I was once a professional proofreader-we are a dying breed, I fear!

Two I remember:

A nearby town, which I will allow to remain anonymous, actually installed a "Welcome to..." sign with the town name misspelled. It took about a week for anyone to notice (okay, to be fair, it was a week before anyone called the Town Office. They may have noticed before then.)

Pet Hate Mistake, seen in the press:

The Smith's have spent five years renovating their now-lovely home.

The entire article, in THE local daily newspaper, carried on that way. I marked it in red and sent it to the editor. How are educators to bring up the little grammarians in the way they should go if the growing cherubs see that sort of stuff in print?

The worst ones are wilful and fashionable:

2 for 'to'
and
4 for 'for'

There must be others.

I once refused to buy a book which had one of those in the title. Well - the writer was obviously not aiming its wares at the likes of me.

Not so bad using them for text messages, where they started, but unforgiveable to put them in Proper writing. It was bad enough trying to get kids to differentiate between 'to', 'too' and 'two; and 'four' and 'for' before this began - what can teachers do now? Nothing I'm afraid it's all lost, like apostrophe is to the greengrocer's apostrophe (and misspelling: 'Tomatoe's/Potatoe's for sale') which Martin pointed out.

Dido

Here in New York, half the population writes "your" for "you're". And yes, I've seen schoolteachers do it! Very sad.

There's a famous typo in the first edition of Beverly sills autobiography "Bubbles." I had read about the typo back in the day, perhaps the late 1970s, and always remembered it. (I worked as a proofreader at the time.) So a few years ago when I saw a used copy of "Bubbles" in a book store, I opened to the first page, where memory told me the typo occurred. Sure enough, the word "public" was missing its "l."

When my son was in the 6th grade I was discussing his spelling with his teacher and counselor and they said I shouldn't worry to much about spelling because these days everyone has spell check, etc on their computers! AAAHHH!

Deborah...or even "shouldn't worry TOO much..."

(Sorry - I'd normally have let it go, but on a thread about spelling errors, I couldn't resist it...!)

But I entirely agree with your sentiments.

Deborah....I was told exactly the same thing about my son's script. Everyone types now so don't worry about it. My husband was furious but could get no support from the administration or even the PTA.

The "dumbing down" of American education continues....

Text messaging and certain web sites are in the process of changing the English language forever. We might as well get used to it. But sometimes it's the older folks who should know better but don't seem to know certain correct spellings. While proofreading a letter from a little theatre group which was seeking a grant, I caught the following: She is an alumni of the(can't remember the name) theatre school.

I recently saw a post asking about "Robinson Caruso." I was tempted to ask if he was Enrico's lesser-known brother.

How about the misuse of complementary and complimentary? And paricularly in places like the NY Times.

On the marquee-type sign in front of the local elementary school was written "Congradulations, students." On what, winning the spelling bee?

My worst pet peeve with our local paper is that they hyphenate where ever the end of the line is, no matter how dumb it makes the divided word appear. I agree--how can we expect children to learn anything when adults are so lazy? It can't be for line space because nearly every time there will be room on the last line to have fixed things. Even my very first old word processing program had a button to hyphenate correctly.

These supposedly came from actual classified ads in city newspapers.

"Our experienced mom will care for your child. Fenced yard, meals, and smacks included."

"Great Dames for sale."
______

Re: The use of hypens. I get regular updates from the Chicago Manual of Style, and the editors have a great sense of humor. The following Q & A gave me a chuckle:

Q. A bill has been proposed dealing with price gouging. Would it be correct to write Anti-Price Gouging Act or Anti-Price-Gouging Act? I have seen it both ways.

A. Although hyphens are often optional, I would hate to see a Gouging Act, even if it were an anti-price one, so I would use both hyphens. A fancier fix would be to use an en dash after "anti": AntiÂPrice Gouging Act (per CMS 6.85), although to my eye that still suggests a somewhat gory scene.

______

And of course some of the best mis-spellings come from church bulletins. These get circulated by e-mail somewhat frequently. They are more proofreading mistakes. Some of my favorites:

The outreach committee has enlisted 25 visitors to make calls on
people who are not afflicted with any church.

The Pastor would appreciate it if the ladies of the congregation
would lend him their electric girdles for the pancake breakfast next Sunday
morning.

The third verse of Blessed Assurance will be sung without musical
accomplishment.

Potluck supper: prayer and medication to follow.

Pastor is on vacation. Massages can be given to church secretary.

The choir invites any member of the congregation who enjoys sinning to join the choir.

I once stayed in a hotel in Turkey that offered an international telephone "coonection". Perfect for lovers, of course, but I'm not so sure about the rest of us.

One of the AFL football teams, Essendon, have the nickname of the Bombers. The cheer squads for AFL teams spend hours every week making large banners of crepe paper with messages on them for the team to run through as they come on to the ground (see link).

One day their banner said 'Go the Bombres'.

PS Do not cheer for this team, follow the Adelaide Crows *VBG*

Here is a link that might be useful: AFL Banner

There are a couple of spelling mistakes I have been wondering about as a foreign learner of English for over 50 years, "definate" for definite, "lavendar" for lavender. Because of their frequency I wonder if they are becoming accepted as variants?

One mistake that is quite incomprehensible to me is "would of" for would have in a phrase such as "who would of thought..." Of what? I realize it's a transcription of the spoken would've, but I still don't understand the lack of logic.

I stayed at a very cheap hotel in Paris years ago where I was assured the staff spoke English (they didn't). There was a large sign in the lobby advising guests to lock up their valuables which read, Not Responsible for Rubs in Rooms.

As for more recent typos, the word "magizines" appeared on our elementary school lobby bulletin board to announce the annual magazine sale fund-raiser. There was also another misspelled word (I can't remember what it was now, but it was in big gold letters right at the entrance for all to see) on the back-to-school "Keys to Success" bulletin board. It was up for over a week before I couldn't stand it anymore and pointed it out to the office secretary who, to her credit, was mortified and took it down immediately.

Seen in our local U.S. gov't Post Office: "Do not sit your child on the counter."

Signs in our local grocery store chain: "Can vegetables", "Can meat", etc.

Kath, Bombres makes sense, in a way, where theatre, centre and sceptre are normal spellings. :-)

Marianne, as frequent as the misspellings of definite and lavender are, I don't think they are acceptable variants...yet. Defanite/definate are the usual misspellings, but I don't know which one will win. I think the lavendar spelling comes from the rhyming of it with calendar. An acceptable variant that I still don't like is collectable. I guess it became so common that the dictionary people considered it inevitable.

The only logic in would of is people trying to write what they are hearing. That and they are accustomed to the sort of and kind of idioms.

I'm so behind the times, usually, that I am often mystified by new expressions. I was running across Walla or Wala frequently in postings, but I had no idea what it meant. Then one day it dawned on me: Voilà !

I too used to be a proofreader. Mistakes are often made by even august publications. I caught a violation of "principal/principle" in an article in Time magazine a few years ago. "Your/You're" and "Their/There" also annoy me when I see violations. But these are usage issues, not misspellings.
There is a "misspelling" photo that appears occasionally on certain political sites of internet blogs. In this photo a young man holds a sign in support of some right-wing political issue. The sign is directed at the left-wing opposition protestors... "Support (whatever the issue is) or go home morans". He meant "morons". Classic pot kettle black.

Years ago I was editing a travel article for a client about the San Diego, California area. This was before illegal immigration became such a hot issue here. The article was talking about the proximity of Tijuana, Mexico to San Diego, and that a visit there made a nice day trip from the U.S. city. The author had accidently written about Mexico and the U.S. "boarders." Gave me a good laugh.

On sports discussion boards you find that the number one mis-spelling is "looser"--meaning "loser." It became so common on my favorite board that the more careful denizens began calling each "lo0sers."

That should be "each other." Good grief.

(Along these lines, I wonder how many idiotic sentences are caused when the Windows autoselect feature selects/deletes more words than the writer intends.)

Here is one fresh from our drive in to work this morning:

"Strickly customers only"

I kid you not.

And Frieda - "good one!"

I wonder how many misspellings are due to people spelling phonetically. I was taught this way, and truly believe my spelling suffers for it...especially as the rules of the English language make no sense some times. This reminds me of my husband telling me about a conversation with someone who works at a Printing place in our area. They print things for a living. When his co-worker called, he was told to send a file to the FTP server that was labeled "Print." The lady at the Printing place said "Send it to print...P-R-E-N-T." The co-worked inquired, "Don't you mean P-R-I-N-T?" "No," she said. "P-R-E-N-T." This might not be so bad if a) she was very new; or b) she did not work at a PRINTing store!!

Which story reminds me of an incident with an old girlfriend of mine many years ago, whe was South African. She was at my flat one evening - we hadn't been going out long - and I asked her if she wanted to listen to some music. "Have you got any Brid?", she asked me. "Brid?" I replied in some perplexity. "Yes, Brid", she said. "You know, they did songs like If and Baby, I'm a Want you."

A light went on. "Oh, Bread!" I said. "Yis!" she replied.

Not spelling, but further to my pet peeve with hyphenation, yesterday our newspaper separated a last name TH-
OMPSON.
Makes you wonder what an OMPSON is, doesn't it?

And then there is the one about a high school journalism student asking the teacher/counselor of the high school paper how to spell "pinnacle". Upon proof reading the story written by the student, the teacher saw the sentence, "Principal Robert King has reached the pinochle of his career."

All of these are very amusing, and I, too, am often struck by misspellings I see along the way. But the truth is I often misspell words myself. Most frequently it is my poor typing skills that are to blame, but sometimes I am simply wrong.

Rosefolly

This isn't a misspelling......but I just had to put it in for your amusement.

While vacationing on an island off southern Florida recently, I spotted a truck in the CVS parking lot which had this on the side doors:

South Florida Ironworkers
"We are proud of our erections"

I could not believe my eyes!
Why would anyone put such an offensive ad on the side of their truck!?
Who would call these guys for ironwork?!
Of course.....if you were just interested in their claim, it sure is a great way to advertise that!!

LOL

rosefolly - you stated that very humbly and honestly. I am sure I have made some wretched mistakes on this very forum. Still, if our mistakes, mis-spellings and terrible grammar aren't good for much else, at least they can make us laugh, yes?

Thrykas, certainly that is true. I have often thought that laughter is one of the great gifts of life. It has stood me in good stead through some of the most difficult periods of my life.

While I'm usually a decent speller, English grammar rules can trip me up. Funny how I can catch the mistakes of others easily--but not my own. Luckily, my own dear husband, who majored in some sort of grammar, is always ready to correct me. (I dearly love commas, perhaps to excess.)

Speaking of grammar - I think this quote belongs to Winston Churchill:

"Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put."

Since we are on the topic of language, what does IWHO or however you spell it? I have seen it here several times and I can't figure it out. It took me forever to figure out what DH was, I am not good at puzzles.

Rosefolly, you might like this anonymous poem I found years ago and have used as a mantra.

Build for yourself a strongbox
Hammer each part with care;
When it's as strong as your hands can make it
Put all your troubles there.

Hide there all thoughts of your failures
And each bitter cup that you quaff;
Lock all your heartaches within it
And sit on the lid and laugh.

IMHO is 'in my humble opinion' Deborah. Some of these acronyms can take some working out, can't they?
The one I always take ages to remember is IIRC, which is 'if I recall correctly' - it always looks like some kind of medical test to me LOL (haha!)

I usually have to ask my teenagers what these acronyms means....

yes, teenagers of the flying thumbs. If we MADE them communicate like that, sitting and repeatedly tapping keys until the letter they need appears, we'd be had up for child abuse!

cece, Child Abuse is as nothing compared to the feelings of extreme rage engendered by so-called adults who take mobile/cell phone calls while visiting/talking to ME.
These 'friends' will chat quite happily 'til the 'ring tone' pours forth from deep in their furthest pocket and with not so much as an "Excuse me" they start a long and very loud conversation of extreme banality "Yeah, right, OK, no, you forgot, I'll pick it up, I'm busy, speak to you soon . . ."
Then, even worse, they tell you who was ringing and why (in case you cared) and that they had better just get in touch with X Y or Z. At this point I often leave the room.

There seems to be no etiquette for such situations. Is it as bad in your country?

Vee --

My dad used to have a very good policy about mobile phones. He sid they were there for YOUR convenience and not for the convenience of the caller. He never used to have one and now he's inseparable from his phone.

I usually check to see who is calling -- if I recognize who it is and if it looks like it might be important, I MAY answer it. If I don't recognize it, I don't answer it. After all, if they REALLY need to talk to me, they'll leave a voicemail message and I can call them back at my leisure.

Yes, it can get bad here in Canada for that. It's fairly common for people to answer mobiles in restaurants in the middle of a meal. What's worse are those who have Blackberries -- they CONSTANTLY read email while they're having lunch with you or when they're talking to you!! Some have even RESPONDED to email in the middle of a meal or a conversation!

One of my colleagues wanted to get a Blackberry. I dissuaded her from this, saying that she should only get one if she wants her life controlled by email. There's a reason why these things have been nicknamed the "Crackberry". It's like Pavlov's dogs -- someone's Blackberry beeps or vibrates and that person HAS to check it.

hm, if the regular phone rings in your home and you have company do you ignore that too? or do you excuse yourself and answer it?

Rude people are rude people and their cell phones don't make them any more or less rude.

I think it is the inanity of cell phone conversations that gets to us, as well as the frequency of calls.

My nephew's wife has a ring tone that says, at first quietly and then becoming louder, "Let me out. I'm stuck in your pocket. Let me out! I'm stuck! Let me out!" They also had one that said, "Your phone's ringing. Your phone's ringing. Your phone's ringing. YOUR PHONE'S RINGING!" Cute the first time you hear it, maybe.

Vee, yes the cell problem is an issue in the US which increasingly seems to worsen. My pet peeve are the near accidents caused in my area by drivers of cars glued to their cell phones. Despite admonitions in professional theatres locally to "turn off your cell phones", one sees them light up across the aisle, then the owner must get up, disrupt all the others enjoying the performance, etc. Don't even get me started on cell phones in restaurants! What I find bizarre are the cell phone users one sees in restrooms, talking away. I'd be embarrassed to carry on a private conversation in a ladies'room. But maybe I am the odd one....

On another forum at GardenWeb, we have a long thread on this very phenomenon.

Two dreadful cell phone happenings:

At the Junior Olympic National Volleyball Championships this summer-two of us in the ladies' room, in adjoining stalls....
Total stranger:
"Well, and how is your team doing?"
Me, after a slightly surprised pause:
"Pretty well, we've won all our matches so far but we play Puerto Rico next, they are always strong..."
Total stranger:
"Do you mind? I'm on the phone!" Proceeded to continue talking while flushing and washing hands. I skulked in stall until she left so as not to be recognized elsewhere later.

Observing student teacher teaching a lesson-his cell phone rings and he stops teaching and answers it! Did mention that in evaluation later as "something not to be done ever again!"

The Met keeps a squad of thugs to pummel thoroughly anyone who lets his cell phone ring in the middle of Götterdämmerung.

I was in the little local market yesterday and saw a bag of nuts and dried fruit labeled "Atheletes Mix."

I don't know, I think a cell phone ringing might be rather appropriate during "Götterdämmerung."

Or we could write our own libretto to the opera and rename it
"Got, der dam ting rung!" I know, I know - don't call us, we'll call you.

I think I have the mobile phone story that takes the cake:

At work we have two tills and one line. The girl at the first till called the next customer, who had lined up while talking loudly on her mobile phone on a personal call which didn't sound very important (I could hear all the details at her end of course). She walked up but didn't look at the assistant, so she called the next person. I then had the phone person, who came up, continued her call without missing a beat, and wrote on a piece of paper 'have you got (insert name of book)' and held it up for me to read!!!!!!!!!
I checked the computer, we didn't have it, so just pulled a face and shook my head, and she walked away, without uttering a single word.
One of my colleagues suggested I should have written on the paper 'I didn't get that, could you write it again?' LOL