Common spelling errors seem to spread like a plague on the Internet. Here are a few favorites of mine.
1. You're - Your
This is probably the most common of them all, though it gets rather peculiar when it goes the other way around. Twice I have caught myself trying to type "you're" when it should've been "your".
2. They're - Their - There
Somewhat related to the previous one.
3. Stare - Stair
Homophones are quite common in English.
4. Think - Thing
I know there are quite a lot of native (and non-native) English speakers (like Gordon Ramsay) who tend to pronounce -ng as -nk. Funny how these get carried over to written language.
5. Whose - Who's
A homophone but I think sometimes the person doesn't know "whose" exists.
6. Did + imperfect form of a verb
This one is easy to spot. More of a grammatical than spelling error in nature.
7. Definitely
A rather common word and so often misspelled. Took me awhile to learn myself too. De-finite-ly. No a's and only one n in the word.
8. It's - Its
It's easy to drop off the apostrophe when feeling lazy but the capability to use "its" correctly instead of "it's" as a possessive pronoun seems very rare.
9. (Should/Could/Would) (Ha)'ve - Of
Sort of a homophone although it really looks out of place in a text. "It should of been me." Twice I've spotted this one in the A Song of Ice and Fire books -- once per book I've read.
10. Than - Then
I could swear this wasn't nearly as common two years back as it is now. I feel like the majority of internet is misspelling than as then. A and e are quite similar in spoken English but this totally rubbed me the wrong when it started to grow in popularity. Nowadays I don't care as much but I do assume a person is above average intelligence if they don't do this mistake.
The first Deus Ex game actually had this one, and maybe one line of Javik's subtitles in ME3, though I didn't manage to take a screenshot of the latter to be sure.
Bonus: Not capitalizing o in an acronym
I saw this surfacing with Star Wars: The Old Republic when its acronym suddenly became SWToR. Because o's are never capitalized in acronyms, right? Or maybe, dear denizens of the internet, it's because the o's often stand for "of" or other constituent word. I don't recall ever seeing anyone shorten Knights of the Old Republic to KotoR; always KotOR or just KOTOR.
Another recent example is when Good Old Games decided to rebrand themselves as GOG.com. The moment they did that, people started typing it GoG. Gah!
One comment on number 9. I have seen authors purposefully write certain character's dialogue with incorrect grammar/spelling as a way to add flavor/depth/realism/whatever to the character. The stereotypical low born peasant who wouldn't know better. I obviously can't say for sure that was Mr. Martin's intent or not.
ReplyDeleteI've noticed every one of these on forums or in chat and they either make me giggle or sigh. I've also seen:
Cheapscake - From context they meant "Cheap Skate"
Urethra - From context they meant "Eureka" (this one was particularly hilarious)
Some people's children...
Using incorrect grammar on purpose to add flavor to a character is quite fine, indeed. I think these two occasions (or one at least) were just honest mistakes, though; Tyrion Lannister is certainly not low-born. An odd character to make such an error, and in his thoughts no less.
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