<p>Seriously, is knowing the difference between “principal” and “principle” really that hard to master?</p>
<p>I taught at a community college for a little while a very, very, very long time ago. And if I ever find myself in a classroom again I am very tempted to automatically fail any paper submitted that includes incorrect spelling or usage of any of the following:</p>
<p>a lot
advice - advise
cannot
its – it’s
lose – loose
personal - personnel
principal – principle
then – than
there – their – they’re
your – you’re
(I’m sure there must be more.)</p>
<p>Oh, and one more thing – the name of the Rolling Stones song is “Honky Tonk Women” not “Honky Tonk Woman.” Mick’s able to get more than one. ;)</p>
<p>They should of asked me to proof it! I woulda caught the typos on there FAQs. Bad spelling effects us all! No need to thank me – I’ll just say your welcome. :)</p>
<p>I think two of the most common ones in your list now, exacerbated by ‘quick messaging’ (texts, email, IM), are the words ‘your’, apparently because it’s just too difficult to spell with two extra characters (you’re), and using ‘loose’ in place of ‘lose’ because the people doing that honestly don’t know the correct spelling (because they consistently misuse it).</p>
<p>The advent of the spell checker is making some people lazy and dependent on it where they don’t even try or learn.</p>
<p>GolfFather - I am with you 100%. I still see “alot” and “loose” instead of “lose” all the time with co-workers. It’s like nails on a chalkboard.</p>
<p>I had a middle school English teacher who told us to remember that the principal is your friend (thus he is the “pal”). How hard is that?</p>
<p>On the college front, this is why you shouldn’t be shy about editing recommendations that teachers give to your kids to take home to read before they submit. A chemistry teacher just thanked me for editing the rec he was going to submit for DS; he was so embarrassed that other parents in previous years hadn’t caught the mistakes that were in the template part of the letter. They were really bad; I was mortified.</p>
<p>Wildwood, I will. I wanted to wait a day at least in case they corrected it and then CC members wouldn’t see the mistake I was referring to.</p>
<p>I’ve contacted several sites about spelling/grammar mistakes in the past.
Principal/principle and “it’s” for possessive seem to be the two most common ones.</p>
<p>The teachers at our HS routinely do everything the OP stated…and more. Oh, how I would have loved to have had the chance to read their rec letters first. We based those letters solely on whom we thought could write a coherent letter with few spelling errors.</p>
<p>The “bad” people around here are the ones who might even notice the error. Everyone’s done seen that being a grammar Nazi is just plain uppity. Yep, I’ve learned the hard way. 2.75 years and I am SO done with this school system.</p>
<p>We were peer grading essays in English last year (I’m a high school student) and somebody actually spelled “thing” as “thang.” They were being serious. I was shocked! Schools need to focus on spelling more, instead of preparing students for the next standardized test.</p>
<p>The FAQ was undoubtedly written by a lower-level admin. person. Of course that person should know how to spell and the piece should have been proofed by someone else, but it doesn’t really reflect on the ability of college presidents to spell.</p>