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Ten words you need to stop misspelling
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As a pedant, I love it!
I would have added should have/should of which is even beginning to appear on TV now, much to my annoyance!
Don't get me started - as a scholar of both English and Classics, it's the words we've acquired from Latin and Greek that annoy me - or the incorrect pluralisation of, to be precise.
If some moronic footie pundit, for example, uses 'stadiums' instead of 'stadia' (which Opera has just underlined as being a misspelling so it's stupid, too!) I find myself yelling at the telly.
Formulas is another (the plural, as I'm sure you all know, is formulae)
Operas is just about acceptable (even though, pedantically, it's the plural of 'opus')
Generally, anything ending 'um' takes 'ia' in the plural (well, apart from words we didn't borrow from the Romans, obviously).
Criterias is another - it's already plural! The singular is 'criterion'!
And technically, technically, the plural of 'forum' is 'fora' though it's outdated these days.
And the plural of 'virus' is 'viruses', not 'viri' (it's the odd one out).
But there is one word at the moment which has me REALLY annoyed and that's 'paninis' - 'panini' IS plural - the singular is 'panino' - but then I spent a year in Lazio, so I know this stuff...
There's plenty more, but I don't want you all to hate me...
Cake - as our resident dyslexic and sex god, you can spell whatever you want how the hell you like and we'll still love you....
Didn't know about the panini - like that - will annoy peeps with this from now on.
Oh the there/their thing gets me all the time, just like where/were. Have to get a grown up to check if a work thing. That poster might be a really good investment.
Some of those misconceptions you've mentioned really irk me too, Bella.
My Latin/Italian is rudimentary at best, but even though I've now moved in another direction I'm a linguist originally (some might say a cunning one) so I have heightened awareness of such things.
That's inexcusable.
It used to really, really annoy me in my old job, when I used to be responsible for giving e-guidance to prospective students. Some of them used to email me in 'txt spk'.
All I wanted to do was to replay to them saying that "If you're clever enough to get a place at this university, you're clever enough to use proper English. If you're not prepared to do this, then fuck off."
But, naturally, I was polite and helpful and answered their queries.
[Edit: "reply", not "replay".
]
My pet h8 is txt spk.
I no u h8 it 2.
Great link gfb.....
I may pinch it to share with some of my fb friends, who have clearly forgotten they ever went to school.
I always used to get its/it's wrong because I was taught that possession and contraction required apostrophes and so I reasoned if it belongs to it, then it must be it's.
No one ever told me that its is a possessive pronoun and no possessive pronouns have apostrophes (his, hers, ours, yours, theirs)
I was one of the pre-national curriculum 80's generation, that did lots of nice "topic" work in school, but didn't have a single English grammar lesson; I acquired most of my grammar understanding through learning French!
That site's American though, so they spell neighbour n-e-i-g-h-b-o-r
A bit weird after the spelling lesson ... 