I was talking with Michele today, a most excellent friend of mine who happens to also be a high school teacher. She touched on a frustration that is one of my pet peeves as well, namely incorrect word usage.
One of the most egregious Word Violations (yes, I will capitalize it and make it part of the Shoestrings lexicon henceforth) has to do with homophones – words that sound the same but do not share the same meaning. Spelling checkers are wonderful things but they will not find misused homophones for you, giving rise to the classic poem which many of you have probably long since seen in your email box but I print here for your enjoyment anyway:
Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin 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 a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rarely ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect in it’s weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.
– Sauce unknown
When I see that someone puts an arm around someone’s ‘waste’ I can’t suppress an ‘eww’. It’s a waste of a good sentence.
I often see requests to ‘please bare with me’ but, honestly, I’d rather keep my clothes on. Only balding bears can get away with being bare.
And how many times have you seen someone insist that, “I really like that to”? ‘Too’, ‘two’, and ‘to’ can’t be banged through our heads hard enough, honestly. In fact, say this out loud (maybe when the kids aren’t around):
“Balls,” said the Queen, “If I had to/two/too I’d be King.”
The King laughed…’cause he had to/two/too.
If this isn’t funny we may have to take your homophones away for your own safety.
It is our right to get the words right when we write though to do so may require a rite. Homophone quizzes may rein in the tendency to get homophones wrong so that we may reign as Word Masters instead of being left paupers in the rain.
If nothing else, here is a handy educational video from Veggie Tales to help everyone remember…homophones keep the plain plane from landing out on the plain!
Writing Prompt: Use as many homophones as you can in a humor piece of only 200 words.
I love spotting homophonous eras, er, I mean errors. I especially love it when the mistake is maid, I mean made, by a professional writer. They occur every day on the Web and most often on yahoo, where the writers and editors can’t keep peak/peek, where/wear, to/too straight. You can see numerous examples on Terribly Write: http://terriblywrite.wordpress.com