What’s the us(ag)e?

10. Spell check nonsense

Spell checkers. You just got to love them. [Not “gotta” love them. Your spell checker will signal that “gotta” is not spelled correctly. I guess, though, that it is spelled correctly, but “gotta” is not a “real” word, though it is really used.] I often do not spell words correctly, and I make many mistakes in typing words that I do know how to spell correctly. The spell checker on my word processor sometimes corrects the words for me and almost always indicates which words are not spelled correctly and gives me the correct spelling or a choice of spellings.

And I love such help with writing.

But, and there is always a “but” when we deal with technology, the spell checker does not and cannot find, let alone correct, all of the words that are frequently misspelled. The English language has many words that sound the same and close to the same but have very different meanings. These words that sound the same are called homophones (from “homo” meaning “same” and “phone” meaning “sound”). Words such as “our” and “hour,” “two,” “to,” and “too,” “sale” and “sail,” are examples. And we also have many words that are spelled exactly the same but that have different meanings. Some examples are: bear (to support, and the animal), and lead (the metal and “to go first”). We call such words “homonyms” (“homo” “same” and “nym” “name”). [The dictionary will tell you that a homophone is a homonym, which may be technically so; however, it seems to me to be more exact to consider them as separate but related, sort of how you might think of your relatives, especially those cousins who seem to only care about the family at funerals when they come prepared to haul off the family furniture.] And there are other words that are pronounced in ways that are similar but are not really the same, words such as “our” and “are” or “accept” and “except.”

Here are some frequently made mistakes with homonyms, homophones, and near homophones.

I can’t bare it when I make spelling mistakes.

(That’s probably a good thing. But more correctly I should write that I can’t bear it.)

I except my fate as a poor speller.

(“Accept” is, however, the correct word to use.)

Tell me a tail or spin me a spell.

(But a “tale” is what I want.)

Does bad spelling effect me?

(No but it does affect you. Bad spelling is an effect of carelessness.)

Are you lost already with all of these homonyms? Did you loose your way?

(You might be lost. But you use “lose” to ask this question.)

Why not by a better spell checker?

(Because even the best spell checker won’t tell you that you should use “buy” in the above sentence.)

Don’t you no any better than to rely on the spell checker?

(I guess not since the spell checker didn’t pick up the fact that I should have written “Don’t you know any better that to rely on the spell checker?”)

I just new I was making a mistake.

(I just didn’t know that I should have written “knew” instead of “new.”)

There (their / they’re) are so many ways to make spelling mistakes.

(They sound the same but “there” points something out [There is that mistake.], “their” is a pronoun indicating possession [Their mistakes are their problem.], and “they’re” means “they are.”)

I quite!

(Oh. I don’t know what you mean, but I was afraid you were going to quit.)

Just set down and pay attention to these words that are often misspelled.

(Actually, I want you to sit down. You can set something down next to you, but you sit yourself down.)

Than we’ll get through these lessons.

(Then. “Than” and “then” don’t even sound that much alike.)

We are almost threw.

(Actually, we are almost through.)

Weather we like it or not, we are almost through.

(Whether we like it or not. And I’m sure we don’t like it that we are almost through.)

Whose pleased that we are almost finished?

(“Who’s” means “who is” so I should have written “Who’s pleased that we are almost finished.”)

Now your pleased since we are finished.

(Now you’re pleased.)

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Of all the above examples, the computer spell checker indicated that the following were not spelled correctly: your, whose, threw, than, and accept.

The real lesson to this lesson is that if you rely solely on your spell checker you will end up writing a lot of nonsense (non-sense and also just inadvertently funny) sentences. And for those of you skeptics who don’t believe there are inadvertently funny sentences just floating around waiting to be grabbed by the usage policeman, take a look at this one. A friend sent me this one, an email message he received, but not from anyone at our school:

Please be advised that the 2001 Biology Faculty Workshop to be held at XXXXXX Community College is CANCELLED due to low registration.  I apologize for any incontinence this has caused.  Thank you

The computerized spell checker finds nothing wrong with this message. And perhaps there is nothing wrong with this message. But the dictionary gives these as the first two definitions for “incontinence”:

1. Exercising little control or restrain, esp. in sexual desires. 2. Incapable of controlling the elimination or urine or feces.

The message does refer to a BIOLOGY workshop, so perhaps there is something about the message that I don’t understand.

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