Let us now gather, we who are teh Straight Dopers, teh followers of Cecil Adams, Sage of Our Age. An urgent problem of critical importance has been identified, and we shall have teh honor of solving it first. For too long it has crippled our industries and our intelligence. Teh time has come to resolve this issue once and for all.
“Teh” is a correct alternate spelling of that word usually spelled “the”.
With this simple statement, we step out of teh Dark Ages into an Enlightenment. Millions of office workers will no longer waste billions of dollars in manhours going backwards on their keyboards. An estimated $200 billion dollars will be saved in teh United States alone, to say nothing of teh savings in eyeglasses rendered necessary by teh strain of looking for and correcting what is now teh accepted spelling. “Teh” also rewards left-handers for being faster typists with their dominant hand, encouraging equality throughout teh English-speaking world. And with this groundbreaking development, new ones can only follow. Perhaps someday, our children and grandchildren may spell “that”, “taht”, use “they’re” and “their” or “you’re” and “your” interchangeably, or even be allowed to leave quotation marks and even parentheses open. Teh possibilities are limitless.
So, please step up and pledge yourself to teh brave new language of tomorrow. Spell your words correctly, either way you like. Spice up your writing with both common usages. Tell your family, your friends, your boss. Make teh commitment. Remember, teh world of teh future starts with you.
Linguistic evolution by way of sloppy typing? I don’t hold with it though I do have to admit that “teh” is a common one for me along with “form” where I meant “from”. The most annoying one to me since switching to an MS split style “natural” keyboard is failing to hit “c” in some words. I’m an Oracle database analyst so mistyping “select” along with form/from is a particular pain in the ass. Nautural keyboard my sxx.
FWIW I had to correct the word select, and once again now.
I am ambivalent about bad spelling and grammar, sometimes a misspelled word really gets to me, and other times i get pissed off because someone is nitpicky enough to point it out- not just on the message board, either.
Grammar questions, really tough ones that you see in GQ sometimes, they bother me because I think in the long run, a language is not about whether the correct word is “whether” or “if”, or whether it’s “He runs as fast as us” or “he runs as fast as we”-
No, language is about communication. So if an easier way to get your point across comes along, I’m all for evolving to “Teh.”
I really like hypenated words though, like stomach-ache and ice-cream and week-end and to-night…
They just look old and charming.
I think I’ll remember that for chat. anyone who has run into me knows that I ahve a tendancy to misplace the letters in words when I’m typing fast. Really I’m just using generally accepted alternate spellings, honest.
