alex.moskalyuk

If you’ve ever been through an English as a Second Language program, you are probably aware of the numerous annoyances in spelling that an avid English learner must know about. So, if you’re like me, and English is not necessarily your first language, you go on the Internet hoping to finally utilize your mad language skillz, only to find native speakers themselves mauling English, their first language. It’s everywhere - in emails, on forums, Slashdot, personal sites, and blogging just contributed to this phenomenon.

I will keep a list of the most annoying ones, that I hope to keep updating in the future.

1. it’s/its - This one is not hard, really. It’s a beautiful day implies that it really is a gorgeous day to be outside, while Killer bee is a strange creature, its behavior is mostly unknown talks about the subject (in this case killer bee), and then something pertaining to this subject (in this case behavior). The first one is just a short form of it is, the second one is a pronoun. Any time someone has a problem with choosing between it’s/its, substituting it’s with it is should give the definitive answer. Its really annoying to see people make this mistake over and over.
2. ‘ve/of - This one is interesting, since people who make this mistake have probably better audio skills than visual. They seem to hear that little voice of their own pronouncing “I could’ve run away to join the circus” and since the phonetic appearance of that little apostrophe-ve part is so similar to our favorite of, the brain automatically makes a substitution and stuff like “I could of run away” and “Microsoft could of open-source Windows” comes out. Fewer people make this mistake, than the previous one, which nevertheless doesn’t make it less annoying. Once again, substitute that little ‘ve with have, and if the sentence still makes sense, then of probably has no business being right there. I could of written more on this, but let’s move on.
3. definately - Google search for definately - 634,000 results. Dictionary.com search on definately - 0 results. Hard to say where this one comes from, perhaps ambiguity of “independent/independant” had something to do with this, or maybe people freak out at “fine”, thinking that they should read it as in “wine”, which they know is incorrect, and thus definitely must be wrong, but there’s really no excuse for this one.
4. they’re/their - Less common, and less annoying to me, but still lurking out there among those with greater capabilities for spoken word than written one.