I host a trivia quiz at a bar in Seattle. Every once in a while I have a spelling round. This was inspired by reading threads here and coming across the word “definately” one too many times. I included “privilege” in that round as well. My next spelling round will include “memento” and “restaurateur.”
Of course, there is! argumEnt. (I couldn’t resist. 
)
But there is “eat me”.
Our Honda dealer has a row of parking spaces with lovely painted signs reading “Complementary Customer Parking”. I mean, yeah, I guess it goes well with the building (they’re different shades of gray).
And of course: “Sorry for the inconvience”.
Time to start running down a third. Or try memorizing instead of memorizig.
The one that bugs me is that there is no “z” in use. U-S-E. Not U-T-I-L-I-Z-E. There’s just not much excuse for the word ‘utilize’ to exist.
Also no “z” in please, and the word has three vowels. If I could just smack everyone who writes “plz” (and its bastard brother “thx”) I’d be very happy.
I was probably halfway through college before I finally figured out the difference between these two.
The way I remember them is i.e. means “in explanation” and e.g. means “example given.”
Not exactly right, but it helps me keep them straight.
There’s a sign on the wall at a store I frequent which reads:
Please do not remove “carts” from store.
I can’t, for the life of me, figure out why someone thought it was necessary to put quotation marks around carts. I mean, they are in fact … carts?
They’re also buggies.
If their’s anyone I can’t stand its a palindromic braggart.
There is only one ‘s’ in “bus.” There are two in the plural, not three, and they are not together - “buses.” A buss is another word for “kiss.”
Same goes for the stuff that comes out of an infection: there is only one ‘s’ in “pus.” Otherwise, it’s your face, or a cat.
“Get that puss off your face!” - Kevin Meaney’s mom
I dunno if this counts, but I was on the stand yesterday answering questions for a defense lawyer who could not understand the difference between bleeding “beneath the scalp” and “inside the skull”.
Didn’t matter if I used medical words (subgaleal hemorrhage, subdural hematoma) or “puddle of blood inside the scalp but outside the skull, versus bleeding on the brain”, he just didn’t get the distinction.
The jury did, fortunately. Smarter than the defense.
One of the traditional hazings for women in surgery (at least when I was a surgery resident, back in the 1980’s) was to ask us how to spell “pus-sy.”
Pronouced pus. Cee.
The best answer I heard was “purulent”.
For whatever reason (and I can’t for the life of me suss out the origins) some people use quotations for emphasis. Because, I suppose, an underscore, bold or italic type, or for cryin’ out loud even parenthetical asterisks just don’t provide enough emphatic variety. “Sheesh.”
One more: there is no such word as “perogative”. It is your prerogative, not the other way around. Maybe if people would pronounce it properly it might help.
I must agree. The one I see is You will love our “home-cooked” meals.
Putting those quotes there means they are not home-cooked, surely.
But there IS in “fridge” which is extremely unfair.
I think the worst thing ever is probably unneeded quotes. As in a sign reading:
There is “no” food allowed in this room "at all"
Nowadays, we all have bold and italic capabilities and we should all know how to use them. Or at the very least, use capital letters or grab a sharpie and underline the words. Seriously.
Uh, nevermind. I thought I’d read the whole thread before posting.
That’s the one I was originally* coming in here to mention. There was a store back home in Nova Scotia with a professionally-made light-up sign that said “Kendra’s Convience”. Gah!!!
I was at the doctor’s office yesterday and there was a little bucket proclaiming “Umbrella’s Only”.
I get a kick out of misspelled food on menus. If they can’t spell it, how the heck do they pull off cooking it? 
Thanks, lissener, for fighting my ignorance on “restaurateur”.
I have a friend with whom I got into a yelling argument with because he insisted that there was an “a” in definitely. This is a guy who claims he can spell better than I can. Ha! It is to laugh.
And one more:
There’s no “o” in “dalmatian”. It’s not a dalmation. It’s a dalmatian. I read a website once that said to think of the “o” as another spot, and so the “o” isn’t in the word because the dalmatians need all their spots.
- On preview, I had originally typed “priginally”. Ha!
Hey, rinni, thanks for reminding me: the name of that dog that so many people (even owners) misspell is shih tzu. There is no reference to feces in its name at all.
Yes! That too. I also hate when people pronounce it “shit zoo”. It’s not a poop exhibit.
There’s a sign in the toilets at work that’s eating at my brain at the moment - “Please be considerate of the person that has to use this toilet after you”. Now I’ll cop to the fact that I don’t know that it’s wrong, but something keeps niggling in my brain and says “people aren’t thats they’re whos”.