As a follow-on to my post from earlier in the week, I want to further acknowledge some of the comments you made. Let us do that by identifying five common typographical errors (let’s just agree to call them "typos" rather than "errors of ignorance," okay?), then showing you how to not make them.
It’s vs. Its
Probably the number one boo-boo people make, and if you’re like me, it really is a typo when you misuse one or the other.
First, I’ll tell you why people make errors with it’s/its. In English, possessives are generally indicated by following a noun with an apostrophe and an s: the book’s title, the mayor’s speech, Susie’s ponytail. What most people don’t consciously realize is most pronouns1 do not follow that possessive convention: his, hers, ours, theirs, yours.
Guess what? "It" is also a pronoun, and just like those listed above, its possessive form does not have an apostrophe. (See what I did there, again?) Its characteristics include a citrusy odor and a bitter taste.
The construction it’s is a contraction of it is: It’s easy to understand how people can misuse the possessive. But it boggles that people misuse the contraction: Its truly a mystery. I mean, I had to backspace over the apostrophe the first time I typed that sentence!
Still, the mistakes are made, and I promised to give you a solution to avoid those mistakes: Never use the contracted form of "it is." If you follow that simple rule, all you have to remember is not to use an apostrophe in "its."
Inspiration: @maziltovfrom Krumpit and @Arrensfrom Through the Eyes of Death
Let’s vs. Lets
This one is similar to the preceding discussion: The contracted form of "let us" is let’s. A synonym for "allows" or "permits" (Note: No apostrophes allowed or permitted!) is lets. Once again, if you eschew the contraction and never type the apostrophe, you’ll be perfect! But how often do we see Haste let’s you cast faster or Lets run Heroic VH?
Now I’ll be the first to admit, typing out "Let us run Heroic VH" will cause your friends and guildmates to slowly edge away from you. But if you say to yourself, "Let us run H VH," you should recognize you want the contraction, complete with apostrophe!
Notwithstanding the above, there are definitely times when you’ll want to use "let us." Need an example? Take another look at the second sentence of this article. I’ll bet you didn’t even notice, did you? 
Peaked/Peeked/Piqued
The only way to avoid misusing these homonyms is to know what each one means.2
- peak: (transitive verb) to cause to come to a peak, point, or maximum
- peek: (intransitive verb) 1 a: to look furtively b : to peer through a crack or hole or from a place of concealment —often used with in or out; 2 : to take a brief look
- pique: (transitive verb) to excite or arouse especially by a provocation, challenge, or rebuff
The most common (or at least the most glaring) misuse is to substitute peak (and less frequently, peek) for pique. A correct use would be: She piqued my curiosity. My interest was piqued. However: My interest peaked when the discussion came to money.
The way I help myself to remember is that if my interest or curiosity is heightened or raised, both of those have an "i" in them, as does "pique." But if my interest is maxxed, there is no "i" but there is an "a" as in "peak."
Finally, to remember the proper use of peek, think of the pair of e’s as a pair of eyes.
Inspiration: @stoppableforcefrom Stoppable Force
Definitely
How many times have you seen (or typed) "definately"? Way too many, right? Keep this in mind: There is definitely no "a" in "definitely"! (There is no "a" in definite, either!)
To/Too
I almost hate to address this one: For the most part, I think people simply mistype "to" and hit the "o" key twice. I know I’m guilty of that occasionally. But just in case you truly do have difficulty knowing which one to use, here’s a simple mnemonic to apply.
"Too" is an adverb meaning "also" while "to" is a preposition. So if you mean "also," you want to also add an "o" at the end of "to."
End of Today’s Lesson
I know I could come up with a lot more common typos, but I’m limiting myself to five in this article. And besides typos, there are plenty of other word pairs that give writers fits. For example, that/which, than/then (which a couple people commented on the earlier article), horde/alliance. What are some you’d like to see me address in a later post? Let me know in the comments!
- If you don’t have a basic understanding of the different parts of speech I’m talking about, go brush up on them; it’s beyond the scope of this article (and my desire) to rehash primary school English. ↩
- All definitions from Merriam-Webster Online. ↩
There/Their/They’re is the one that irks me the most by far.
And probably misused as much or more than any of those I listed (neck and neck with it’s/its, I bet). I thought about addressing this one, but I got started late today, and the prospect of wrestling with those on a Friday afternoon…ugh.
The unfortunate thing about those is that a lot of the misuse is not carelessness, as is generally the case with the ones in today’s article, but (at least by my observation), pure ignorance. (LOL…and that could be a whole essay in itself! Maybe someday when I’m full of piss and vinegar I’ll talk about ‘netspeak.)
Yeah, and sometimes i still see the your/you’re problem. I even saw a picture of a man with a tattoo that says “your mine” when it should have been “you’re mine”
Nice articles, Kestrel – this one and the 101 article. I think both address many faults with the written word commonly seen on blogs and other forms of online communication.
I think that two more – one fairly common, and one specific to the game we play – need to be added.
1) Lose/loose – This one seems to happen quite a bit, where the word “loose” is used in place of “lose”. When you fail to win at a contest, you “lose”, not “loose”. “Loose” means a number of things – “unbind”, “spread apart” (as in a loose formation), “be promiscuous”, “relax the grip on”, and quite a few other meanings, but none are the same as “lose”.
And the winner, not the “looser” of WoW chat…
2) Rogue/rouge – Come on people, cosmetics and/or colors generally don’t stab people in the back, sap them into inactivity, or walk around invisibly poisoning people. Rouge is, in English, “a reddish-colored cosmetic powder for the cheeks and/or lips.” Rouge, in French, is the color “red.” And, unbeknownst to me before I looked all this up, rouge in Canadian, is “a Canadian Football sport derived from rugby.” (What the heck? I guess you do learn something every day.)
Great write-up, Kestrel. I got a real kick out of the articles.
My 2 yen,
Akiosama
.-= Akiosama´s latest blog post is Out with the Old and In with the New? =-.
Akiosama, thanks for the comments and the compliments! Good one on lose/loose — hadn’t thought of that one, and you’re right. And of course the rogue/rouge faux pas. What’s worse are the ROGUES who get it wrong!! Aaarrrggghhh!
Kes,
It’s funny about the lose/loose one – I’d seen it so many times as “loose” that before I wrote up that little comment on it, I actually went to dictionary.com to make sure it hadn’t been ‘retconned’ in as a new correct usage.
While I understand that language is continually evolving, seeing something become correct in language simply because enough people are using it wrong for it to become convention is a bit scary to me. It’s too “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” for my tastes.
Thanks for the reply and all. Keep up the good work.
My 2 yen to Kes,
Akiosama
.-= Akiosama´s latest blog post is Out with the Old and In with the New? =-.
My “bible,” as I mentioned, is Web11 (and if necessary, WebU). Generally, those folks are pretty good at not watering down the language. There’s a pretty big gulf between something that’s just flat out wrong, such as spelling “lose” with a doubled “o”, and adopting “hopefully” to mean “It is hoped (that)”.
But yes…I had to refer to the dictionary a couple times while writing that article, just to be sure I was sure of what I was saying.