watt?
Anyway - for all intensive purposes and without further adieu, it’s not a misspelling, but “in and of itself” can dig a big hole and bury itself.
Once, we had a guy I worked with who did a transcript on a show about famous serial killers. Each fucking time, he spelled it “cereal killers”. We had quite a laughfest that day, thinking of all of the dead and mutilated corn flakes and lucky charms around the globe. I guess Cocoa Puffs would be the toughest kills, since they’re so damn round! 
Wow. Kurtis Blow?! Man, you’re going real old school on us!
Or in keeping with the thread “Old Skool”.
A few years ago I became so frustrated with the lose/loose, chose/choose, “rediculous” stuff I cpmplained about it in the CoX forums. I was instantly attacked by several other posters for being a spelling nazi. Several people claimed that the people making these mistakes may have dyslexia or that english wasn’t their first language. Maybe one or 2 of them had legit reasons, but theres no way that all of them did.
So I was labelled a jerk because I pretty much said what you have here…if you’re not going to bother to spell a common word correctly I’m going to assume you’re a moron or just plain lazy.
Everyone makes typos. I understand that. I’ve made a lot of my own mistakes in grammar. I’ve probably made some here, now. But people spelling “ridiculous” with an “e” get under my skin for some reason.
Maybe I am a jerk.
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Psh, you stomp 'em, obviously!
But what if something is *so diculous *that it is diculous all over again?!
Maybe “Bidiculous”?
No, that’s something that’d diculous in two ways. Completely different concept.
What if its diculous three times over? Tridiculous?
Close, but it’s actually tripiculous.
No, that’s an adjective describing a man with three penises.
ETA: Tridiculous, that is.
That would be Peter O’Toole.
No, wait, that’s “bidickulous”…
I’m pretty sure you’re thinking of tricockulated.
I thought that was when they put three vaccines in one shot.
No, that’s trinoculated. Jeeze, remind me to ask you where you went to school so that I can not send my kids there if I ever have any.
Professional editor checking in.
I would consider “high rate of speed” redundant because “high speed” is perfectly clear. IMO, you are correct, speed denotes a rate. My general rule of thumb is that, frequently, prepositional phrases are superfluous and do not add clarity.
“High rate of speed” sounds to me like cop-talk. Often, police types use too many words and string too many prepositional phrases together. I think they think they sound more intelligent or formal or something. For me, that verbal habit tends to set off my Bullshit Detector.
In this example, “of speed” is the prepositional phrase, which would indeed add clarity to “high rate.” It could, for example, be used to distinguish a high rate *of speed *from a high rate of accelleration. So the redundancy isn’t in the inclusion of the prepositional phrase–it’s in the substitution of “rate of speed” for the simple “speed.”
Actually, I don’t think we need to distinguish between a high rate of speed and a high rate of acceleration if, in fact, the distinction can be inferred from the context of the rest of the text.
And that, my friends, is why editors hate each other. You’ll never get two editors to agree on what is correct, because pedantry is its own reward.
You mean it’s own reword - in the context of editors.
I’ll admit, I *was *considering the phrase “high rate of speed” in a vacuum. Of course, while I can certainly think of many contexts where “of speed” or “of accelleration” would be redundant, without the surrounding text or conversation, how can we comment definitively?
Yeah, but at least we can discuss it like civilized people, instead of the “Well, 'cause!” of the hoi polloi.
… What are your feelings on the Oxford comma?