David'Z RantZ ~~ Return of the Grammar Nazi

Nope, no Comical Wednesday entry today, fellow babies!

I've often said "Ya gotta love the internet," for various reasons, as appropriate.

However, thanks to improperly proofread emails, blogs, and websites, the following words have now become interchangeable, at least, as far as how they appear in articles and other kinds of postings:

• an/and
• to/too
• peak/peek
• form/from
• hugh/huge
• advise/advice
• breath/breathe
• cloths/clothes
• discreet/discrete
• then/than
• past/passed
• were/where

Not to mention confusion concerning words like "loose" and "lose," "it's" and "its," "who's" and "whose," etc. In fact, I predict that the word "lose" (with that spelling) won't even exist in a decade or two!

"Intact" -- rendered as two words, "in tact" -- gets a category all its own.

The above examples are hardly exhaustive, just the ones that occur to me at the moment!

And spell-checker programs don't help, because they can't check your grammar. So misused words like "their," "there" and "they're" can squeak by easily.

Ever See This?

I halve a spelling checker,

It came with my pea see.

It plainly marks four my revue

Mistakes I dew knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word

And weight four it two say

Weather eye am wrong oar write

It shows me strait aweigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid

It nose bee fore two long

And eye can put the era rite

Its rarely ever wrong.

I've scent this massage threw it,

And I'm shore your pleased too no

Its letter prefect in every weigh;

My checker tolled me sew.

Or this?

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer

in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is

taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be

a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is

bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the

wrod as a wlohe. Pettry amzanig huh?

That is kind of amazing. I have to wonder if it's really because "because the human mind does not read every letter by itself, but the word as a whole," or if it's just that we as a society have learned to "translate," as it were, because we've just become so damned used to people on the internet who either 1) don't know how to spell and don't care, or 2) are too lazy or rushed (it can vary) to proofread what they've written before sending or posting it. Ha!

So, "Ya gotta love the internet?" Well, not always.

And don't worry, I don't want to sound too high-and-mighty. I make an occasional error myself! Damned shame, ain't it?

End of rant.

Thanks for your time.