I don’t see why people get so worked up about typos in message board posts. People know the rules, but in unedited prose in informal contexts, typos are inevitable. I tend to cut people slack. I prefer people to add their opinions even when they don’t have time to carefully proofread their posts than to refrain from posting for fear of being labeled an ignoramus if a stray apostrophe finds its way into a post.
I make a lot of typos, thus my frequently edited posts, but some mistakes are clearly just due to ignorance of spelling or usage conventions. One of the things that make me cringe is when people use an apostrophe on the name on their mailbox or house sign. I saw a sign the other day that read, “The Johnson’s,” and I wanted to pull over and ring the family’s doorbell and yell, “It’s Johnsons, that is unless you want everyone to think the house belongs to your…uh, never mind!”
I also believe there are several “English as a Second Language”-type folks on here. (Was that hyphen in the right place? Are my quotation marks o.k.?)
There’s a difference between a typo and not knowing the difference. A typo is a mistake and the latter is a knowledge gap that can negatively reflect on you.
Personally, I’d want to know if I was making a consistent mistake.
I was wondering how long it would take for someone to chastise the OP and other posters for commenting on spelling or syntax errors.
Everyone makes typos or other mistakes of grammar occasionally when the mind is working ahead of the fingers. But I don’t think that’s what the OP is about. I don’t believe the concept of plural vs. possessive is being taught well in our schools. Someone who says doc’s, patient’s, and hospital’s all in the same paragraph (rather than using the correct plural form) isn’t making a typo. I see that kind of thing all the time, both here and on other sites.
“Can you give me the site for that book you found on that cite when I caught site of you out on the job sight?”
OK, I’ve never seen anyone mess it up quite that badly, but people do confuse site and cite.
The other one that bugs me is when people assume that “he and I” is always correct and “him and me” is never correct. Wrong. But whenever I correctly use a phrase such as “him and me”, I can just FEEL that colleagues think I’m wrong!
So, how would folks handle this situation? I’m involved with an organization in which the leader of the organization – a very high profile individual – constantly makes glaring vocabulary errors, e.g., uses “fulsome” to mean “complete” and “penultimate” to mean “ultimate” or “last.” I don’t really have a close enough relationship with this person to correct the errors, but the worst part is that the errors are catching on among many staff members. It is like a disease. What would you do?
I can’t remember which specific article it was, but the other day, I read the following sentence:
“The award was given to he and his mother.” Will anyone be surprised if I mention that the article was on AOL (Huffpost)? Apparently no one at Huffpost is expected to proofread his own copy. I guess they don’t have editors either.
@nottelling, I just read an article using the word “upmost” Pass that one on to the staff!
The word penultimate is a great one to use for “compliments”. You might want to tell the leader that you think he is the penultimate manager. He’ll be flattered, I’m sure.
i*
Penultimate was on the SAT for one of my kids! He got it right!
I am more likely to forgive someone on a message board than I am someone who has signs, banners, literature, etc. printed up for public viewing. Those people should be getting someone to edit their material. We just came out of a campaign cycle here, and it blows my mind, the stuff that is sent out with glaring mistakes. If you want me to take you seriously as a professional, then learn to communicate professionally. If that means you need to have someone proof material you’re distributing, then pay someone to do it. I was recently asked to join a closed Facebook group of local moms, but they titled the Facebook page, __________ Mom’s. Sure enough, most of the members think if a word ends with ‘s’, then an apostrophe is needed. It’s so bad, I’m about to leave the group. Go on, judge me for being so harsh, but I expect more from people who have, at a minimum, graduated high school.
But one of my biggest pet peeves… people who capitalize every other word because they think it makes what they have to say more important. Um… no! It just makes you look ignorant.
BTW - while many of us sometimes get annoyed with some of these language and grammar errors, CC is by far, the most educated group of people I’ve read. If you really want to see some poorly-educated people, read the comments section after any online news article.
I don’t know if this is even permitted, but if any of you ever catch an error in a post you’ve written after the editing period is up, I’m volunteering my moderating abilities to correct things after that time - but this only applies to obvious spelling errors - nothing that would change content. So just PM me. The nice thing about CC is, at least in the Parent’s Cafe and Parent’s Forum, this just isn’t needed all that much.
@consolation - LOL! I wish I could like this post five times! Reading it was one of the best ways I could end my birthday today, and you didn’t even know it was my birthday.
The apostrophe crimes wrt its and it’s cause me physical pain. I’m serious. Okay, not really but yes really.
I spend some time reading fora on MyFitnessPal and because it’s a weight loss site, and because the clientele are not as uniformly well-educated as that of CC, the misspellings of ‘lose’ and ‘loose’ are legion. And they also cause me physical pain. 
**It’s **is a contraction for IT IS.
Its is the possessive for it. You don’t spell hi’s and her’s
What do you all think about the overuse of “literally”? My head literally explodes when people misuse that word.
Can we merge this with the baseball thread? Mets fans started a tradition of bringing quirky signs to the park mocking Hunter Pence. One of my favorites was “Hunter Pence uses literally figuratively.”
One of mine is “graduate high school.” You graduate from high school. Or the high school graduates you and your classmates. You do not graduate high school.
In case you haven’t already seen the video, Weird Al wrote a song on this topic called “Word Crimes.” My kids loved it.
Thanks, MomofJandL. That one really gets on my nerves too.
I think it may be a regional thing (northeast, maybe?). I grew up in PA and OH, hubby grew up in Colorado. We both say “graduated FROM.”
Two that haven’t been mentioned yet:
Faze/phase
And pour/ pore
ARGHHHHH!