Get it right people. Come on!

I’m generally not a spelling nazi. The way I see it, unless it’s a formal document, if I can make sense of it I don’t care about the formatting. I’m not sure why there are so many people out there who feel the need to correct people’s mistakes. Particularly in this online existence where almost all forms of communication are in writing. When you’re trying to keep the flow of conversation at a reasonable pace, you don’t need to worry about spelling errors.

If people are smart enough to know there is an error, they should also be smart enough to work out what the person is trying to say by the context of the conversation. I guess if the error is so bad that even the context is lost, then maybe people should take more care, but in that event I still don’t care. I just hope you weren’t asking me to do something. Cos if I don’t understand the request, it ain’t gonna get done.

There’s just two spelling errors that I feel need to be corrected. I never correct them at the time, hence the purpose of this post. I hope that it will serve to educate a few people on the subject, and serve as a blanket correction if you will.

The first is no biggie, but believe me you will look pretty stupid if you make this mistake.
“Voila”: It’s French. It loosely translates to “and there you have it”. Most commonly used, in English, when a magician performs his trick. All too often I see it typed as “wah lah”…or “wala”...or something, let’s say more phoenetic.

Like I said, this is no biggie, but now you can get it right.

The second is a biggie and honestly it shits me up the wall. It’s one that people continually get wrong. The problem with this one is there are three possible ways to correctly spell the word, but each one has a different meaning. I don’t know whether it is a case of me being more sensitive to it, but I think more than half of the population do not know the correct time to use each spelling choice. They seem to treat it like a multiple choice question. And quite often I will see the same person spell it incorrectly twice, by using the other wrong option. Crazy stuff.

I am referring to the word “their” (or “there”; or “they’re”). So here is your lesson. And if your only goal in life is not to piss me off (if it’s not, it should be), then you will take heed:

THEIR – means belonging to them.
THERE – in that place
And THEY’RE – they are.

I hope this has helped. Really I am only helping you to help me.