OK - I hate this and am seeing it more and more on ozbargain.
Loose - means the opposite of tight. 'My belt was loose'
Lose - the opposite of find, the opposite of win, to come last etc etc. "You've got nothing to lose" "I don't want people to lose out on this deal"
Go ahead, flame the crap out of me. But at least start getting this right.
Effect VS Affect.
GO.
Effect VS Affect.
Here's the compilation of 10 most popular Misspellings by the Oatmeal
You have to check it out, it's awesome. (Not its awesome)
I like his "who/whom" poster. "Whom" is a word you don't hear much anymore, and honestly one could live without it. But it sounds classy. ("Whom" is in a case that still exists in other languages.)
Damn you auto correct… If only you did auto grammar too.
I'm effected by Ben Affect:)
At least that's just a spelling mistake. Every time I hear "great deal just brought one!" a little bit of me dies.
well likely the person tries it and intend to return it, hence "brought"
"We have brought a land in 2011"
Your right. I would of said something before but I don't let it effect myself. Its a matter of practise that separates these loosers from you and I. I need to lay down now but my bed is broke. It's springs are braking so it has less then it should.
thankyou for your reply. Id be lieing if I said I could care less.
you're replay :)
It's "You're right"…
lol if that's the only sarcastic error you picked up
You're*
edit: beat me to it
Less then or less than?
you and me…
Very good. It is common for people to hypercorrect "me and you" to "you and I" in all cases when as in this case "you and me" is grammatically correct.
Oh oh are we playing spot the grammar / spelling mistake?
I've found 12.
There is 14 + 1 bonus.
There are 14 + 1 bonus.
For those playing along at home, and just realising this was deliberate sarcasm, here are the answers:
You also missed a golden opportunity by spelling separates correctly in the original text. It is a commonly misspelled word.
@endotherm: Although as it is, every word is a correctly spelt word, just not the right one. The only iffy one is "looser", but if you accept Urban Dictionary…
Looser: Someone who can't spell loser.
As in "I may be a loser, but I am definitely not a looser."
@endotherm: I think we've found ourself an American :). Outside of America "spelt" is primarily used to denote the part participle of "spell", though it can also mean a kind of wheat. Nevertheless, I've added this to my pet grammar checker, so as to keep the peace.
That is correct. 'Spelt' is the preferred past participle of 'spell'. 'Spelled' is an American variant.
http://www.grammar-monster.com/easily_confused/spelled_spelt…
@gmatht:@omgwtfbbq: I'm not an American. But I was taught to avoid using old-english words in modern speech if possible. Words like dreamt, learnt, spelt… If there is a modern alternative, why not use it? I'm not saying either choice is wrong, but in some cases it avoids confusion and pedantic discussions like these :).
@ryang: Either would be correct. However in the context, "didn't" would change the tense and the meaning. "I don't let it affect me" means he has a continuous policy of not letting things bother him. "I didn't let it affect me" would mean he used to (past tense) not let this bother him, either a one-off or a general policy. As the rest of the text did not justify a tense change, it is correct to leave it as is and not pick it up as an error.
You did good in school.
Bargin
lol this one is gold. So many instances of it.
Especially when the correct spelling is at the top of the web page.
I don't know why your complaining.
Their knot being compaint?
I think it's a grate discussion.
gr8 b8 m8. would r8 8/8
:)
Oh roooooney. There just venting because there've had a bad day. Can you here the anger in this place?
Yous are all so funny
Learn to spell.
It's "Youse".
Here, here! Or should that be Reed, reed!
well done. I'll assume your "here, here!" is contextual.
Thankyou ;)
The loose/lose problem is that no-one knows how to spell, but they know how to hear. Lose sounds like choose, so people spell it "loose".
Misuse of apostrophes annoys me most, along with than/then and the perennial their/there/they're.
Gross. They put the full stop inside the quotation marks in their 'kitten' example, but only thee word 'kitten' is enclosed along with it.
Good point
Expect education standards to get worse and worse for the average person with Abbott/the Liberal government making all these funding cuts.
Me fail English? That's unpossible!
Maybe try sport instead. That way you'll get to ride up front!
I share your aching pain, OP, but if loose/lose is the only regular misspelling/misunderstanding that you notice on OzBargain, then your Cartman/Hitler avatar may need a…
pair-of-glasses/at-least-a-monocle.
That's nowhere near as bad as the multitude of sinners who don't know the difference between then and than.
I admit, I sometimes misuse these two… though, if I find out that i made a mistake, I'll fix it.
great post.
can you do one for effect and affect. :)
Does seeing effect misused affect you?
or does seeing affect misused effect you? Or are you sensibilities not effected to much?
I always read that as 't' like "t' much" when I see a to that should be a too.
How about some discussion on the most misunderstood word in everyday usage:
Here's my submission:
CONTEMPORARY
It's used to mean past, or to denote the present, or belonging to a particlar era, or sophisticated, or outdated, or well-designed……..
And all too often pronounced as "contempory"
"contempory" is pretty fair representation of the correct pronunciation.
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/pronunciation/british/con…
Ironically, that Macmillan pronunciation example is quite clearly incorrect, as it too omits the syllable which they show in their own phonetic spelling example: /kənˈtemp(ə)r(ə)ri/.
An example of the correct spoken pronunciation of contemporary is given here: http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=contemporary&submit=Su…
Depends whether you favour the British or American pronunciation.
http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english…
You're welcome to favour the American, but its a bit harsh to say the British is incorrect.
Well aren't you a kernuckle head.
The word appears in every second high school essay
What about "I wish I would of bought one"
Thats just engrish…
'would of' instead of 'would have' is one of my current irritants.
*currant
I'm glad people are raisin the awareness of such common errors.
Or 'hai guys I need sum advices' lol
Please advice.
I just thought that was a lolcat speaking :)
I reckon I'm pretty good with spelling and using correct words (ie. not getting phonetically similar words mixed up in written form), and grammar too. I admit I struggle with punctuation though - I'll blame a lack of emphasis on teaching that sort of stuff in school, because if it was taught to us thoroughly, I would have definitely freaking mastered it. Unfortunately I've just had to wing it most of my life without really understanding the actual rules behind grammar and punctuation though…
Anyway, I still have a lot to learn and really appreciate being corrected when I'm wrong. Up until fairly recently, I was still misusing 'laying' in sentences which 'lying' was correct. Ie. 'I'm lying down', or 'I need a lie down'… I used to say 'I'm laying down'. Once I was corrected, I started noticing the reasons for my bad habit all these years. I watch iView a lot and tend to have the subtitles/CC switched on in case I miss any unclear audio. I've lost count of how many times I've caught them using 'laying' instead of 'lying'. Way to perpetuate bad habits and incorrect usage among people, huh. Though I guess it's still my fault lol. I read enough formal text to have picked up on my mistake a long time ago. Not sure how it slipped past me :(
Another thing I'm still confused with is the difference between words like 'learned' vs. 'learnt', 'dreamed' vs. 'dreamt' etc.
Probably more will pop into my mind later on. I shall post them later if they do, so you smart cookies can educate me :P
You and others can hang around in this thread, but (for my own sanity), I'll try and gracefully retreat after just writing this for you, wt:
I'm all for evolution in language (seriously), and I am very much a pick 'n' choose grammar and spelling hypocrite, but plenty of the 'accepted' variations in English spelling - the ones that personally, piss, me, off - I blame on one man: Noah 'Flood Boy', 'Effing' Webster of 'Webster's American English Dictionary' fame/infamy.
Though noble in basic intent, he set out to simplify the language for people who struggled with spelling - and proceeded to strip-away so much from so many words.
If his ideas had 'all' completely stuck - instead of just 'many' - an accepted variation in the English spelling of 'soup', would be 'soop', an accepted variation of 'tongue', would be 'tung', and an accepted variation of 'women', would be 'wimmen'. (Yep, they're all the work of Webster, and there are many other atrocities like it.)
He also applied his own charming set of inconsistencies to his often-crappy quest for a phonetic-spelling revolution. He wasn't always wrong, just usually.
As it is, whenever I see a word like 'colour', written as 'color', or 'traveller', as just 'traveler', I just see the missing romance in those words and hate that dead bastard. Also people actually still around who lack any real sense of passion for the English language. Also those without an understanding of passion within language, generally.
Regarding your 'vs.' words: I did accurately refer to my hypocrisy about certain things, spelling-wise and grammar-wise…
Even allowing for certain tense-related differences between some words that can otherwise interchangeably end in 'd' or 't', I like to mix things up - written vs. spoken. Some language confusion and crossover here, can indeed be good.
In much the same way as I would actually (and usually) prefer to write 'learned', instead of 'learnt', I also prefer to write 'dreamed', but - very nearly always - will SAY 'dreamt'.
Does that clarify anything? Don't answer that!
Have fun in the thread, turnip.
Fun fact: "Dreamt" (and its derivatives) is the only English word that ends in 'mt'.
No it ism't!
I've seen many comments on YouTube before saying "you're such a looser". Hahaha
The second 'o' is for Elephantis elephantitis emphasis.
does it really matter, you know what the person means so they are still communicating the message?
sometimes it may be the keyboard, I know I make errors on my phone (usually a C instead of a space).
Loose vs lose is one of the more understandable errors given that a double o usually makes a long sound.
Another common misunderstanding…
and just about any other words that end in se/ce
In American English, license is both noun and verb.
As is so often the case, here is the cause of the perpetuation of confusion.
So how come you've read all the way down the page to this point if its so annoying? Or were you just distracted from doing better things?
Smile a while: This forum isn't harming anyone. Lets others get their peeves out, and who knows, someone reading may just coreect their post a tiny bit for the better.
(Geez! I was so tempted to murder the English in this post!)
Why the negative votes?
@cheng2008: Yes, but in a positive way. "niwdoG"'d the thread?
Still, IMHO that's not the reason for all the neg's.
Yep I agree. Grammar Nazi hat tip.