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!
Blaise Pascal
Only three of that 10 (weird/wierd, a lot/alot, definitely/definately) are spelling errors. The other are common word choice mistakes, mostly homophone/near homophone confusions.
Calling “lose/loose”, “then/than”, “it’s/its”, etc “spelling mistakes” is simply wrong.
DaMamaJama
why no to/too/two? FB users drive me nuts with those.
Personal pet peeve: the boyfriend can’t spell “border” (as in the boundary between two countries) – he always types “boarder” (as in someone who’s living in my house and paying me for it). CRAZY!!!
Andygirl
This makes me happy on SO many levels! And yes, friends, confusing “lose/loose”, “then/than”, “it’s/its”, etc may not be spelling mistakes exactly, but they’re certainly grammar mistakes. So it can’t hurt to learn them! Now what drives me insane is when people use apostrophes to pluralize words. You don’t need an apostrophe, people, just an “s”!!!
Gauldar
@Aaron
The opposite to fail is pass. I for won am 4 the pertection of speling mistake’s, thAy R & indangered speseas.
Wes
Verb-adverb combinations replaced by nouns/adjectives always annoy me.
Log in =/= Login
Check out =/= Checkout
Back up =/= Backup
roselle
Succeed is the opposit of fail. Lose the opposite of win.
“I win, you lose. Deal with it.” Although failing to win is a loss, indeed.
Let’s hope 2010 is a year we’ll all win without fail.
Skipweasel
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.
Norton Mansfield
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.
Marilyn Terrell
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!
D Bozko
One of the most common misspellings I see on is rediculous instead of ridiculous.
Baro
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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Aaron
