[Closed] Spelling mental circles

Altantic.

Every Time.

And I'm an oceanographer.

Maintenance..........cannot spell this for some reason! I want to spell it maintain-ence ( with out the hyphen) but I am a gobshite......

Separate. I know it's not seperate but I can't help it..

Yeah, I'll ditto maintenance, it's a double-whammy for me because I look for word stems in spelling which means I start out at maintain-ance. I've had to type it sufficiently often at work now though that I think I've finally fixed it with plain old muscle memory.

Separate / seperate also (I actually got it wrong first time after literally just reading it in that last post!)

Recieve .. I know.. i before e except after c but still spell recieve wrong every time

i before e except after c

This is a really annoying mnemonic, because it's wrong as it stands. It should be "I before E except after E, when the vowel sounds like EE."

Institution - (third attempt there) and since all my work is Higher-Ed this is not ideal..

Oh and there is a rat in separate 😉

I have a few, but the best trick is to hit Google 🙂

One today was superceded .. is it superseded or superceded..? Google knows.

One word I never get wrong is "determined" - because, in a reading test at school about 40 years ago, I read it incorrectly. It was the only word I got wrong, so I checked it afterwards and have never forgotten!

Oh and there is a rat in separate

.....and also in seperate, so I'm not sure how that helps?

Edit: arat not erat! ......gotcha....thanks

is it superseded or superceded..?

Or supersceded. (Sorry).

It's a bugger is that one, because you've got super[b]s[/b]ede and con[b]c[/b]ede and they totally should be the same word stem.

Neccesesry.

Neccesasery.

Nesesaary.

**** it.

**** it.

Reported. Unnecessary profanity...

Was that really [s]nesecery[/s] [s]neccessary[/s] [s]nessecary[/s].... **** it.

"needed" - HTH. (-:

cloudnine - Member
Recieve .. I know.. i before e except after c but still spell recieve wrong every time

Still do this, after all these years..

Their/thier, yes I know.. and on the iPad I have to back space to correct [i]every bleeding time[/i]

superseded

One of my first ever tasks in my career was to go through an enormous big box of architectural and structural drawings for the main Royal Mail sorting office which was being built in Glasgow and mark each superseded drawing with a huge S/S in black marker pen.
It took days.

Since then, spelling it has not been a problem.

Their/thier, yes I know..

Brain hack for this - every version of that word starts with "the." [b]The[/b]ir / [b]the[/b]y're / [b]the[/b]re.

Well, bloody hell.

Why didn't I think of that ... 🙄

Cheers.

My brain is a big old ball of linguistic Elastoplasts.

Eg, a lot of people have trouble with definite / definate. This is a word stem fix - there's de-finite-ly no word as "finate."

I'm dyslexic so most bloody words either look wrong or I have spelt them wrong but think they are right. I can't even check them over as I still see the same mistake if it's there or not. I hate my head sometimes.

Independant/Independent.

I always go for the French spelling. Every bloody time!

None. I'm purfect.

Eg, a lot of people have trouble with definite / definate

This is ubiquitous. I vote we change the spelling to how we all say it.
Definut / definutly.

Gague.
Guage
Gage.

Fk.

definitely I never get right first time. People is another

Oh and there is a rat in separate

Now to fix my daughter who texted me to say she was 'going back to the howse'

jam bo - Member
Altantic.
Every Time.
And I'm an oceanographer

Now you mention it, you'd be suprised how little sea ice there is in the artic.

Now to fix my daughter

I've a friend on Facebook who keeps talking about her "dorta." I keep meaning to buy a puppy so I can kick it.

Now you mention it, you'd be suprised how little sea ice there is in the artic.

You'd probably fit quite a bit in the back of a lorry.

Also, "suRprised." (-: Muphry's Law.

Whenever I finish an email:

Regrads

Actually a typo rather than being unsure of the spelling.

Neccesesry.

Neccesasery.

Nesesaary.

**** it.

1 [b]c[/b]offee, 2 [b]s[/b]ugars. Ne[b]c[/b]e[b]ss[/b]ary.

I hate words that sound very similar but the spelling changes the meaning. "Homophones", apparently. E.g. Stationary / Stationery. The absolute worst is Compliment / Complement, because they basically mean the same thing - "I received a compliment because my tie complemented my shirt."

Oh, and I can't force my brain to understand why "comprised of" is wrong, but that's a grammar thing not a spelling thing I guess.

The absolute worst is Compliment / Complement

That completely hadn't occurred to me, so thanks for that.

I can't force my brain to understand why "comprised of" is wrong

Is it? Why?

rhythm.
does it have two h's ?

For some weird reason I keep wanting to put an 'n' at the end of it. I think in a past life I may have conflated it with "hymn."

Dave, not Steve.

Bear with me

My "new" barber, looks a lot like my mate Steve from School.
Every time I go in, the girl offers me a seat at her chair and I say confidently that "it's OK, I'll wait for Steve". She looks at Dave and says each time, "you're Steve today".

I made an entry in my Contacts list for my Barber that says "DAVE - ITS NOT STEVE FROM SCHOOL: REMEMBER ITS THE OPPOSITE".

I went in for a hair cut last week but didnt bother reading my note, and proudly hollered to the girl that I'd wait for Pete!

FFS.

Accommodate / accomodate

Also similar sounding words that exist as a noun and a verb (there's probably a word for that that I won't be able to spell 🙂 ):

Practice / practise
(I remember these and similar spellings by applying "advice" and "advise" to the same sentence)

Affect / effect

Discrete and discreet, one means on the sly, one means something that stands alone. Never know which is which.

Ditto practice/practise, one's the noun, one's the verb.

+1 for maintainence.

Rhythm Has Your Two Hips Moving, which I just used to spell it in that mnemonic!

Separate. I know it's not seperate but I can't help it..

This, every bloody time.

Also regrads and monring as typos in about ninety percent of all emails. The best one I've seen was from an accountant colleague who sent a customer an email regarding a discount. Only she didn't type discount she wrote discoc*#t.

Comparison, never completely sure if it ends in n or m.

I can't force my brain to understand why "comprised of" is wrong
[b]Is it? Why?[/b]

Some sort of super grammar nazi reasons, apparently.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/05/why-wikipedias-grammar-vigilante-is-wrong

As for rhythm, I have to write the word arrhythmia or dysrhythmia at least once a day and it always looks wrong.

I can never remember sentence vs sentance, and also practise vs practice.

I know the first example one is wrong but it doesn't look wrong enough to stand out.

But a hack to help me remember the second, where both are right but have different meanings would be nice.

That said - the purpose of language is to communicate. Does it actually matter if we were to have 'alternative' spellings for some of these words. Would anyone in the world misunderstand an instruction that

"A sentance must start with a capital letter and end with a full stop."

just because there's an a-e error?

Our spellings have changed with time enough anyway (ye olde shoppe), are we obsessed with being correct vs accepting evolution?

There's a sort of invirtuous circle: someone mispronounces a word or phrase then when they come to write it they write it in the way they say it so misspell it. An example would be: "could have", this is often contracted in speech to "could've" so it gets written down as "could of".

The soft 'c' as in advice does make things confusing, we've two letters 'c' & 's' that can sound the same but one of those letters (c) can also sound like 'k' or 's.

I can never remember sentence vs sentance, and also practise vs practice.
...
But a hack to help me remember the second, where both are right but have different meanings would be nice.

I like Timba's idea. I remember it differently (in my head, the 'c' is the regular form and it changes to an 's' if you're using it as a verb), but this is probably better:

(I remember these and similar spellings by applying "advice" and "advise" to the same sentence)

are we obsessed with being correct vs accepting evolution?

Yes, damn it! (-:

select * form emp;

The soft 'c' as in advice does make things confusing, we've two letters 'c' & 's' that can sound the same but one of those letters (c) can also sound like 'k' or 's.

Evolving that further though - we don't actually need the letter C - anywhere it's used we could replace by a K or an S depending on its pronunciation.

And while I also know there are similar words, with similar meanings, but with different spellings to differentiate them from each other, the context of a sentence clarifies that.

eg: You advise someone (verb) or give someone advise (noun)

Careful, we're heading towards newspeak!

I think there's a speeling mistake in your advise/advice example 🙄 😉

(not sure if whitestone has missed the point or I am)

It'll all be irrelevant anyway, we'll evolve 2 txtspk b4 long.

My mistake if I missed the subtlety of your example 😳

txtspk: definitive proof that if you give an infinite number of monkeys and infinite number of keyboards you'll get gibberish!