Comments on: Friday Five: Typos and How To Avoid Them

By: Kestrel

Kestrel — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 04:24:10 +0000

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.

By: Akiosama

Akiosama — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:31:21 +0000

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? =-.

By: Kestrel

Kestrel — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:18:32 +0000

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!

By: Akiosama

Akiosama — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:53:28 +0000

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? =-.

By: Marq | Brochure Printing

Marq | Brochure Printing — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 00:17:55 +0000

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”

By: Kestrel

Kestrel — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:25:21 +0000

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.)

By: Nim

Nim — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:15:35 +0000

There/Their/They’re is the one that irks me the most by far.