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If you’re releasing advanced copies of your new video game, you probably want to make sure everything is perfect, lest the reviewers critique you for something that won’t even be in the final version of the game. Of course, while you’re probably focusing most of your energy on the game itself, it’s generally a good idea to at least take a good look at the box art and spelling, lest you release “revelaitons” to the world.
Link Via The Consumerist
Are you sad because no one ever responds to your Tweets? Here’s a sure-fire way to get a reply. Stealth Mountain describes his account as follows (I may be wrong, but the muscles on the avatar look male):
I alert twitter users that they typed sneak peak when they meant sneak peek. I live a sad life.
So all you have to do is Tweet about a “sneak peak” and the Stealth Mountain will come after you! Link -via Everlasting Blort
How do you spell the name of the erstwhile leader of Libya? The Colonel writes it in Arabic lettering, which is not directly translatable to Roman. For most Middle Eastern names, news agencies use whatever spelling the subject prefers, but in this case, he has never stated a preference.
Instead, Libya’s Brother Leader lets a hundred flowers bloom. The banner at the top of his official website spells it, “AL Gathafi.” But if you go deeper into the site, you’ll see it variously rendered as “Al Qaddafi,” “Algathafi,” and “Al-Gathafi.” Adding to the multitude of his spellings is the increasingly ironically named “Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights.”
And that’s just the surname. Variations on his given name include Muammar, Moammar, Mu’ammar, and Moamar, and many others. Once you’ve settled on how to spell his first and last names, you then have to decide whether you want to add the Arabic prefix “al-” before his last name. Which can also be spelled “el-.” And then you have to decide whether the prefix should be capitalized.
The list of different ways that western news outlets spell the Libyan dictator’s name is all over the map. Link -via the Presurfer
Here’s a law that strikes home here at Neatorama. There have been times when I’ve proofread, edited, and corrected the same thing ten times, but somehow a typo appears in the published version. I blame extraterrestrials. John Bangsund of the Victorian Society of Editors coined the term Muphry’s Law in 2003. It states:
1. if you write anything criticising editing or proofreading, there will be a fault in what you have written;
2. if an author thanks you in a book for your editing or proofreading, there will be mistakes in the book;
3. the stronger the sentiment in (a) and (b), the greater the fault; and
4. any book devoted to editing or style will be internally inconsistent
The law also goes on to state how readers will see these errors instantly. Link -via Boing Boing
(Image credit: Flickr user Squid Ink)
I’ve always advocated that you don’t have to be intelligent to have rights, but this idea from Defective Yeti has wondrous, if perverse, appeal. What if you had to prove that you had a grasp of basic grammar before you could log on to the internet? You’ll find a rotation of these at the site, with working buttons that will determine whether you are worthy. Link -via Rue The Day!
You can find a Tumblr picture blog for almost any subject under the sun. Starbucks Spelling is dedicated to the custom of baristas writing a customer’s name on a cup, for which they sometimes get the spelling wrong. What makes this worth a look is 1. there are so many misspellings, and 2. how can anyone keep track of all the venti and grande lattes and espressos and then spell Joe G-I-O? Shown here are four different orders Omar recorded. Link -via Gorilla Mask
How well do you use apostrophes? Test yourself with this simple 10 sentence quiz. You can check each answer as you go, which may improve your performance on the later sentences. Yes, I guessed all of them correctly, even if I do make mistakes when I’m writing in a hurry. Link -via b3ta
(Image credit: Flickr user marymactavish)
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!
Is nothing sacred anymore? After decades of having the rule (it was even made into a Charlie Brown song), the British government is ditching it:
Advice sent to teachers says there are too few words which follow the rule and recommends using more modern methods to teach spelling to schoolchildren.
The document, entitled Support for Spelling, is being distributed to more than 13,000 primary schools. [...]
It says: "The i before e rule is not worth teaching. It applies only to words in which the ie or ei stands for a clear ee sound. Unless this is known, words such as sufficient and veil look like exceptions.
"There are so few words where the ei spelling for the ee sounds follows the letter c that it is easier to learn the specific words." These include receive, ceiling, perceive and deceit.
The document recommends other ways to teach pupils spelling, like studying television listings for compound words, changing the tense of a poem to practise irregular verbs and learning about homophones through jokes such as "How many socks in a pair? None — because you eat a pear."
In this edition of Spellbound, you’ll have to key in the first names of each female TV star mentioned. Capital letters don’t matter, but spelling does – so be careful. And good luck!
I only scored 40% because I are a bad spellar. Link
This got me laughing. Here is Sameer Mishra who won the Scripps 2008 National Spelling Bee. These kids get tough words but this word stumped Sameer … at least for a short moment.
Link: YouTube
