You know, when somebody corrects your spelling....

[conuly]

Don't try to counter-correct them until after you bother looking in a dictionary.

Correcting spelling may not be the most polite thing ever, but so long as you take it in good stride you still look like a reasonable, educated individual, albeit one who made a spelling error. (Well, English orthography is a mess. Who can keep it all straight?)

Comments

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

But what do I do if I'm correct and know it even before checking a dictionary?

I mean, if someone told me that "conceive" was written "concieve" because "i after e except after c", and I happened to be 100% certain that it's "conceive"... am I not allowed to protest until I've found a dictionary to prove that I'm correct after all?

[lady-angelina.livejournal.com]

Some people won't listen to you until you actually produce proof that you're correct. =P (And then there are some who won't listen to you even AFTER you've shown irrefutable proof, but let's not go there. XD;;; )

[conuly]

If you're right, then no.

But what I, personally, may lack in manners I more than make up for with mad spelling skillz. Or skills, even. If I tell you, just as a random example, that the word is not "wa la" but "voila" because it's a French word, then you really should confirm this before saying "I didn't mean viola, haven't you ever heard people say 'wa la' before???"

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

*giggles* Now THAT I fully understand.
(I have seen people write "wa la" before. It has taken me a while to even get what they might be intending to say...)

[conuly]

I know!

[conuly]

Ah, and now she's going "But I wasn't trying to spell voila! I was spelling wa la!"

To which I say: STFU already. You were wrong, you were wrong, you were wrong. And I started off... more or less polite, but now that we're six comments in I'm starting to get tired of her trying to argue with me that I'm the one who is wrong with the spelling of this word.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

If someone told you that, you could legitimately respond "Yes, dummkopf, i before e except after c", because the word conceive is one of the relatively few examples in which that rule actually works. You'd have a lot more trouble if the word about which you were correct was weird or eiderdown or something, because there's no sometimes-applicable rule one can quote about those.

*shrugs* What you do when you're correct and know it even before checking is walk away and remind yourself yet again that against stupidity, the Gods themselves contend in vain, because protesting - with or without a dictionary in hand - is generally futile. People in general do not wish to be told when they're wrong, will not examine or believe evidence proving they are wrong, and will resent, discount and dislike anyone who says that they are. Why make enemies over a minor point in spelling, when there are so many better reasons to make them?

My life is full of people who exemplify the Dunning-Kruger effect; if I tried to set them all straight on all the subjects about which they are badly misinformed, I'd have no time left for anything else. Therefore, I've been moving toward a philosophy of just going ahead and letting people be as wrong as they please, because I'm not getting paid to teach them. Sad to say, the vast majority of the human race is neither educated nor reasonable, and after about puberty, there is usually no way to make them so.

[tsukikage85.livejournal.com]

That... is hilarious. And pathetic.

[conuly]

If someone told you that, you could legitimately respond "Yes, dummkopf, i before e except after c", because the word conceive is one of the relatively few examples in which that rule actually works.

I believe the British version runs "When sounding like ee, it's i before e, except after c", but I don't know that it's any more useful stated that way.

Of course, part of the trouble is that people seem to think that that rule applies (or should apply) when the e and the i span two different syllables. That, of course, is ridiculous. Theist has an e before the i because they make two different sounds. It's not "an exception to the rule" because it's not covered by the rule in the first place!

Sad to say, the vast majority of the human race is neither educated nor reasonable, and after about puberty, there is usually no way to make them so.

Now that we're three exchanges into this conversation I've given up on the girl. She wrote a decent fic, and I liked it, but you simply can't read stories by somebody who refuses to admit when they're wrong, it just doesn't work.

[conuly]

It got worse.

[conuly]

And what's really sad is I felt no disparagement towards this person in the first place. Or even in the second place. It's now that she's on her third comment (or possibly her fourth by now, I refuse to check, lest I look like (more of) an ass when I reply yet again) insisting that she's NOT wrong that I'm beginning to think she's just hopeless.

[tsukikage85.livejournal.com]

Oh, do elaborate!

[conuly]

http://conuly.livejournal.com/1798725.html?thread=11717957#t11717957

I gave her a link to the dictionary entry on "voila". She continued to argue that that wasn't the word she was trying to spell. *headdesk*

And you know, everything else was spelled beautifully. Had I imagined she'd react like this to "Good fic, but you made one little spelling error" I would've just hit the back button and been done with it!

[conuly]

I'd link to the thread proper, but by my most recent comment I'm Very Obviously Pissed Off (I don't take criticism well, particularly when I'm right) and I just look bad.

[leora.livejournal.com]

While not relevant to your case, the one issue I have seen even educated, good-spellers get caught on is when they are corrected by another educated, good-speller and point out that they are right, and it takes a bit for each of them to realize that there is more than one valid spelling for the word. So, the correct spelling was "corrected" to another correct spelling. Which is annoying, since it wasn't an error, and the corrector was wrong to say it was. But the person corrected may also mess up if they claim the corrector is in error without checking first.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

That is likely to leave you with few stories to read, then, because most of the humans on this planet refuse to admit it when they're wrong. If you'd given up three exchanges sooner, you could still read and like her fic even though she misspelled a word because she didn't realize it was French, and thus mistook it for one of those meaningless noises English is full of: whoopie, ick, blah blah blah, argh, etcetera.

I suppose they are not technically meaningless, because they do convey meaning, and we all know what they mean, but they're not easily defined. Not onomatopoeia but something similar; a sort of emotional onomatopoeia: words that sound like how they feel. Has that type of word a name to itself, I wonder?

Heh, years ago I was an Uppity Free Woman of Cyber-Gor, and my-godda-bless, such execrable writing and spelling I had never imagined - truly; and I had tutored developmentally-disabled inner-city kids; also ghost-written copy-edited papers for profit; I had seen some poor writing-skills in my time. But this, this was poor writing-skills coupled with the passionate (if misguided) ambition to write like the great literary Master, John Norman, Author of Gor.

ROFLMAO, at one point in my giddy career, I was actually Ubara (AKA alpha bitch) of the glorious city of Ar and thus had all these kajirae, slave-girls, at my beck and call. Now, I am not into the whole slave-girl thing, but since they were my 'official' retinue, more or less, I thought they ought to show some class.

Gorean kajirae are always talking about their "warm slave-bellies" (in the third person, referring to themselves as "this girl"; sheesh, don't get me started) which would be hard enough to bear, but this one kajira kept spelling it worm. AAAARRRGGGHHH!!! I finally told her rather severely that if she didn't learn to spell it right, I was going to have her de-wormed.

I would have done it too; I had the whole scene half-written in my mind, but then my Ubar was deposed and we had to flee into the Northern Forest, so I suppose the poor girl has a "worm slave-belly" to this very day. Tragic, but what can ya do.

[conuly]

The thing is, usually it's the people who can't spell at all who don't want to be corrected. They go "Oh, blah blah blah, internets!!!!" but the people who can spell go "Thanks!" and whether they mean it or not they stop there.

Took me completely by surprise.

So actually, no, I don't have so few stories to read, because most people can at least spell, and I never have to know they can't (and won't get help) because they don't mess up.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Ream ember, spill-czech wont salve ewe ivory thyme.

I swear spellcheck has spoiled the current generation, along with the goddamned you-knew-what-I-meeeeant whiners.

Honestly, if someone tells you it's spelt wrong, say "Oh, okay," and fix it. When someone tells you your fly is undone, do you spend half an hour arguing that it isn't, or do you check it and zip as necessary? Some people's kids....

[pne.livejournal.com]

The userpic came is based on an incident with a person who also had their own conceptions of how to spell that word.

[conuly]

How hard is it to get it right?