I know it’s in the dictionary and a legitimate Scrabble word, but I don’t have to like it! When an official financial reporting system is set up and the date parameters titles are “from” and “thru” (I had to retype that because I automatically typed “through”), it fills me with grrr.
But I have to admit “doughnuts” is starting to look like it has too many letters. :smack:
The one that drives me batshit crazy is “prolly.” I hate, hate, hate that word! Grrr.
I was proud of my spelling ability when I was a kid in grade school, so you can imagine my disappointment when my answer, “T-H-R-U,” turned out not to be the correct response to the teacher’s request to spell it.
Those bloody highway signs were wrong, dammit. Wrong!
ETA: I hate “prolly.” Seriously, seriously hate it.
I hate, hate hate when people spell the word though like tho. Drives me nuts.
I must be really old-fashioned at 31 (or maybe it’s because I’m a writer) because seeing e-mail speak is really irritating, too. BAU, ASAP, FWIW - gah!
Whenever I see “thru” I hear it in my head pronounced the way Scotty pronounced it while giving Kirk and Spock directions to Gary Seven’s location in “Tomorrow Is Yesterday.”
Scotty: Bearing 27 degrees, 4 meters, thru!
[True Geeks: I won’t even pretend that’s an accurate quote. Chill out.]
I am a “through”-writing person, (I still write hiccough), but I will cut the programmer slack if you are talking about column headings or field names. Since the shorter spelling is widely recognized and has the same number of characters as “from,” it simplifies many aspects of design layout to use the shorter version.
(I will admit I used to grit my teeth when I encountered the COBOL keyword “THRU,” (that would NOT accept “THROUGH” as a variant), as it was not used in layouts, per se. However, for an actual screen or report, I will grrrrit my teeth and accept thru.)
Jeez, and here I hate “through”. I’ll go to ridiculous lengths to avoid using the correct spelling, and when I have to do it I always stick a “T” on the end.
“Throughtput on the 4gig path has been throttled.”
Oh, tough! Just slough it off! 
Grrrr.
Bite.
Sting.
We, in certain other parts of the world, get a double dose of ‘grrr’ when we see “from - thru”, because not only does the spelling grate on our nerves, but we don’t even use “from - through”. We use “from - to” or “from - until”.
“From Monday through Wednesday”, sounds to my ears like it hits Wednesday running, and by the time whatever it is can stop, it’s already the following Saturday.
Until and to each suffer from the possible confusion that the period ends at the beginning of the last time frame. (It is more common with years or months than days, however.)
From January until April = = => Period is January, February, March, until it stops at midnight between March 31 and April 1 OR until it stops April 30.
From January to April = = => Period is January, February, March, to midnight between March 31 and April 1 OR until it stops April 30.
From January through/thru April = = => Period is January, February, March, and continues through the month of April, ending at midnight between April 30 and May 1.
Most credit card expiration dates are given in that way so that the cardmember knoes that the date includes the month shown: “THRU 07/09” extends all the way through the month of July, 2009, and is no longer valid in August.
I do not present this as any clearly logical expression; I note that that is the current usage adopted in this culture.
Okay, now I’m going to have to make an ancillary control structure in Perl using “from…through” just to spite you.
Stranger
Fair point.
I just checked my debit card, and above the stamped date, it simply has printed “expires”. I then checked my credit card, and above the dates, it just says “valid dates”. So there’s no indication of whether it’s the beginning or the end of the month. Maybe there’s some sort of legal precedent or something here, that this is good enough. On the other hand, I have seen cards and forms where the wording is “From start xx/xx/xxxx until end xx/xx/xxxx”.
Thru and tho are some of the few obvious survivors of the simplified spelling movement, which proliferated in the early-to-mid 20th century and mostly found a home in newspapers, most notably the Chicago Tribune, who gave us such dusty little gems as brot, thoro, thruout, aile, frate, cigaret, and drouth. Other creations have since been accepted as standard, including analog, dialog, and catalog.
I would have thought that the Hearst papers were more notable for their egregious offenses in this area.
Don’t like “thru?”
Try looking at American print media through the eyes of the rest of the English-speaking world. Spelling reform made great gains in the U.S., and has contributed in no small degree to the persistent and unfair characterization of the United States as a nation of ignorant, subliterate, backwater yokels.
Dear god, how American spelling grates on the sensibilities – especially when you encounter it somewhere that it ought not to be – like in the context of something produced start-to-finish within our own borders.
“Odor” is every bit as jarring as “thru,” to the rest of the us English speakers – but I’ll bet there aren’t many of you left who even blink. 
Makes me want to slotter someone.
Do not.
Yeah, chill out. Here, have a draught beer. 
Per the OP: Pity the technical writers who have to document such an aberration. Larry Mudd’s post reminded me of the many times I had to write manuals for products that were primarily for sale in the US, and I had to use spellings that I was told in grade school were wrong, wrong, wrong!
But in grade school, they didn’t pay me for spelling. If our American clients were willing to pay me (and they did, very well), I could spell odor, thru, check, and center instead of odour, through, cheque, and centre. 
The only thing that should say “thru” is a MIDI port.
(synth-geek joke)
Good point. One of the strong supporters of this was Melvil Dui.
Seeing “thru” in the written form does looks odd to me. I tend not to use it. I do use tho’ in places other than the SDMB (because it does irritate folk here, so I try to avoid doing that), but it’s just an ongoing habit of mine, especially in email. I’m the only weirdo I know who uses it.
“Prolly” was something I picked up two or three years ago, but have since dropped. No particular reason why, not particularly against it. It was just one of those things, like a fad, as far as I’m concerned.
There’s loads of other spelling stuff which I see on messageboards these days which does get my attention, but I just let it go. Can’t really regiment how folk from different backgrounds communicate, I feel. Mind you, I’m still trying to tell my brain that “normalcy” isn’t a spelling mistake. I grew up with “normality”, y’see. (Although I’m far from it!)
I always figured that THRU was a carry-over from COBOL. (I know - old-tyme geek here).