Maybe the post should have been titled “Cant, hypocrisy, spelling and punctuation”. Then again, maybe we should just cut all bloggers a bit of slack, even on playful bagging about this sort of stuff. I make spelling (and more frequently typographical) errors quite often and so do most if not all bloggers. It’s an inherent part of a genre where you’re writing and publishing daily and often without much time for careful proof-reading and revision, and certainly without the intercession of a sub-editor. Most journalists would look very ordinary indeed if their work was published under those conditions.
A quick plug for Firefox and the Spellbound extension. You can get an Au dictionary for it, so spell checking something in the browser is as easy as right clicking on “spell check”. Made my posts/comments a million times more readable.
I blame Sarina Russo (“how to get that job”) whose fine college taught me to type when Paul Keating decided dole bludging part time Arts students should get some useful skills instead of all that book lernin.
I have a PhD but I once wrote “social morays” (instead of mores) on my blog. Writing at 2am does strange things to the brain sometimes. A commenter the next day left a hyperlink to a picture of a moray:
Strictly speaking Scott, it should be “How much for one of those PhD[no apostrophe]s again?” I still can’t stop myself from red-inking this mistake, even if I do it a hundred times marking a paper. (I still don’t accept 1970’s, 80’s etc either).
I had wonderful and meticulous old-world journalism lecturers and they were ruthless when checking written work. Me: “1974 saw the exit of Richard Nixon…” Him: “1974 didn’t SEE anything – it was a year, not a guide dog.”
I’ve never been willing to use that phrase since, although I think he was being pretty tough. (Just trying to de-cliche his students’ work I’d say).
That bit of brain swapping is interesting. I am a demon for those homonym things, and for the apostrophe, and for perambulatory commas.
But I do them all the time myself, and it is very closely associated with fatigue and age. EEEEEK! Every day I have a ritual in which I look at the previous night’s work [thinks: is this a contraction of ‘work of the previous night’? Yes, so proceed], and then clean it up, feeling very very old.
Basically, I am thinking of the words in my head and then forgetting to write them down. I just had to correct ‘contraction’, for which I wrote ‘contract’.
Mark – if you learnt to touch type from Sarina Russo, you probably got the best concentrated value for your fees in your entire learning life. I regret the fact that I never learnt shorthand very much.
Scott’s ‘can’t’ [contraction of ‘cannot’] [contraction of ‘the can’t that belongs to Scott’] in the title was apostrophe-less. Now that’s [contraction of ‘that is’] bad……
There’s an old “Law” of USENET that states that any attempt at a spelling flame will contain at least one spelling or grammatical error. (IME, “grammar” is itself usually mispelled). I’ve forgotten what it’s called now, but it doesn’t really matter.
Given the baffling delight of many ‘bloggers in taking USENET traditions and making them into a twisted, soulless perversion of their former selves (cf “fisking”), I suggest we take this law and make it our own. All in favour, misspell “aye”.
What’s this about Mark Bahnish’s cant?
Er, Bahnisch.
Maybe the post should have been titled “Cant, hypocrisy, spelling and punctuation”. Then again, maybe we should just cut all bloggers a bit of slack, even on playful bagging about this sort of stuff. I make spelling (and more frequently typographical) errors quite often and so do most if not all bloggers. It’s an inherent part of a genre where you’re writing and publishing daily and often without much time for careful proof-reading and revision, and certainly without the intercession of a sub-editor. Most journalists would look very ordinary indeed if their work was published under those conditions.
A quick plug for Firefox and the Spellbound extension. You can get an Au dictionary for it, so spell checking something in the browser is as easy as right clicking on “spell check”. Made my posts/comments a million times more readable.
I blame Sarina Russo (“how to get that job”) whose fine college taught me to type when Paul Keating decided dole bludging part time Arts students should get some useful skills instead of all that book lernin.
Cameron et al, WordWeb will do what I think you’re saying Firefox does, but will do it in ANY program.
I tried to read Mark’s post and the spelling error was just ‘screaming’ at me…. sorry if its in poor taste.
Nicholas, Wasnt aware of wordweb. Interesting that it has a thesaurus bundled. Looks good for Win32, but no good for my iBook.
I have a PhD but I once wrote “social morays” (instead of mores) on my blog. Writing at 2am does strange things to the brain sometimes. A commenter the next day left a hyperlink to a picture of a moray:
http://www.scoobydo.dircon.co.uk/deepsouthxmas/moray.jpg
How much is the great degree worth? Not much, probably.
Strictly speaking Scott, it should be “How much for one of those PhD[no apostrophe]s again?” I still can’t stop myself from red-inking this mistake, even if I do it a hundred times marking a paper. (I still don’t accept 1970’s, 80’s etc either).
I had wonderful and meticulous old-world journalism lecturers and they were ruthless when checking written work. Me: “1974 saw the exit of Richard Nixon…” Him: “1974 didn’t SEE anything – it was a year, not a guide dog.”
I’ve never been willing to use that phrase since, although I think he was being pretty tough. (Just trying to de-cliche his students’ work I’d say).
;)
That bit of brain swapping is interesting. I am a demon for those homonym things, and for the apostrophe, and for perambulatory commas.
But I do them all the time myself, and it is very closely associated with fatigue and age. EEEEEK! Every day I have a ritual in which I look at the previous night’s work [thinks: is this a contraction of ‘work of the previous night’? Yes, so proceed], and then clean it up, feeling very very old.
Basically, I am thinking of the words in my head and then forgetting to write them down. I just had to correct ‘contraction’, for which I wrote ‘contract’.
Mark – if you learnt to touch type from Sarina Russo, you probably got the best concentrated value for your fees in your entire learning life. I regret the fact that I never learnt shorthand very much.
Scott’s ‘can’t’ [contraction of ‘cannot’] [contraction of ‘the can’t that belongs to Scott’] in the title was apostrophe-less. Now that’s [contraction of ‘that is’] bad……
Sounds like a pedants’ revolt.
typos bring out the little tim in all of us
Bahnisch him
Ooh, that wascally Homer!
There’s an old “Law” of USENET that states that any attempt at a spelling flame will contain at least one spelling or grammatical error. (IME, “grammar” is itself usually mispelled). I’ve forgotten what it’s called now, but it doesn’t really matter.
Given the baffling delight of many ‘bloggers in taking USENET traditions and making them into a twisted, soulless perversion of their former selves (cf “fisking”), I suggest we take this law and make it our own. All in favour, misspell “aye”.
Yea