Monday, June 05, 2006

a sarcastic comment on spelling.

Too many people don't know how to spell the word: separate. I see it as "seperate" everywhere. (Most recently, in a comment on a blog I read two seconds ago.) I had a professor (well, not really...he was a grad student I think) who taught partial differential equations when I was in undergrad. He was always solving said PDEs on the board in front of the class, and he always put the heading "seperation of variables" on the board at least once a week, all semester, which eventually became very irritating. Nearly everyone in the class noticed eventually, and each time it happened, we would all look around the room at one another as if to say, "he still hasn't figured it out." Nobody ever said anything...I really wanted to write him a note on my final, but decided against it for fear of negative effect. Maybe he still spells it the same way.

On another note, I keep seeing spelling typos in books...really obvious ones with three "e"s in a row or letters swapped..I can't see why some authors don't use spell check. It would be so easy.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's interesting you should talk about people making typos. I counted two in this very article. You are using apostrophes where there is no need to have one. It's like when people say 1950's rather than 1950s.

Still, keep up the typographical errors. I'll be watching.

Laura said...

Thank you so much for pointing this out. I have corrected the two errors. I hope you pay close attention to the one word sentences, the lowercased proper nouns, and the tendency to use elipses (...) that pervades my writing. I am certain these shall provide you with much amusement in your perusal.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.