No-one can spell nowadays, or so it seems. I suppose spelling-checkers and auto-correction haven’t helped. Perhaps we’re going back to the pre-1700 age when you could spell things whatever way you liked. Come to think of it, the last hundred years have been rather like the seventeenth century, with breakdown of respect for existing hierarchies, wars, religious strife, executions of kings… perhaps we can hope for the dawn of a new Eighteenth Century. But, back to spelling. Writers and editors seem to have extraordinary difficulty with homonyms - words with different spellings (usually) and meanings, but the same pronunciation. I have started collecting examples by writers who should know better, and commercial websites. I plan to update the list regularly, and I don’t think there’s any danger of running out of examples.
TOBY BARNARD
'...the volume is an exciting brand-tub into which to dip.'
Toby Barnard, in The Irish Times, 5 September 2009 (Weekend Review pp11).
JEREMY CLARKE
‘But once I began scrolling through the messages, their sheer niceness and the
spirit of altruism implicit in the offered postings shamed me into reigning
in my greed, slightly.’
Jeremy Clarke, in The Sunday Telegraph, 26 June 2005 (Review pp1-2).
ANTHONY DANIELS
‘without any colonial office supervision to reign in personal extravagance or dishonesty’.
Anthony Daniels, ‘Geldof should learn from history: in Africa, aid does not bring
relief’, The Sunday Telegraph, 5 June
2005, p19.
MATT DRUDGE
'The prince, a junior officer in the Blues and Royals, and third in line to the throne, has been a "magnificent soldier" and an "inspiration to all of Briton." '
The Drudge Report http://www.drudgereport.com/flashph.htm February 2008
COLIN FREEMAN
'to prevent Islamic fundamentalism leeching into the continent's failed and nearly failing Muslim states.'
Colin Freeman: 'Islam has tamed a lawless Somalia, but is it raising an African Taliban?' The Sunday Telegraph, 8 October 2006, pp28-9.
GLEESON, JUSTIN, et al.
'PERSONS IN PRINCIPLE PROTESTANT DENOMINATIONS'
Gleeson, Justin, et al.: Atlas of the Island of Ireland, 2008 (p50).
JACQUI GODDARE
'Wild pigs have become known by hunters as the "poor man's grisly bear" because of the low cost and high success rate in catching them.'
Jacqui Goddare: 'Texans count cost as feral hogs run wild' The Sunday Telegraph, 26 November 2006, p31.
ANDREW GRAHAM-DIXON
‘a depiction of splendidly caparisoned elephants riding into the circus, while their attendants dance and clash symbols’
Graham-Dixon, Andrew: ‘White elephant fit for a
king’, The Sunday Telegraph, 24 July
2005 (Review p9).
JUSTIN MULLINS
‘by the time Mitchell’s work bares fruit’
Justin Mullins, in ‘Whatever happened to machines that think?’,
New Scientist, 23 April 2005, 32-37.
SANDRA O'CONNELL
'Being marginally more thrifty would see you eek out your savings over two nights at the St Regis Hotel presidential suite in the same city'
O'Connell, Sandra: 'Journeys of a lifetime', The Irish Times, 29 April 2006. Article available online at www.ireland.com/focus/ssia/p4a.htm
THOMAS PAKENHAM
‘At this Camden backpeddled hurriedly.’
Pakenham, Thomas: The Year of Liberty (paperback edition, Abacus, 2000), p54.
JOHN PRESTON
[describing a documentary on torture] ‘All this had a grizzly fascination’
John Preston’s television column, The Sunday Telegraph, 10 April 2005 (Review, p10).
TOBY ROBERTS
'branding oneself an "atheist" seems like tempting fate.... So I sometimes just call myself "C of E" instead, which strikes me as much the same thing, only more discrete.'
Roberts, Toby: 'Confused? Yes, but not so badly as Lord Tebbit', The Sunday Telegraph, 30 April 2006.
ANDREW SELKIRK
'Knock a hole in back of the head so you can use it as a holy water stoop'.
'Giving Gifts to the Barbarians', Current World Archaeology No. 17 (June-July 2006), pp26-9.
SANDI TOKSVIG
'How easily I can wile away the hours...'
'An adulterer's guide to angling', Seven [Sunday Telegraph magazine], 26 Nov 2006, p5.
JONATHAN WYNNE-JONES
'While conservatives are keen for Rowan Williams to act quickly in censoring the Episcopal Church for defying calls to repent for appointing the openly homosexual cleric, Gene Robinson, as bishop, it could be years before a covenant is drawn up'.
'Liberals may split from Canterbury over homosexuals', The Sunday Telegraph, 2 July 2006, p10.
OTHERS
'Twisted up in Schrödinger's uncertainty thought experiment, this historical kitty has been put through a quantum ringer that nobody should have to experience'.
Think Geek website, description of t-shirt,
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/science/6dff/
'Added to which, the sense of lineage among Wales' medieval princes was, at best, defused and confusing'
Aled Islwyn, 'Welsh Princes emerging from the mist, Current Archaeology No. 208 (March/April 2007), pp32-3.
'Be it a year between school and university, or 18 months
spent abroad before starting full time employment after college, the GAP year
has become a right of passage for many a twenty-something'.
‘Unity in Diversity’, anonymous article in Backpacker
Ireland & UK, issue 48, April 2006, p36.
For a poetic view of the problem, see Ode to a Spell Checker