LinkedIn Poll: "Which writing mistake drives you crazy?"

Good morning!

Thought I'd share this little poll with you all. LinkedIn asked: "Which writing mistake drives you crazy?"

I find the results somewhat surprising. The number one most annoying mistake, as rated by people who took the poll, was homophone misuse (e.g. writing except when you mean accept). This one annoys me too, but I thought "Punctuation abuse" would score much higher than it did.

Also encouraging was the mistake voted second most annoying: "Cliches, passive voice, trite writing." Granted, people who chose to take this poll are more likely than the general population to care about quality writing. But it's encouraging to me because it says to me that a significant number of folks still care about good writing. Sometimes, reading things on the internet, it's easy to think that good writing isn't valued much.

"Words" We Hate

Warning: The editor is ornery today!

Does it bug you when you hear a word that's not really a word -- and may even be totally incorrect -- yet people who say it can't seem to grasp that they're wrong?

Take this example: incent. I hear this all the time, especially in business. As in, "What can we do to incent our staff to work harder?"

It makes me cringe every time. The correct word is incentivize. Saying incent makes it look like (1) you're ignorant of the correct word, (2) you're dying to use the latest business buzzword, and/or (3) you're trying to popularize your own trendy little buzzword even though it's incorrect... or your own shortened version of a buzzword... I mean, really? Is incentivize really that long and cumbersome to pronounce? Do we need nicknames for buzzwords? Wouldn't that be, like, one of the most ridiculous things ever? (Maybe I need to write a separate blog about buzzwords.)

Changing Language

Don't get me wrong. I know word usage changes all the time. I know that over time, nouns get used as verbs or adjectives, and vice versa. Lord knows text wasn't used as a verb until very recently in history.

And yet text as a verb doesn't bother me. Incent does. Maybe because nouns becoming verbs is so common that it seems like a natural, creative progression of the English language to me. whereas incent is just plain wrong.

Another one that makes me cringe is heighth. You know, when people mean to say height, but they slap an extra -th sound onto the end. Maybe this is merely a regional variation, or maybe people who say this are trying to be all egalitarian, not wanting height to be deprived of the same ending sound possessed by its cousins, length and width. I don't know. But for the record, it's wrong.

What's your (non-)word pet peeve?

Test Your Vocab

Maybe you've seen this on Facebook by now, but if not, check it out:

http://testyourvocab.com/

The instructions read: "Check the box for each word you know at least one definition for. Don't check boxes for words you know you've seen before, but whose meaning you aren't exactly sure of."

My score was 24,900. What was yours?

Most of my friends' and families' scores were higher than mine. I used to think I had a big vocabulary. But that was back in high school, when I was reading world literature and classics on a daily basis for English class.

Sometimes I think my high school days were the "smartest" I've ever been, at least in terms of book learning. I read a lot now, but the books I read don't necessarily use words like legerdemain and sparge. I wish I had time to be reading Poe and Dickens on a regular basis. *sigh* Maybe when I retire.

Mxied-Up Wrods

For your amusement:

• Deos it relaly maettr aubot the splleing or grmaamr, as lnog as you get the msesege?

According to an Internet meme that's been circulating for many years, something about the human brain allows us to read words - easily, too - as long as the first letter and the last letter are in the right place.

• I cnduo't bvleiee taht I culod aulaclty uesdtannrd waht I was rdnaieg. Unisg the icndeblire pweor of the hmuan mnid, aocdcrnig to rseecrah at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mttaer in waht oderr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whoutit a pboerlm. Tihs is bucseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey ltteer by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Aaznmig, huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghhuot slelinpg was ipmorantt! See if yuor fdreins can raed tihs too.

Fact or Fiction?

Is this really true? Can you scramble up the middle letters of ANY word and still be able to read it without a problem?

It turns out that the "research at Cambridge University," cited in the jumbled paragraph above, does not exist. At least, it did not exist when that paragraph started circulating.

However, Cambridge researcher Matt Davis, after seeing that paragraph on the internet, delved into this issue in great detail. Click here to read his excellent page on the topic.

The Verdict

On his page, Mr. Davis debunks the theory that you can scramble up the middle letters of a word any way you want to and still maintain readability. Behold:

1. A vheclie epxledod at a plocie cehckipont near the UN haduqertares in Bagahdd on Mnoday kilinlg the bmober and an Irqai polcie offceir
2. Big ccunoil tax ineesacrs tihs yaer hvae seezueqd the inmcoes of mnay pneosenirs
3. A dootcr has aimttded the magltheuansr of a tageene ceacnr pintaet who deid aetfr a hatospil durg blendur

If you're like most people, these sentences get progressively more difficult. Yet they've all been scrambled according to the same rules: keep the first and last letters in place, and mix up the middle letters willy-nilly.

So, just in case you were wondering: No, this does not give you an excuse to stop giving a damn about spelling, or about proofreading. But it does explain why even the best proofreaders overlook some mistakes, especially when they're reading text quickly!

Bye, Borders

Well, it happened. A few months after it downsized and closed multiple stores, Borders is now giving up the ghost for good. Read more in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. By the end of September, all the stores will be gone.

So now my lament from March becomes a eulogy today.

It's Not About the Books

The more reactions I hear from people about Borders going out of business, the more I realize one thing.

Borders may be a giant bookstore. But the sadness accompanying its closing is not about the books at all.

No, people went to Borders for the experience. They went to browse through new arrivals and to check out the staff's picks. They went to lose themselves in the possibilities: seeing a new release by a favorite author, discovering a brand-new author, finding a gem that they might never have stumbled across ("treasure hunting," as one fan called it today online), and holding those gems in their hands. They went for the ways that a bookstore stimulates the senses: warm lighting, endless colorful book covers, artwork on the walls, the subdued murmurs of other customers, and the smell of coffee from the cafe. They went to feel like part of a community of people who love reading and learning. They went to Borders to be alone, or to meet up with friends. They stopped in on first dates, or with their children, or to kill time before a movie. They stayed a few minutes, or they stayed for hours. It was a destination. For book lovers, it was hard to leave the store without buying a book, because the rows upon rows of bookshelves were just too tempting, and you had to throw yourself into them and see what they might hold for you.

You can get books online. But you can't get those experiences online. And sure, you might get the same experiences at Barnes & Noble, or at a neighborhood bookstore. But Borders had so many locations all across America that, for many people, it was the only bookstore in the area. For many people, losing Borders means losing the bookstore experience for good.

It's sad news, Borders. We'll miss you.

Creating the Perfect Password

Sometimes I feel like a ridiculously large percentage of my brain is used by remembering all of the various passwords that I use in my life.

There must be dozens of them. Maybe even hundreds. There's a handful for work. One for my home computer. One for my bank. Several for each of the online bill sites that I visit to pay my bills. One for my health insurance company's site. One for my husband's health insurance company's site. The list goes on and on.

It's a bit maddening. My poor brain could be using those cells to store pleasant things, like fond memories of friends and family and good times. Yet those neurons are saddled with the most boring job description around: remember several strings of characters as well as which websites or computers those strings belong to.

The Master Password

Wouldn't it be great to have just ONE password for everything? Then you could send most of those poor beleaguered brain cells on vacation, and when they return, give them a brand-new and much more fun job.

But creating a master password would be complex. It would be both a science and an art. It would, in fact, be a feat of creative writing, on a tiny scale.

It would have to meet the following requirements at the very least:

• Uncrackable, even by people who know you (no names of your pets, spouse, children, hometown, your username spelled backward, etc.)
• Exactly 8 characters in length (I've seen sites that require at least 8 characters, and a few that require exactly 8 characters, but never any sites that require fewer than 8)
• Easy for you to remember
• Easily tweakable to meet the stringent requirements of certain sites. Here's what I mean by tweakable. Some sites require that your password contain only letters, while other sites require at least one number and one symbol in addition to letters. So an ideal password would allow characters to be swapped out easily for numbers or symbols. For instance, you could use the word migraine as your password, and if you encounter a site that requires a number and a symbol, you could substitute an exclamation point for the first i, and substitute the number 3 for the letter E, so that you get m!grain3.
  

That's a tall order. I don't even know if it's possible, given the many different requirements demanded by various computer systems.

And then, of course, there are the companies that require your password to be changed every few weeks. So you'd have to go through the entire master-password creation process again several times a year.

On second thought, I don't know that this would be a creative process after all. It might only be an exercise in futility. What do you think?

Mistakes Cost Money

"Spelling mistakes cost millions in online sales," shouts the headline of a recent BBC news story.

I was fascinated to see this story. Spelling mistakes cost millions in sales? Really? If the article had contained hard data, it would have been a real coup for editors.

Alas, it's not scientific. But it is interesting. The guy making the claim is not an editor or writer, apparently, but an "entrepreneur" who publishes websites professionally. An excerpt:

Mr Duncombe says that it is possible to identify the specific impact of a spelling mistake on sales.

He says he measured the revenue per visitor to the tightsplease.co.uk website and found that the revenue was twice as high after an error was corrected.

I wrote about this issue a few months back. If a website is riddled with mistakes, I do tend to take the website -- and sometimes the entire company -- less seriously. To me, the mistakes make the company look careless and amateurish. If they don't care about communication, I wonder, how much do they care about their product?

I don't know if mistakes on a website would cut sales in half, like Mr. Duncombe claims, but I'm sure it would cut sales at least somewhat. What do you think?

I'd love it if some brilliant researcher would do a real study on how bad web editing affects web sales. It's seldom that you can put a hard dollar figure on the value of good editing.