10 Words You Need to Stop Misspelling

A couple of these are on my pet peeve list; I bet you find a couple that are on yours as well. Enjoy The Oatmeal's humorous look at some of the most common (and annoying) spelling mistakes!



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The other day I saw a video on youtube were a dude claimed "I am not hear to tell my opinion. I am hear to tell the truth", and the video was him arguing that John Frusciante sucked. My instant though: "Sure, he can't hear. That explains his musical taste."

I'm surprised how often native speakers commit these kind of spelling mistakes, while people who learned Engish as second language don't.
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He omitted some of my favorites:

reign vs rein
--especially that new kind of monarchy, "free reign"

pedal vs peddle
-- you don't peddle a bike unless you're selling

and one I spotted last week: using segway to mean segue!
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Most of Oatmeal's examples aren't human error. They're spell checker mistakes! Thus our own pet peeves are yet another example of our increasing acceptance of the machine into our arsenal of mental tools.

A more proper response to the problem, true to the examples listed, would be to upgrade spell check programs so that they automatically correct grammar as well.
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Can we add, just for Americans, insure/ensure?

You don't take steps to insure something doesn't happen unless you're paying for an indemnity.

You /ensure/ it isn't going to get broken because you don't want to pay to insure it.
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