If you were scrutinizing me for irony that subtle, I wouldn’t want to work for you in the first place. In fact, I imagine you’d regularly lose smart and capable people who mysteriously developed “attitude problems.”
With seriousness appropriate to its importance. And I’m not going to be snotty about a tiny error. Unless you are.
:rolleyes: <long deep sigh>
People, please clue me in here. Are the folks who say “life’s too short to put up with all kinds of petty shit” just living in some deluded dreamworld?
Here’s the question. You send me a cover letter applying for a job with my company. You misspell the name of my company. I say, “Did you know you misspelled the name of the company?”
You say: __________
It is small stuff to write the wrong version of “to” in an office memo. It’s big stuff to send an email to a potential customer calling him “Chick” instead of “Chuck,” giving him the wrong lead time for his material, and then shrugging when he complains. Sure, you can consider his annoyance stupid. I don’t care what you think inside your head. What I care about is what you say to Chuck, what you say to me when Chuck complains to me, what you do in the future.
My company has an outstanding reputation for customer service. We don’t get that reputation by not making errors. Of course we make errors. We make typos and misspellings and grammatical fu and give out wrong information, etc. The point is how we make it right, how we go about accepting those mistakes and correcting them.
I don’t actually hire proofreaders, but I review their cover letters, resumes, sample edits, and PR and sourcing tests. You are 100% on the mark here. It’s simply unacceptable for a proofreader’s resume to contain a typo.
As to the OP, yes lose/loose makes my eyes water, as does its/it’s. It’s grating and, as someone else indicated, jumps off the page at me.
My personal peeves:
Insure/Ensure - No, they’re not interchangeable!
Regardless/Irregardless - My world actually rocked when Bill Gates said irregardless in a public forum some months ago.
One that really raises my hackles, though only expressed when spoken, is the use of a hard T on the last syllable of most multi-syllabic words ending in ‘ty’, e.g.: responsibility and opportunity. In American English, pronunciation of these and other words that end similarly has evolved to be commonly expressed with a soft T, as in the word ‘perfidy’. My head literally swings around whenever I hear someone say responsibiliTee, or opportuniTee, etc… Curiously, this only bothers me when Americans do it as I inexplicably give Englanders a pass.
I hate to steer this thread bcak toward it’s original direction, but here’s one I’ve encountered twice already today and it drives me NUTS!
“Belgium” is not an adjective! Objects from Belgium are BELGIAN! There is no such thing as a Belgium beer! There is no such dog breed as a Belgium Shepherd! You loosers!
This one used to bother me a lot (and frankly still grates a bit), but it is not a sign of ignorance. When I first heard it, I thought it indicated a lack of familiarity with the word in question, but it’s not the case. It turns out that it is a peculiarity (well, to me) of southern American (i.e. Dixie) speech, and is used by perfectly well educated and habitual users of such words. You’ll also hear it in the north from folks who grew up in environments with a strong southern influence on their speech - I’m thinking of the urban black folks I meet or hear on the radio.
As for the cover letter issue, I hold ANY typo, mispelling, or egregious grammatical error as a serious downcheck in any written document intended to make a good first impression. If a person can’t be bothered to check carefully when what s/he is writing is going to be the recipient’s first and possibly only exposure to him or her, then s/he doesn’t care enough about making a good impression to be worth my time. That includes cover letters and resumes for any position, regardless of whether or not the job in question involves any writing. It’s not the mistake itself that’s the problem; it’s the indication that the person really doesn’t give a shit what my company thinks of him or her.
Interesting. I’d noticed that peculiar affectation in conversations with African Americans too, as well as some Whites, but only since moving to the New York/New Jersey area. I just chocked it up to someone attempting to use a word they’re clearly unfamiliar with, but your explanation makes sense to me. Still, it’s like fingers on a chalkboard whenever I hear it.
Some of the salespeople where I work can’t spell ‘label.’ These are people who communicate with customers via email and they’re mispelling the major selling-point of our product.
We hired a helper for me. I refused to hire the ones that couldn’t spell ‘mock-up.’ It’s not the speed of sound. Of course, I also didn’t hire the ones that showed up in jeans and t-shirts.
It’s basic presentation. If you want people to think you can do the job, you make yourself look good. That includes spelling things correctly.
The only acceptable confusion of lose/loose is in reference to vomit. ‘I’m going to lose my lunch’ and ‘I’m going to loose my lunch’ both work, imo.
Unfortunately, I found that reins/reigns problem in a GAME MANUAL from a certain Really Really Big Company. Among other things in the manual that suggested to me that the peons who put it together were high. I suggested that the dogs of war be loosed upon the unfortunate writer or editor who let such a thing pass.
I’d say: Damn. It. The N is silent, isn’t it? It’s kind of jolting when “damnit” is written all together as one word to see that N in there. If we’re going to stick it all together to make our writing sound colloquial, I think we ought to take that letter out. YMMV.
I believe you should have said “which pleases me no end”. As I was taught back in the 1970’s (when I also learned that such constructions as 1970’sdo properly include apostrophes, in contrast to Chefguy’s training), “pleases me to no end” literally means “pleases me without actually accomplishing anything”. Meanwhile, “pleases me no end” signifies “pleases me eternally”, which is the intended meaning. However, a Google search brings up more hits for your version than for mine, so we may be in the midst of a shift from one “standard” form to another.
I was reminded of one of my pet peeves this afternoon. Silicone is NOT the same as silicon!! I suspect silicon breast implants would be rather painful; they would certainly be very hard! What does Silicone Valley produce - breast impants and lubricants?
