I notice this spelling fairly often, including on this message board, by people who seem to be making every effort to write well. Every other word is spelt correctly, but then this “thru” spelling shows up like a big turd in the middle of an otherwise immaculate lawn. What is it about writing the word “through” that makes people feel they don’t have time for an extra three key strokes?
When I was first hired as a machinist, I fought a losing battle about this very word. 15 years later, a thru hole goes all the way through the part, and that’s how it is.
What is it about through that it feels it deserves an unnecessary 3 letters?
Agreed. Also rite and valu.
When you read “thru,” do you understand what it means? If so, that makes it a word. I know I’ve contested this in the past, but I’m not as sure as I used to be. Some shit takes time.
Also “lite.” The battle on that one has pretty much been lost, though.
Same goes for nite and lite. It’s newspeak, man.
Ninja’d by Cat Whsperer.
I’ve kinda given up in stuff like that; in this text-based, 140-character world, spelling is now a form of shortcut, slang, or even dialect. “Thru” is the least of my worries 
Don’t like it, but I guess I get it.
The fact that “thru” saves three key strokes makes it worthwhile. It also is closer to a phonetic spelling, and avoids the confusion of through/though/tough.
Spelling and pronunciation make little enough sense in English anyway. Every little bit helps.
Regards,
Shodan
You’ve been on a message board where every word was spelled correctly? Now you’re just making stuff up. If message boards were a lawn, there’d be brown splotches and crab grass everywhere, and gophers coming up out of their holes to moon the gardener.
Yeah. If it conveys the meaning, then it counts. WTF does “ough” convey that “u” does not?
Unless your definition of newspeak is “spellings that annoy me”, I fail to see how anything in this thread qualifies.
It’s been a word longer then you’ve been a person. First used 1839.
I use it as “they went thru the house” as opposed to “are you through?” leaving “through” for finished, etc, and “thru” for ways and paths, etc.
The meaning is different, the spelling should be.
I guess I forgot the winky smilie. I thought the “man” would be enough to not take me seriously.
I think you’re all kind of missing the point. I’m not just complaining about bad spelling, or lazy writing, or asking whether “through” should be correctly spelt “thru”. If all the words are spelt wrong, or most of them, or there are a few phonetic spellings, I know what’s going on. But when someone has written a long post where they have clearly at least tried to spell every other word correctly, I don’t get why “thru” shows up in there. It’s not really a special case for any reason I can see. “Through” might be a bit cumbersome and not very phonetic, but we don’t see people writing “tuff”. People write “tho” instead of “though”, but only if they’re deliberately misspelling to save effort.
I’ll try to quit using it soon. Is tonite early enough?
I explained in post #13, and it’s NOT a misspelling. It’s a *alternate *spelling, and a good one as it has a purpose. It’s been a word for almost 200 years, what more do you want?
So when I write “He went thru the house…” I am not misspelling “through”.
It’ll be tuff.
Grammar Girl says: “My impression is that using the spelling t-h-r-u is kind of equivalent to dotting your i’s with little hearts: people will know what you mean, but they’ll think you aren’t a very serious person.”
Yeah, well she doesn’t even accept “donut”- she’s one of those useless grammar nazis that are holding back the language from evolving.