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Fantastic Name

Which is your preferred spelling?  

138 members have voted

  1. 1. Grey or gray?

    • Grey
      69
    • Gray
      33
    • Both/neither
      36
  2. 2. Fiber or fibre?

    • Fiber
      81
    • Fibre
      42
    • Both/neither
      15
  3. 3. 'Til, til, or till?

    • 'Til
      56
    • Til
      23
    • Till
      34
    • All/none of the above
      25
  4. 4. Synch or sync?

    • Synch
      8
    • Sync
      122
    • Both/neither
      8
  5. 5. Axe or ax?

    • Axe
      112
    • Ax
      8
    • Both/neither
      18
  6. 6. Worshiped or worshipped?

    • Worshiped
      23
    • Worshipped
      109
    • Both/neither
      6
  7. 7. Whoa or woah?

    • Whoa
      50
    • Woah
      42
    • Both/neither
      46
  8. 8. Is proper spelling important to you?

    • Yes, very
      38
    • Yes, kinda
      62
    • Meh/no opinion
      22
    • No, not really
      10
    • No, not at all
      2
    • Other (please explain!)
      4
  9. 9. Do you get irritated when people don't spell words using your preferred spelling?

    • Yes, very
      8
    • Yes, kinda
      30
    • Meh
      39
    • No, not really
      38
    • No, not at all
      18
    • Other (please explain!)
      5

This poll is closed to new votes


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Fantastic Name

Just curious as how people like their words spelled. 🙃

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To me, whoa and woah are 2 different words. It's like asking which spelling is correct, there or their. :) 

 

As for what's correct it depends on where you're from and/or where you live and what is considered correct and standard there. The is no "one true" version of English. There are a number of equally correct versions. 

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AceMissBehaving

I’m dyslexic so I’m more bothered by people being bothered by spelling. I’m very careful and use spell check a lot, and get very anxious/paranoid about it when I’m trying to form thoughts online. Especially when wading into controversial arguments etc.

 

I’m also a Brit who’s been living in the states for 16 years, so just looking at all the above options made my head spin!

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Sometimes my spelling depends on whether I'm posting in the four letter word thread. :P

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AceMissBehaving
6 minutes ago, CBC said:

Many of my answers are dictated by the fact that I'm Canadian, thus I use proper (British English) spellings. :P 

🙌 

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1. Both

2. Fiber

3. Til

4. Sync

5. Ax

6. Worshipped

7. Both

8. No, not really.

9. Not at all.

 

Not surprising coming from an American huh?

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1. Grey

2. Fibre

3. Til

4. Sync

5. Axe

6. Worshipped

7.  Never spelt it :(

8. No, not really

9. No, not really

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Anthracite_Impreza

The correct (British) ways of course.

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AVEN's Census surveys show that most members are in the U.S., so it's not surprising that most responses reflect preferring American spelling.

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Tree snake

My feelings on this matter are simple. 

I misspell = I'm an idiot.

Other people misspelling doesn't bother me at all, unless the text is so off it's unreadable.

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Without spellcheck, I think I'm about as skilled as a third grader.

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1 hour ago, daveb said:

The is no "one true" version of English.

Yes there is! There is a hint in the word... English - Eng-land!

 

(only teasing of course) I do get irked by some Americanisms like 'reaching out' instead of 'contacting' being used increasingly in the UK. What is all that about? Nothing to do with spelling, but still. I use British spelling, always, because that's where I live and that's what I've grown up with. And no, I'm noty a nationalist 🙂

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Forest Spirit

Non-native speaker here, and although we learned British English in school I honestly don't know half of the time if my spelling is British or American English... except with some words that are shorter in American English like colour vs color. Just recently learned the reason for that (shortening words for newspapers) and it makes it easier to spot, but in general it's just 'Idk' 😅

Apart from grey -gray and fibre - fiber I didn't even know that there were two spellings for the rest of your examples...

 

Edit: ColeHW's and iff's answer implies that I use both at random:ph34r:

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25 minutes ago, Quasar.w said:

Non-native speaker here, and although we learned British English in school I honestly don't know half of the time if my spelling is British or American English... except with some words that are shorter in American English like colour vs color. Just recently learned the reason for that (shortening words for newspapers) and it makes it easier to spot, but in general it's just 'Idk' 😅

Apart from grey -gray and fibre - fiber I didn't even know that there were two spellings for the rest of your examples...

 

Edit: ColeHW's and iff's answer implies that I use both at random:ph34r:

^Same :'D Especially "worshiped" looks so weird to be honest O_o

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Forest Spirit
2 minutes ago, Llea said:

^Same :'D Especially "worshiped" looks so weird to be honest O_o

It just wants me to squeeze a second 'p' in there😁 Idk it sounds like there are two p's... then again it's English, where spelling and pronounciation are two beings that have never met each other before😋 ^small tease to a language I love using^

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4 minutes ago, Quasar.w said:

It just wants me to squeeze a second 'p' in there😁 Idk it sounds like there are two p's... then again it's English, where spelling and pronounciation are two beings that have never met each other before😋 ^small tease to a language I love using^

Yess, exactly! 😄 The word "Mercedes" says it all when it comes to english pronounciation :'D But I really like english, too. It sounds good and grammar and spelling are easy. But I can't get the hang of the pronounciation 😪😅

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Forest Spirit
53 minutes ago, Llea said:

Yess, exactly! 😄 The word "Mercedes" says it all when it comes to english pronounciation :'D But I really like english, too. It sounds good and grammar and spelling are easy. But I can't get the hang of the pronounciation 😪😅

Oh god... I had to look up the pronounciation for Mercedes and just whaaaat... where does that 'ei' come from?😅

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3 minutes ago, Quasar.w said:

Oh god... I had to look up the pronounciation for Mercedes and just whaaaat... where does that 'ei' come from?😅

I seriously don't know 😂 And we never learned any rules for englisch pronounciation in school. Probably because the teacher didn't know them either 😅

Pronounciation is the reason I never learned French and sucked at my Chinese classes :'D

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Horse Ham Radio
  1. Grey
  2. Fibre
  3. None of these. It's "until". 'Til is acceptable though, but Til is wrong and Till is a different word entirely with two meanings already (cash till and that farming thing :P).
  4. Sync because that's how people I know pronounce it. (like sink.)
  5. Axe
  6. Worshipped
  7. Woah
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Alawyn-Aebt

I. Both acceptable, personally use Grey more however when it is absolutely necessary in certain contexts to look American I spell it Gray

II. Context: Fiber if you eat it; Fibre if it is optics or glass.

III. Always Until, I will accept 'Til if needed. Til is incorrect. Till is a different word. I actually saw a sign saying 'till once, that is definitely wrong.

IV. Both acceptable, if you use the word synchronization within a few sentences though one should spell it Synch.

V. Both acceptable, I only use Axe.

VI. Always Worshipped.

VII. I try to avoid spelling that, Whoa seems wrong because if it ends in -oa it should be pronounced like Boa in my book. Therefore on the rare occasions I spell it, and when I have to read it, I prefer Woah.

VIII. Yes, kind of (NOT KINDA). More of a stylistic thing for me, just as long as it is spelled (yes, not spelt, I use spelt exclusively for some tenses though) in a reasonably comprehensible manner.

IX. Yes, kind of (NOT KINDA). Again it is a stylistic thing. There are some words I naturally put a u in like British English even though I am American, it probably comes from me watching British children's television shows and reading predominantly British children's books in my preschool and early-elementary school years. Favourite, Harbour, Labour, Flavour, Neighbour, etc. and most others that follow that pattern look odd if they lack the u.

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everywhere and nowhere

In English it's a different thing. I usually prefer British spelling (by the way, one of the reasons I prefer "gray" is my disgust and hostility to you-know-what series of books... :angry:). But both are allowed, both are correct. In Polish it's a different thing. There are some variants, some cases of different spelling allowed, or - even more commonly - gender variants: some words are almost always used in plural and so there is doubt about what is actually the singular form?? ;) For example:

kluski (noodles) - singular could be kluska (f) or klusek (m)

obierki (peels) - obierka (f) or obierek (m)

rodzynki (raisins) - rodzynka (f) or rodzynek (m) ("Rodzynka" is usually used in the meaning "one raisin", "rodzynek" had gained an extra meaning - "only male in a group of women".)

But ordinary spelling errors annoy me very much, along with:

a) Not using diacritic signs. Polish has a fair amount of them: ą, ę, ó, ć, ś, ń, ź, ż, ł. A typical Polish keyboard is an ordinary QWERTY with necessary drivers installed, diacritic signs are typed by pressing Alt key + letter (for example, ę = Alt + e). Some people omit these signs not because they don't have a Polish keyboard, but because they are too lazy. I hate it.

(On the other hand, I never use Polish signs in my mobile. But I simply can't. I have tested years ago it by sending a message to my mom and asking her what appeared: I may type "będę" [I will] - and my mobile will send "bede" anyway. The model is 19 years old, by the way.)

b) Not remembering how to use punctuation. For example , putting the comma like this. Or ,perhaps ,like this. Or: some people know that there is no space before a dot or comma and a space after - but think that maybe with question marks and exclamation marks it's different and so one can commonly find forms like "Would you have guessed ???".

Is it really so much to expect people not to use messy language?

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36 minutes ago, Aebt said:

Whoa seems wrong because if it ends in -oa it should be pronounced like Boa in my book. Therefore on the rare occasions I spell it, and when I have to read it, I prefer Woah.

So it should rhyme with Noah? ;) 

 

p.s. "woah" reminds me of a certain white dog...

Spoiler

C0653B2_en.jpg

 

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5 hours ago, Llea said:

Yess, exactly! 😄 The word "Mercedes" says it all when it comes to english pronounciation :'D But I really like english, too. It sounds good and grammar and spelling are easy. But I can't get the hang of the pronounciation 😪😅

First thing to keep in mind - not all "English" words are actually English. In this case, Mercedes is Spanish in origin (ultimately going back to Latin), so the pronunciation should be Mer-sey-des or Mer-say-dees, which would be more Anglo, I guess. 

 

As for why US English doesn't follow British English, blame Noah Webster who deliberately dropped the extraneous "U" in words and even changed some pronunciation in others.

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scarletlatitude

Probably not the best person to answer this since I'd be a hot mess without autocorrect.... but I did anyway.

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17 minutes ago, fuzzipueo said:

As for why US English doesn't follow British English, blame Noah Webster who deliberately dropped the extraneous "U" in words and even changed some pronunciation in others.

That's certainly part of it. But don't forget, American English has retained some aspects of British English that the Brits have since dropped/changed.

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buttons pushed. answers are undoubtedly somewhere in my posts at one point or another :)

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Forest Spirit
9 hours ago, Llea said:

I seriously don't know 😂 And we never learned any rules for englisch pronounciation in school. Probably because the teacher didn't know them either 😅

Pronounciation is the reason I never learned French and sucked at my Chinese classes :'D

Honestly don't remember if we ever learned pronounciation rules... but we did (with that one teacher for 5 years) learn vocabulary with these pronounciation signs things in brackets (forgot how they're called)

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3 hours ago, Quasar.w said:

Honestly don't remember if we ever learned pronounciation rules... but we did (with that one teacher for 5 years) learn vocabulary with these pronounciation signs things in brackets (forgot how they're called)

It's called International Phonetic Alphabet or IPA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet We learned how to use it in year nine or so which gave me a huge advantage over my fellow students who had to learn it from scratch at uni.

I didn't know anything about the details of pronunciation before coming to university. Studying the history of English and its phonology really helps; this semester we learned why the plural of mouse is mice and that the plural of book could also have been beek.

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As someone who can misspell the same word across one page of work spelling are a thorn in my side.

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Forest Spirit
3 hours ago, Jona Rhys said:

It's called International Phonetic Alphabet or IPA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet We learned how to use it in year nine or so which gave me a huge advantage over my fellow students who had to learn it from scratch at uni.

I didn't know anything about the details of pronunciation before coming to university. Studying the history of English and its phonology really helps; this semester we learned why the plural of mouse is mice and that the plural of book could also have been beek.

Right, phonetics. We didn’t learn them very properly but it still helped. Do you study sth like 'English and American Studies' or English as a teaching subject (Lehramt)? And regardless, THAT'S SO COOL^_^ (love languages in general)

That means I also love reading beek... alas, what a word! (ok I'll stop)

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