I don't think that's being nit picky at all and we've had long discussions on this here. I don't mind it so much when someone misspells something but when it's a newspaper,sign or something else that is up there for the public to see...there is no excuse for it.

Joyce, i'll apoligise in advance. I have a terrible time spelling since i had a stroke and everyone here have been very kind to me in spite of my spelling. I look up words sometimes but those words i usually have spelled right.So please overlook my spelling and i'm glad you're here.
mwoods,i agree with you and i would never ask for a job that included much spelling. LOL
vickie

Yaayyy..another spelling nitpicker. Do you fly into a tizzy over misused punctuation too? I totally agree with mwoods.

I shudder when I see misspellings on public notices, but personal correspondence with phonetic spelling doesn't particularly bother me. OTOH, I gag at the present spelling of the plural for bus.

What really aggravates me is my own error of skipped words -- my brain speed is unknown but considerably faster than my reading speed which is about 700 wpm, however, my typing speed is only about 100 wpm, so what I meant to say sometimes gets left behind on the journey between brain and fingers. Spell Check will catch most misspellings, but it has no capability for figuring out if any word got lost.

Has anyone ever tried to contact the company the presented the misspelled word?

Another grammar maven here...lol. My favorite sign at a supermarket was "Pork Lions," also "Chicken Breats." LOL

I does annoy me when people who should know better, don't. Like newspaper reporters and others who make a living with words. Is grammar even taught in school nowadays? Just wondered. How about sentence diagramming? Never hear about it now, but I used to like diagramming sentences when I was in school.

Bad grammar and rebellious fingers are two different animals that on the surface may be easily be mistaken for each other.

Well, I'd like to think we all forgive mistyping in our posts, but I got the impression the poster was referring to an error by the GW itself, which is indeed unacceptable.

Nobody seems to proofread anymore. We stayed overnight at a hotel at the weekend, for a family thing, and there was even a typo on the hotel TV channel listing. My dear SIL, who is a teacher, was so amused, she told the receptionist (charmingly) who said it was a misprint. No, SIL, responded sweetly, it's an error.

Wow, I would sure like to get some of those pork lions. rofl. I'm pretty bad at punctuation, and not the best at spelling, so spell check has been a real eyeopener to me. I'm learning how to spell words I've written wrong my whole life. When a little red line appears under my words, I am usually taken by surprise. Then I look it up and say "oh, my, THAT'S how you spell it?"

Meldy, how is bus made plural now? I've always used busses. But, I just looked it up online and the single as well as the double ess is now acceptable. I'd think with just one ess the word would be pronounced to rhyme with mooses. BTW, it really bothers me when the name Brian becomes Brain. I worked with a nurse who always did this. And in this room is "Brain" Smith. LOLOL.

Earlier this week, on her way to visit my sister, my wife saw a sign outside a little pub advertising a "Three Coarse Meal" for £7.95.
My own favourite (UK spelling) was the sign in a local butchers shop advertising "Frozen Dog Mince"

Dog mince? Isn't mince similar to USA's hamburger?

Calliope~ the major dictionaries give both spellings now. Local schools all have signs saying "Buses Only". The Metrobus stops are marked "Buses Only". Even highway signs will say "Buses This Lane". Every time I see 'buses' my eye reads it as 'abuses' and I do a mental hitch twice, once that there is no preceding 'a' and again to change the pronunciation from booses to buhsses.

The greatest thing on my computer is the spell check button on the Google tool bar. It has really helped me with mt Freudian typos.

But how does spell check help with homonyms? I.e., baited, bated; baize, bays, beys; bawl, ball (I remember a poster saying she balled when watching movies. LOL)

Calliope, they must be Penn State Pork Lions..lol

I thought bussing meant kissing and busing was traveling by bus. The plural of bus would be buses and buss would be busses. Has that changed now?

And what's the plural of a computer serial bus?

(Maybe she was watching horror movies: I 'ball' watching them. Curled up into a tight ball, not looking . . .)

Blueheron, well, what about a word like mat? The plural is of course mats, but the past tense is matted, not mated. The double consonant makes the preceding vowel short, not long. So, like Meldy I see the word buses with a long vowel. It's not at all unusual in the English language to stick in an extra letter, or take one out at will with very little regard to rhymes, reasons or rules. I would really, really hate to have to learn it as a second language.

Buss has meant kissing to me so now when I go downtown and is means getting two busses it might not be such a bad deal.

Per Mrs. DiMateo....some 55 years ago...or perhaps more.
"For words ending in a single consonent, preceded by a single vowel, double the final consonant before adding 'ed' or 'ing'."
Wow!! That came from the depths of the old brain!!
Linda C

My problem is I usually "wing it" on spelling and then go and look it up to see if I was right. Mostly because if I'm typing in the response box on GW and go elsewhere I lose my post and have to start over. I never could remember the rules for punctuation and grammar...just go by what looks right.

For all those who enjoyed the hilarious book by Lynne Truss, "Eats, Shoots & Leaves". I'm enjoying an omnibus edition of her 3 comic novels which make me laugh out loud. Just mentioning in case you need a good summer read. (There's lots re gardening and cats...). josh

Here is a link that might be useful: The Lynne Truss Treasury

So following the wise words of Mrs. DiMateo if you read these books you will have been Trussed? :)