is the overuse of reflexive pronouns. E.g.:
“You want the package? Certainly, I’ll come round and give it to yourself.”
or
“Myself and James are going to play squash.”
or
“That’s very kind of yourself.”
twitch
I definately hate it when people screw up spelling.
Priceless - well spotted!
*This * is the one that gets me all riled up.
:tears out hair:
I suppose he’s talking about the “offen” vs the “offten” pronuncations. A quick trip will reveal both pronunciations correct. Also, this usage note from dictionary.com:
Except that the triple terminal ‘h’ is not an issue of grammar. It’s to do with orthography/spelling.
Shrinking Violet: I wondered if anyone was ever going to spot that
Remember, no matter how obvious the misspelling is to you, that means YOU likely make a misspelling that’s just as heinous looking to others.
“Loose” for “lose” looks VERY obvious and stupid to me, but I tend to make the “it’s” vs “its” mistake. So I have no right to complain.
[QUOTE=LilyoftheValley]
To get back to the OP…
It’s a little bit hard. My dear intelligent husband – speaker of 5 languages, graduate of prestigious universities – has trouble spelling it. It’s the whole “lose rhymes with choose” issue. Loose, lose, choose, chose – he’s always asking me which is which. English is not his first language, so I’m cutting him some slack. Since living with him, I’ve cooled down a bit on the Spelling Nazi front, and I’m even willing to ignore these spellings in most folks’ everyday writing.
[QUOTE]
I love it that most ESL websites use The Chaos by G. Nolst Trenité to teach English pronunciation. If I were confronted with something like this at the beginning of a language class I would just give up.
I do, however, continue to have problems with which past-tense to use. I understand hanged/hung, but what about burned/burnt, lighted/lit, etc?
I rarely see mantle/mantel used correctly.
There is a local commercial running now that starts out with the printed words, “Is your child sufferring from…” The first time I saw it, I yelled out, “Whatever you’re peddling, I don’t want any!” It was a commercial for a division of the college I work for. :smack:
I just don’t understand why someone would put together a TV commercial and pay to have it run several times a day for months on end without checking it for spelling errors. This is how you are presenting your business to the public! Sloppy bastards.
Microsoft’s motto “better everyday” makes me want to stick pins in my Bill Gates voodoo doll (well, more pins anyway…). “Everyday” means mundane or ordinary. “Every day” means just what it sounds like.
Don’t even get me started on “anyways.” It’s bad enough to hear it spoken, but when people write it down it makes me think very evil thoughts.
Perhaps he died while carving it.
That’s the problem. The person obviously doesn’t read anything that would even use that word. I think that’s why I tend to (unfairly) judge someone’s intelligence by certain misspelled words. I can get over “its” and “it’s”, because it’s easy to leave out an apostrophe once in a while. But “lose” and “loose” drive me batty. I tend to think that the people who make that mistake don’t read anything that’s not on a message board or IMed to them. :rolleyes: Oops, there I go being judgmental again!
Another one that irks me (albeit to a much lesser extent) is when someone refers to a decade as the 80’s. It’s 80s with no apostrophe, as far as I’m concerned.