Unfinished Words

Last winter/spring/summer, I collected yogurt lids in the hope of getting the right letters to win a beach vacation.  I didn't get them.  But I did end up with tons of lettered lids in my desk drawer at work.  When I left my job, I saved the lids so I could use them for an elaborate art project for my then-boyfriend.  When we broke up, I saved the lids because I couldn't bear to throw out the results of such a sustained effort toward something.  When I moved out of my apartment, I finally got rid of the lids, but first I took this picture because I didn't want the letters to have been a complete waste:

All of those letters scattered on the floor made me realize something: sometimes you have to go through a lot of wrong words before finding the right one.  And also, I ate a lot of yogurt last year.

Your Words

Sometimes I wonder if, by immediately discounting anyone who misspells obvious words, I'm missing out on something.  For example, what if this is actually the best apartment in the city?

Then I think, Do I really want to rent from someone who can't even get such a small thing right?

(The answer is no, in case there was any doubt.)

Spelling Words

When I was younger (think college), I couldn't spell the word privilege to save my life.  For whatever reason, I just couldn't learn the order of the letters.  I had to look it up every single time.  Finally, one day I decided to learn it, for once and for all, and I did.  It was simple, once I actually tried.

There's an epidemic of the privilege situation going on, and it spans the globe.  Working at a publishing company, I read a lot of proposals and descriptions of books claiming they were indispensable.  But they were actually indispensible.  The first few times I thought nothing of it, because I wasn't sure how to spell that word.  But then when I saw it written the other (right) way, I figured it was just another American/British English spelling difference.  So I looked it up, only to find that -ible doesn't even exist.

Since that revelation, I've come across the word countless times, and there was always a 60/40 split, wrong to right.  So now I'm just stumped.  Is this all a big conspiracy to get me to think I'm spelling the word correctly but really I'm wrong?  Or are entire countries unaware of the word's proper spelling?  Honestly I'm not sure which it is.

Fighting Words

I would never claim to be a grammar expert.  Fine, that's not true; I would claim that, but I would be wrong.  Maybe.  However, I've been around long enough to have certain grammar/spelling pet peeves, and the it's/its phenomenon is right up there at the top of my list.  If I had a penny for every time I saw a sign--some obviously professionally done and others not so high-budget--with the it's/its error, I'd have over 57 pennies.  Which wouldn't be enough to buy much, but it would be heavy.  And I'd be angry about having to carry around so many pennies.

Still, the quickest way to start a fight with me is not to make the it's/its mistake.  It's to accuse me of not knowing the proper way to use those words.  Don't believe someone could get so mad about something so seemingly trivial?  Well, then explain how, when I thought about this old blog post today, my fists instinctively clenched.  I'm not saying it's a good thing.  I don't think I could find even one person who'd say it's a good thing.  But it's the truth.  In all its glory.

Use Your Words

But use them wisely. Otherwise, you'll end up posting a sign like this:

One thing we can all agree on: Must be fail.