Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
Meet Rogue Rouge Rogue Rouge Castle: 'Your' should be you apostrophe R-E, not Y-O-U-R. That's not even a tough one like when to use 'who' or 'whom.' Becket: You really think that's the take away here? Castle: I'm just saying whoever killed her also murdered the English language. — Castle
Fan Fiction writers are notoriously inclined to either not use a spellchecker at all (producing mistakes such as the numerous claims of "mispellings" on this page), or to blindly trust them. The latter case leads to two distinct problems:
- On one hand, if a mistyped word happens to be a valid English word itself, no spellchecker can spot the problem. Homophones and the three main words of this trope title (Rogue Angels of Satan, of course) are particularly prone to this.
- On the other hand, a mistyped word, proper noun or even valid English word that just happens to not be a part of the dictionary (for whatever reason) can get "corrected" to something utterly preposterous. The variant is called the Cupertino Effect after numerous instances of "cooperation" being replaced by "Cupertino" in EU documents because the spellchecking expected "co-operation."
In other words, this is when a spell checker becomes an enemy, not a friend (especially when it's set to the dastardly "auto-correct"), and is the result of the imprecise and ambiguous nature of both the English language and such programs. Seems to be especially common in fanfics, perhaps because They Just Didnt Care.
If the words are correct, but the punctuation, grammar, or other usage is just wrong, that's Wanton Cruelty To The Common Comma. Compare with Spell My Name With An S, where confusion occurs because nobody can agree to how a name is spelled. When this is done by a character in a work of fiction (or just by someone sending fanmail), expect them to get told that You Make Me Sic. See Malaproper for someone who does this with the spoken word.
For a somewhat larger, somewhat snarky, list, see The Big List Of Booboos And Blunders.
Naturally, this page is a magnet for Incredibly Lame Puns.
Also, please try to avoid sounding like a stuck-up douchebag when adding examples.
open/close all folders
Examples
Common misspellings/miscorrections
- accept/except
- I accept your apology, except the bit about me being a douchebag.
- adverse/averse
- I am averse to these adverse weather conditions.
- affect/effect
- He affected the mannerisms of Solid Snake, which had quite an effect on his date.
- Affecting affects effects effects.
- Altar: A table used as a platform for religious worship. Alter: to change something.
- The Lady's Guild at the church altered the altar cloth.
- banzai/bonsai
- "Banzai!" screamed the samurai as he set about the tiny bonsai tree with his katana.
- bare/bear
- "Bear with me," said the shop assistant. "Bare with me," said the prostitute. "Bear's with me," said the zookeeper.
- bated/baited (as in, you wait with bated breath — it means you're holding your breath, not stuffing maggots into your windpipe)
- board/broad/bored (as in "Should I get my son a surf broad for christmas?"
 )
- I was really bored (uninterested) with what was written on the teacher's broad (wide) whiteboard.
- bowl/bowel (as in "Super Bowel")
- If your bowels are not moving regularly, have a bowl of high-fiber cereal.
- break/brake
- If a car fails to brake in time, it will break against the wall.
- breath/breathe
- broach/brooch
- "What happened to that old diamond brooch of yours," asked Rose's grandchildren, broaching the subject of the Titanic once again.
- bought/brought
- I bought a new hat and brought it with me
- canon/cannon
- To protect his book's canon, the author fired a cannon at the fanfiction convention.
- (Just to make works worse, "cannon" is a canon plural of "cannon," though it has fallen out of usage lately in favor of the much clearer "cannons".)
- ...What.
- cant (slope (of a road or racetrack); lingo of a particular group; insincere talk) versus can't (cannot)
- capital/capitol
- Washington DC is the capital of the United States, and home to its capitol building.
- "Capitol" refers only to the building. All other meanings of this homophone use capital — capital city, capital letter, capital punishment, capital ism, you name it.
- cite/site/sight
- I don't know if this is the right place, but I just have to vent about these three words. "I would like to cite a site that I just had a sight of."
- cleaver/clever
- Cleaver - butcher's knife. Clever - smart.
- Mind you, a clever cleaver is quite sharp.
- cloth/clothe/cloths/clothes/clothing
- Cloth is what you clothe yourself with when you wear clothing. Putting on cloths would not necessarily or likely leave one clothed; for that, one would need to wear clothes.
- coarse/course
- Marissa Amber Flores Picard Gordon frequently asked her helmsman to "set coarse" — because she liked it rrrrrrough!
- conscious/conscience
- I made a conscious decision to be guided by my conscience in the matter.
- council/counsel/consul
- The next item on the city council's agenda was an update on the discrimination lawsuit from its legal counsel. Since the consul is a party to the suit, his diplomatic immunity should make things interesting.
- definitely/defiantly
- I definitely wish my students didn't think there was an 'a' in the word "definitely." However, they defiantly continue to not only substitute an 'a' for an 'i,' but also to transpose the 'n' and 'a' and leave off the final 'e,' making the word triply wrong.
- desert/dessert
- The Sahara is a desert (DE-zert), you desert your post (de-ZURT), you get your just deserts (de-ZURT), but a dessert (de-ZURT again) is a yummy pudding.
- And of course, there's a Perry Bible Fellowship comic that plays with this◊.
- diffuse/defuse
- You defuse a bomb by de-fusing it, i.e. taking the fuse out. And metaphorically, you defuse a tense situation by calming everyone down. To diffuse means to distribute evenly. You will be diffused over a wide area if you fail to defuse the bomb correctly.
- discreet/discrete (although one could argue that someone looking for a discrete relationship when he/she's already in one isn't completely inaccurate)
- The enemy soldier was sliced into three discrete pieces - but let us draw a discreet veil over proceedings.
- draw/drawer/drawers
- A drawer is what you store things in. Your drawers are your underwear. Do I need to draw you a picture?
- If you have a large collection of drawers, you might need a few drawers to store them in. Invest in a chest.
- elicit/illicit
- Illicit activities often elicit pleasurable reactions.
- except/expect
- "I expect you to have no problem with this game except the fourth level."
- faze/phase (Yes, "faze" is a word. No, it's not just "phase" spelled wrong. Yes, they mean two completely different things. This English Bachelors troper has lost count of the amount of times this mistake has been made in published fiction — even Mark Twain did it.)
- To clarify: The Hero was unfazed by the villain's power to alter the phase of matter.
- flaunt/flout
- The rebel flouted the school's dress code by flaunting his new spiky collar.
- For all intensive purposes means For all the deeply thorough purposes.
- For all intents and purposes means for all motives/reasons, and purposes possible.
- forgo/forego
- To forgo something means to go without it. Forego means to to go before, to precede.
- This is completely incorrect. Both are the same word; "forego" is an alternate spelling. The first definition above is standard, and the second is archaic. [1]
- formally/formerly
- Formally means in a manner consistent with some particular set of rules, like the rules of etiquette; formerly means that the description no longer applies but it used to.
- forth/fourth
- "Go forth!" he cried for the fourth time that day.
- heal/heel
- He had injured his heel playing soccer and hoped it would heal soon.
- And if you don't care about the difference, you may be a heel yourself.
- here/hear (the incorrect "Here! Here!" is, if anything, more common than the correct "Hear! Hear!")
- If you stand over here, you can hear the English majors crying after viewing this page.
- I hear their tears of joy. They make me happy, right here.
- horde/hoard/whored
- A horde of dwarves descended on the Lonely Mountain when they heard about the dragon's hoard of treasure; the few dwarves who were absent because they had whored themselves out as mercenaries missed the opportunity.
- have/of (I never would HAVE thought that people would think it's spelled "would of").
- This is probably born of a mistaken phonetic spelling of "Would've," which is a contraction of "Would have," with the apostrophe replacing the space and the H-A.
- hour/our
- The hour is late, and our host is growing tired.
- Arrr, send 'im ta bed, then! He kin have arr room!
- its/it's (took this French-speaking troper years to get it)
- (Note: its' is not a word.)
- TV Tropes widened its focus; now it's covering tropes from all kinds of media.
- Important distinction: an apostrophe is actually an illustration of a speaker "slurring over" parts of a word or phrase: "It's" is a shortening of "It is," with the apostrophe replacing the space and the "i". This Troper shudders whenever he sees "The monster beared [sic] it is [sic] fangs."
- It's can also be short for "it has", as in "It's been a long time."
- The craziest part is, other languages DO have contractions, only not generally with apostrophes.
- One reason for this confusion is the use of the apostrophe-s ('s) to indicate possession (genitive) for nouns in English. But pronouns indicate possession by inflexion, or by adding an s without the apostrophe, e.g. "yours", "hers", etc., including "its". People tend not to notice that "it" is a pronoun, and I don't remember this rule being explicitly taught in school.
- lo/low (As in "Lo and Behold", virtually the only remaining use of the otherwise obsolete word "lo")
- Blame that on its low circulation outside dramatic circles.
- lose/loose
- I start to lose perspective when I realise that people's grasp of spelling can be this loose.
- If you don't tighten that loose bolt, we could lose the entire wing!
- naval/navel
- The naval commander told his sailors to quit staring at their navels and get back to work.
- no/know
- No, I don't think you know enough about writing to become a professional.
- ordnance/ordinance
- A city ordinance forbids the posession of explosive ordnance without a permit.
- palate/palette/pallet
- palate: The roof of the mouth (used as a metonym for the sense of taste).
- palette: The board a painter uses to mix paints (metaphorically, a selection of colors).
- pallet: A platform for storing and transporting goods/Ash Ketchum's hometown.
- peak/peek/pique
- On the mountain's peak, he took a peek into his friend's diary in an act of pique.
- The phrase is "piqued his interest."
- personal/personnel
- A personal opinion: military personnel should not be forgotten.
- populace/populous
- If the city's populace is missing, you can't say it's very populous.
- pore/pour/poor (Particularly the phrase 'pore over;' one never pours over a document unless they do a poor job holding onto their coffee mug)
- Since his pores are clogged with dirt and sweat, he pours water on himself to clean up.
- The Goon Show (an old BBC radio show) actually poked fun at this:
Narrator: And all through the night, they poured over the plans. Sometimes they poured on the table, sometimes they poured on the floor, but mostly they poured over the plans.
- portrait/portrayed
- principal/principle
- The school's principal held sacred the principles set forth by the school's founders; the principal one was "knowledge is power."
- precedent/precedence
- Precedent is a statement or action that sets a rule or pattern for later. Precedence means that something takes priority over something else. The young man set a precedent with his wife by staying late at work even though they had a date. His boss had given him a new assignment which took precedence over everything else in his life. (Hint: Precedent affects everything that comes afterwards, something with precedence is more important than everything that came before.)
- prey/pray
- You might pray in a cathedral, but you don't generally prey on people there.
- prescribe/proscribe
- Some doctors are willing to prescribe medical marijuana for patients; the US federal government proscribes any such use.
- psychic/physic (When Shakespeare wrote "Take physic", he meant a purgative.)
- A psychic will pick you up with mind powers, a physic will pick you up with energizing medicine.
- To make matters worse, within the psychiatric community, "psychic" simply means of or pertaining to the psyche, e.g. "His psychic disposition is that of a manic-depressive with mild schizoid behavior."
- pubic/public
- Never show your pubic area when out in public.
- Unless you're into exhibitionism.
- Or have made at least one middling-quality movie or music video, ever.
- quite/quiet
- It was quite obvious that this error is more a typing mistake than a genuine error. Be quiet, the rest of you.
- rein/reign/rain
- After he lost his grasp on the reins, his reign as Coolest Dude on the Ranch came to an end when he fell off his horse in the rain.
- ridged/rigid
- Corrugated iron is both ridged, having ridges all the way along it, and rigid, because it doesn't flop and bend.
- secede/succeed
- The Southern states seceded from the USA in 1861. If they had won the US Civil War, their bid at independence would have succeeded.
- "Succeed" can also mean "to follow another person in an official position," as in, "Queen Elizabeth II succeeded King George VI to the British throne." This can make matters more confusing, in that there have been both wars of succession and wars of secession in human history.
- shear/sheer
- It was a sheer accident that caused the aeroplane's wing to shear off.
- shutter/shudder
- He had to suppress a shudder of disgust as he pressed the camera's shutter, recording the details of the murder.
- "Unfort-t-t-tunat-t-t-tely," his friend stuttered, "you didn't get an image since you failed to realize you had to press the shutter release to take the pict-t-ture."
- strait/straight
- He was the most strait-laced man I'd ever known, but he could never get his tie on straight, leaving him in dire straits.
- Strait-laced comes from the word's archaic definition, meaning "strict, as in requirements or principles."
- A "strait" is also a geographical feature; specifically, a narrow channel or river that connects two larger bodies of water.
- tact/tack (Hint: The phrase is "Taking a different tack", and refers to the angle of a sailing ship's sails.)
- "Crispin! Adjust the tack, immediately, or it's your turn over the barrel!"
- "Have you no tact, sir?"
- taught/taut/taunt
- Those who have been taught grammar at school tend to taunt those who haven't, creating a taut and tense atmosphere.
- tenet/tenant/Tennant
- It was a tenet of the landlord to never allow his tenants to get away with paying their rent late (except for David Tennant, because the Tenth Doctor was his favorite).
- than/then
- If there's anything worse than confusing these two words, then I'd like to know what it is.
- there/their/they're
- There they are! Their maps got lost, so they're quite late.
- There: denotes location, usually in the immediate area
- Their: denotes possession by a group
- They're: contraction of They and Are, used in the same manner as the separate pronoun and verb it is composed of
- However, their maps cannot get lost. Their maps were lost, or they lost their maps, or their maps got them lost being so badly drawn, but there are very few maps able to get lost on their own. Unless theirs are very rude, or crude, in which case they're told to get lost.
- tic/tick
- He developed a nervous tic after being bitten by a tick.
- to/two/too/2
- I have to admit, I've made a simple mistake or two, but I try not to get too upset about it.
- Example 2: Because he ran too slowly to keep up with his friends, Lyle fell to the two chainsaw-wielding maniacs who were somehow familiar to him.
- verses/versus
- This song has three verses and a chorus. Manchester United versus Liverpool was a draw.
- And heaven forbid conjugating "versus", which is popular in some slang. You did not "verse" your friend in that game you played last night, unless the game involved writing poetry.
- I am utterly averse to those types of errors.
- vice/vise
- One of his biggest vices was grabbing people with a vise-like grip when he was scared.
- In British English, "vice" is used in both senses.
- viscous/vicious
- The sticky, viscous liquid dripped down his back. The vicious thought came into his head "I'll gut those treacle bandits if I ever catch them!"
- voila/viola
- "Voila!" she said, as she finished playing Brahms' Viola Sonata in F minor.
- Note: In French, voilà means "see here!" while viola means "raped!" (as in, "violated")
- waste/waist (as in, "he emerged from the bathroom, with his waist wrapped in a towel, and dropped the tissue in the waste basket.")
- where/were/wear/we're
- "Where are you going? Were you invited somewhere? Is that what you plan to wear?" "Relax, mom, we're just going out for pizza. I promise there won't be any werewolves there."
- whet/wet
- The sound of him whetting his sword whetted her curiosity. The bathroom is wet.
- whose/who's
- Whose fan fic is this? Who's responsible for this crime against the English language?
- your/you're
- Your writing is filled with too many annoying errors. You're getting sloppy!
- Not to be confused with "yore", which are the days of long ago.
Close Common misspellings/miscorrections
Rogue/Rouge
- The upcoming expansion pack for City of Heroes is entitled Going Rogue! Not "Rouge". Going red is, at this time, reserved for City of Villains players and Longbow agents.
- We already had to deal with people mispelling the
Rouge Rogue Isles, the setting of City of Villains (and name source for the expansion) for years.
- But... But... No! When Going Rogue is released it is heroes who will be able to go rouge! Villains will go blue. No?
- And now that Sarah Palin has stolen the title for her new book, the confusion is multiplied.
- Rouge was never a member of the X-Men, but she did become an administrator on The Other Wiki.
- And Madame Rouge is a member of the Brotherhood of Evil, enemies of the Doom Patrol.
- Ironically, there are a bunch of fanfics dealing with this issue, in which Rogue finds some of those online errors. Most of them are actually pretty funny. Or So I Heard.
- Now I imagine Rouge the Bat cosplaying Rogue, or vice-versa.
- Lampshaded in an issue of Ultimate X-men where Kitty confronts (soon-to-be-ex-)boyfriend Bobby with a love letter he's written to "Rouge".
- Also intended to be lampshaded in one of Kyle Baker's Marvel published X-Men parodies... but the editor was so used to the writers misspelling her name accidentally, he "fixed" the "mistake", and Rouge was called Rogue in the story as published.
- Originated by a rant from multiply-banned user Irate about ROUGE ADNIM VANDLES. Irate is not so much for going back and fixing typos before hitting "submit".
- In MAD Magazine, Rouge was one of the Ecch-Men, by the rule of Parody Names.
- One of the Futurama comics (which happens to be an Xmen parody) takes advantage of this by giving Amy (an equal combination of Dojikko and The Ditz with elements of The Libby) the superhero codename "Rouge";
Prof. Farnsworth F: Her power is to suck the life out of you. I wanted to call her "Wife Woman" but eventually we stuck with "Rouge" because of her floozy-like appearence.
- Even some published Star Wars Expanded Universe novels refer to "Rouge Squadron".
- Kinda funny if you consider that Rogue Squadron is partly made up of the survivors of Red Squadron from the first Death Star.
- In any MMORPG that calls their stealthy close-combat class "rogues", expect to see a lot of people looking for a "rouge" for their group.
- Referenced here.
- This Troper once told a (very take-no-crap) female rogue friend he was going to start calling female rogues "Avon Ladies". She threatened to Back Stab him in real life.
- Likewise, World of Warcraft has an elusive class known as furry warriors, a mispelling of Fury, one of the three talent trees Warriors may specialize in.
- Though "furry warriors" could also be taken to describe feral druids, who fight in either cat form or bear form.
- Tauren warriors could also be considered "furry warriors". One of them uses that as a tongue twister in her forum sig ("Furry fury warrior flurried")
- And EVE online has Rouge Drones.
- And rare "fraction items" and long-range "turrents".
- Ragnarok Online seems to be taking this a step further with their new advanced Rogue class. It's best described as a combat makeup artist.
- Likewise, fans of Exterminatus Now have so frequently misspelled Rogue's name as "Rouge" that it's lampshaded on the webcomic's cast page.
- The "Rogue" deck in anime_lj_tcg, for Haseo from .hack//Roots and .hack//G.U., is also misspelled as "Rouge". The admin in charge of making cards has said that it's too much work to redo a deck, so everyone has basically accepted it.
- In an interesting twist, the Sonic The Hedgehog universe has an enemy character who actually is named Rouge. And yep, people have misspelled it as Rogue. You just can't win...
- ARGH, THIS. THIS. THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS. THERE IS A GIGANTIC DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ROGUE (A SCOUNDREL) AND ROUGE (RED IN FRENCH). WHY DON'T YOU PEOPLE GET IT. GOD. DAMN... On that note, I frequently substitute for young students as their french teacher, and when I taught the colors of the rainbow, well... things got out of hand. Not one single student spelled Rouge right. Neither did they get "Jeune" (Jaune), "Veeolet" (Violet) or "Blue" (Bleu) right. Although, that last one is usually tricky for younger grades... But still, I'm very fussy about my colors.
- Doesn't help that she is a government spy, aka rogue. Who wears some crazy facial makeup, aka rouge.
- And then in Sonic Riders there's the anti-hero trio called the Babylon Rogues. Yep, they get subjected to this as well.
- What, they managed to spell Babylon right?
- Similarly, there was a character from late in the Ranma ½ manga named "Rouge"; it was perhaps both karma and inevitable that some Fan Fic writers would start calling her "Rogue".
- Let's not forget Rouge from Power Stone. This troper has rarely heard her called anything but Rogue.
- "Rouge boomers" are epidemic in Bubblegum Crisis fan fiction. They're supposed to rampage, not apply makeup.
- A friend of this troper wanted to write a Fan Fic story where pilots in the Star Wars Expanded Universe think they're getting assigned to the prestigious Rogue Squadron, but are forming a Rouge Squadron instead. It never panned out, unfortunately.
- Perhaps appropriate in this case, considering that Rogue Squadron was originally named "Red Squadron."
- This reaches truly epidemic levels whenever a new game in the Rogue Squadron series comes out, as mocked in this article.
- The old CCG Guardians featured a "rouge specter". It was not red.
- In The Order of the Stick prequel On the Origin of PCs, Haley Starshine's CV (actually, her character sheet) has her class as "rouge", which Deadpan Snarker Roy points out. She's no cosmetic product, after all.
- The computer game Dragonfable had so many fan misspellings of their sneaky class that they eventually began in-game references to a character called The Moglin Rouge. Considering the fun its creators have with mind-scarringly bad jokes, this was kind of inevitable.
- The MMORPG version, Adventurequest Worlds, added a "Rouge Armor" during their Valentine's Day special event. The extremely pink item description reads "'Rouge' Definition: any of various red cosmetics for coloring the cheeks or lips."
- The Seiken Densetsu 3 board on GameFAQs was subject to this a lot a while ago. The character class of Rogue is too often misspelled as Rouge. Eventually it became a running gag to completely ignore the misspelling and assume that anyone asking about the Rouge job was refering to the super secret, all-powerful (and non-existent) job of another character completely.
- The Other Wiki has its own cabal of rouge administrators.
- The Noob Comic features guild facilities for Rogues (and Rouges).
- A certain faction in Freelancer is entitled the Liberty Rogues. Naturally, some Freelancer forums can't help but discuss the "Liberty Rouges".
- Sluggy Freelance teaches the difference. Because knowing is half the battle.
- This is also happens to be a "touchy subject" for the thieves guild in Nodwick. See also Berserk Button.
- This editor recalls an example where the error wasn't in the spelling, but the outcome fits the trope too well to pass up. When this editor's sister and her friend were playing Disgaea, they decided to name their thief character "Rouge" (they may even have consulted me as to spelling). However, after hearing the characters' voice, they had a reverse Samus Is A Girl moment. They decided to keep his name as it was, but to pronounce it "Rogue".
- Haschel from Legend of Dragoon is a master of the Rouge School of Martial Arts (not a mistake, despite the game's dodgy translation; he comes from the village of Rouge). Naturally, it gets written as the Rogue School on occasion.
- This is something of a Berserk Button for many posters on the official Dungeons & Dragons forums.
Angel/Angle & Satan/Satin
- "Angle" and "Satin" for "Angel" and "Satan" are infamously common, cheerily deconstructed in this fanficrants post.
- Apparently the mistake made it into a homemade tattoo. Dumbass.
- You'd be surprised how many people are convinced that Final Fantasy VII's Sephiroth was a One Winged Angle, and that the Evangelion pilots fight geometry.
- Speaking of which, you'd be surprised how many variations of that name exist. Sometimes done on purpose to circumvent the "each name can only be used once" rule on forums and online games. Hence, Legolaz, Legollas, Llegolasz, ad absurdum.
- And speaking of Final Fantasy VII, who could forget saying "Off course!" when asked if you want to continue at the Arena?
- This editor recalls with a certain perverse fondness a holy-roller troll he encountered on a BBS system in the late 1980s, who saw the sinister hand of "Satinism" everywhere he looked. We all agreed with him that the fabricist conspiracy had thoroughly infiltrated everyday life.
- That holy-roller probably would have had no problem with the woman who bought a "beautiful white Satan wedding dress" (capitalized and everything!) from a bulletin board notice in the library.
- "Satan" for "Santa". Of course, this is a little girl.
- Though there are a lot of unusual similarities between the two. They both live somewhere cold (if Dante is to believed). They're both responsible for punishing people who were bad. They both wear red. Just saying.
- "Santa. Kindly old elf, or..."
- This troper once deconstructed Christmas and Santa such that one could plausibly see them as a Satanic holiday and aspect of Satan (in the LaVeyan tradition, admittedly)
- Author Robert Rankin plays with this in Raiders of the Lost Car Park, mentioning an urban legend about a dyslexic who sold his soul to Santa. Of course, this being Rankin, it turns out the dyslexic may not have made a mistake after all....
- Print Media Example: This troper remembers an article in the Boston University student paper entitled "Despite evidence to the contrary, many students still believe in angles". (This is the same paper which headlined its biggest issue of 2000 "BU INS SIXTH STRAIGHT POT".)
- This was made as a pun in Latin, by either by Pope Gregory I, or by Bede. http://www.bartleby.com/81/12158.html
- Those Angles being a tribe inhabiting England (Angle-land...) at the time. Non Angli, sed Angeli, if memory serves.
- Parodied and made a joke on another level when, in 1066 And All That, this was translated as "Not Angels, but ANGLICANS."
- Also parodied in the French series Kaamelott, set in pseudo-Arthurian Britannia: "And those Angles, they aren't the angles of the map..."
- This troper worked for a time at a grocery store, where a sign once advertised "Angle Soft[2] toilet paper." Ow.
- The Fan Translation of the DS version of Puyo Puyo 15th Anniversary has Yu intentionally call Satan "Satin," among other wrong names.
- "Begone, dark angles!" "We will deal with their kind hardly!" — Menalaus (Pox Nora)
- WWE's Chris Jericho purposely reversed this one, referring to frequent rival Kurt Angle as "Kirk Angel."
- Well, he may be curt, but he's no angel...
- But not even Satin could stop Christian Humber.
- Steve Phillips says the death of a player during the season can derail a locker room and explains how the Angles will try to pull things together. Thought I should put the existing error in place in case they fix it eventually. Having your inner grammar wonk activate when reading a story of that nature really breaks the mood.
- Intentionally done in the movie Stay Tuned. Roy is tied up in an underworld version of Waynes World, and is given a rebus puzzle of an eyeball, a ship with guns, and a fabric. "Eye... Warship... Satin?"
- Although not techincally this, there is the funny origin of the name for the French Horn. The French first named the horn "Angled Horn", because of, you know, its angle. Ironically, Cor Anglé (angled horn) and Cor Anglais (English Horn) sound exactly the same. The always honorable English, thinking the French had named the instrument in their honor, returned the favor, giving us the French Horn.
Close Angel/Angle & Satan/Satin
Other mistakes
- Another favorite is "destoryed" (or "destoried") instead of "destroyed". Now that's what I call a Freudian Slip.
- Not to mention the oh-so-handy product, duck tape...
- To be precise, "duct tape" is the eggcorn. "Duck Tape" is both a trademark and the original name of the product, which was made out of cotton duck cloth. It was renamed "duct tape" because people kept mispronouncing and misunderstanding it. The tape itself, ironically enough, was not originally designed for use in ventilation ducts at all; rather, it's believed that "Duck Tape" was first used by the military, to prevent moisture from getting into ammunition containers.
- A speaker or writer implies his meaning without outright saying it. His audience infers what he meant. It's surprising how many people are aware of the two words but manage to confuse them.
- There's a reason this article on "Cannon" exists in the Transformers Wiki, and it involves this trope...
- In fact, it's much the same reason that on this wiki, we have Pavel Chekovs Gun.
- This troper, on the other hand, has gobs of fun when people make that mistake. "Yes, your Shikanaru ship certainly does belong in cannon. I agree completely."
- The 1981 Spider-Man cartoon has an interesting case of this in "Can(n)on of Doom", an episode which features both Doctor Doom using a laser cannon for nefarious purposes and a look into Doom's Back Story. Granting a bit of a stretch on the meaning of the word "canon", there may be some legitimate confusion there. (Any references to a "laser canon", though, are right out.)
- Incredibly, QI, of all things, made a similar mistake, misspelling "Cannonball" as "Canonball." Alan was quick to point this out: "they spelt it wrong, they spelt it wrong, points to me! That's some sort of ecclesiastical ball...."
- This is canon.
- So is this.
- The pope lays down the cannon law in the 1632 series.
- Tsukihime sees your canon and raises you a cannon of canon.◊
- For any tropers not familiar with Tsukihime, that is a cannon which literally wipes from existence those things which aren't in the Church's canon. So Yeah.
- This whole sequence is CANNON BANNED.
- It's amazing how much a sentence can change when you forget the L in Clock...
- Especially in the threat "I'm gonna clean your clock."
- Somebody I knew on a forum once made a comment in the forum's IRC channel: "xxxx has an alarm cock" (name removed to protect the guilty); Hilarity ensued.
- I live near a store named "house of clocks". I'm surprised nobody's vandalized it yet.
- This mistake unsurprisingly shows up in Light And Dark The Adventures Of Dark Yagami, as Dark grabs the cock from the bedside table.
- This troper lives near a Public Health Library where someone removed the L from "public" on their sign. It's gone unrepaired for several years now.
- The word "climatic" is only likely to be relevant when you're talking about the weather. "Anticlimatic"... is never applicable, period. The word you're probably looking for is "climactic".
- Or, as God said in Joan of Arcadia, "It's anticlimactic. Anticlimatic means you're against the weather."
- This editor has claimed to work for the "National Climactic Data Center" more than once. (In fact, at this moment the third result for "climactic" on the google is the National Climatic Data Center homepage, so I'm not the only one!)
- Somewhat Lampshaded in an old Dilbert strip, in which a non-functioning of a terrarium is correctly referred to as "Anti-climatic" as the gag.
- Dan and Mabs Furry Adventures has an annoying, near-systematic tendency to replace the contraction word "have" with "of" after an auxiliary.
- They should of known better. (I feel dirty now...)
- This is a depressingly common mistake; it comes from mistaking "would've" for a phrase instead of a contraction. It is, however, an uncommonly rewarding mistake to correct. Many younger writers really have no idea they're doing it wrong and will amend their behavior.
- Unexpectedly, this can also backfire, and when this troper, a fifth grade teacher, taught "would've" and "should've" and ended up with writings filled with "sort've" and "kind've". You have to give them credit for trying.
- This Is Unforgivable when a professional publication suffers from this mistake every single time the opportunity arises. It should be dead-simple for an editor to flag every instance of "ould of" for manual review.
- Interestingly, a commonly used language assessment tool indicates that "would of" is a regional variant of British English and should be marked as correct. Don't know about non-British English, though.
- Only if by "Interestingly" you mean something more along the lines of "Depressingly"...
- When it's used in dialogue it can be justified, if the character speaking is being portrayed as less than literate.
- This troper recently read a story where the author obviously intended to call the tight group of nerdy outcast high school students a clique. Instead, he called them a cliché. Which is true, but...
- Similarly, "clique" is very often misspelled as "click", but that doesn't conjure up any funny images so it mostly goes forgotten.
- If I had a dime for every time I've read "It's a mute point anyways" on a message board... Goshdang It To Heck, it's a MOOT point (from moot, which means meeting or gathering, and the point that everyone in the moot agrees on, so there's no use talking about it anymore).
- In British English, "a moot point" has historically meant the opposite: a point that is open to discussion by a moot. However, due to overexposure to American media, most Brits will now use it in the American sense.
- Look up the phrase "a pedal stool" (in quotes) on google and see how many of the results are about glorifying someone by metaphorically placing them on a pedal stool, as opposed to a pedestal. "A peddle stool" and even "a petal stool" are about as common.
- Another interesting Freudian Slip is to mispell "martial arts" as "marital arts". Though if found in some Ranma ½ lemons, it can be intentional.
- Any common phrase more obviously derived/lifted from other languages gets this treatment, especially when it's spoken more often than written. "Per se" is often spelled "per say" for this reason.
- Sorted/sordid. Ex.: "THE ACLU HAS A SORTED PAST READ SOME SHAMELESS FACTS". It really gives the message that extra weight of Trufax.
- A correspondent in a UK newspaper wrote that a friend emailed him "They've caught the Washington Snipper!" A rogue rouge stylist?
- This troper had a girl in her English class mispronounce "sniper" as "snipper". After being corrected, she continued to pronounce it that way!
- To be fair, this troper has the same difficulty with existing words that sound very similar — she consistently pronounces "prejudice" as "prejustice", "specific" as "pacific", etc., much to the irritation of everyone including herself. She knows they're different words, they just come out wrong!
- This troper has often come across the phrase (both spoken and written) "for all intensive purposes". Though this might be excusable if one is speaking of a particular hospital ward.
Examples from specific media
Anime & Manga
- Best television subtitle ever: while watching the first episode of Yu-Gi-Oh!, I was very surprised to see Yami declare "Exodia, post-literate!"
- How on Earth do you go from "obliterate" to "post-literate"?!
- The French translation of the Ranma ½ manga isn't very good overall, but there are some mistakes that are plain unforgivable for a published work. Like how Happōsai is repeatedly called a "satire" (same word as in English) instead of a "satyre" (French for "satyr", i.e. Dirty Old Man).
Comics
- A comic by K.C. Green (this troper thinks it's Droop, recently renamed Bee Power) featured a character named Uppercut Ted, named because Green's spell-check didn't recognize the word "uppercutted" and suggested he replace it with "uppercut ted".
- That's because the past-tense of cut is cut, not cutted, and any compound word based on it will has the same form. The past tense of uppercut is uppercut. (Though technically uppercut is a noun, not a verb, so it should be written as "delivered an uppercut" or some similar thing.)
- The same is true for "cast" and derivatives like "broadcast" and "re-cast" (to cast again) It's not "Broadcasted", "casted", or "re-casted".
- In one Get Fuzzy comic (this also applies to the Satin/Satan entry above), Bucky is examining a package of new underwear and saying that they were "made by Satan". Rob corrects him, telling him they were "made of satin". Cue remark from Satchel regarding hot pants.
Fan Works
- There was a lemon where every instance of "erection" had turned into "eructation".
- And another where every instance of the word "ministration" had turned into "menstruation".
- And the word "organism" shows up far more often than the language calls for in any scene referencing sexual climax.
- It's not just spelling mistakes, either. People who hope to write sex scenes should be disallowed any access to a thesaurus — thus sparing the readers any usage of terms such as "tumescence."
- Or "turgid" for that matter.
- I never want to see "inflamed" in a lemon again unless it's meant to suggest that the person has an STD.
- By extension, I never want to see "inflamed" in a lemon again.
- Tara Gilesbie's My Immortal, in which about one in six words is misspelled; "eructation" for "erection", "orgy" for "orgasm".
- That last one is more a case of misplaced abbreviation. Also, masticating for masturbating. In the other direction (that is, not obscene to obscene), "shit" for "sit". Twice.
- Even funnier when you learn that "eructate" means burp.
- "Mystery of Magic Cornelia Fuck" is a particularly hilarious one.
- 99% of the occurrences of "defiantly" in fanfiction are due to "definately" (a common mispelling of "definitely") being auto-corrected.
- This one is so prevalent, there is a website (and line of merchandise including coffee mugs and thong underwear) dedicated to the correct spelling.
- This troper frequents a forum which filters "definately" to "definitely {spelled with an I not an A}"
- And primative instead of primitive.
- The So Bad Its Horrible Crossover Fanfic The Rangers Of NIMH has a lot of this. The opening line is a stunning example: "The Ranger's where flowing a leaded of break-ins." And that's the least of its troubles.
- This troper will never forget, no matter how hard she tries, the fanfic that included the line "She rested her chin genitally on his shoulder."
- The otherwise So Cool Its Awesome fics Shinji and Warhammer 40K and The Open Door are marred by this.
- The is-it-real-or-not fic Half-Life: Fulllife Consequences has the protagonist wet on a platform on his way to fight zombie goasts, whatever they may be, in Ravenholdm.
- And normal people close because he was in his office lab coat.
- Hey, whether people get wet on platforms is none of anybody else's business...
- But it's okay as long as the countrysides were nice, and the plants were singing and the birds and the sun were almost down from the top of the sky
- Too bad that Ravenholdm was no longer nye because the pants were dead and the ground was bloody from headcrabs.
- At least he axed nicely.
- Better goasts than goatses
- The folks at Eyrie Productions Unlimited took a random misspelling in their story development chat channel and turned it to a Crowning Moment Of Funny in Last Transport, an Undocumented Features story focusing on Supergirl and the Teen Titans: In an IRC session between Kara Zor-El and several Titans, Kid Flash (whose typing has been shown to be rather... spastic) interrogates her about her Kryptonian powers:
<Flash> but yo uhave heat vision?
<Kara> I haven't tried it, but I guess I must.
<Flash> awesome. i don.t have any attack pwoers. I just hit things with my nads at housand times a secnod
When she was able to stop laughing and focus on the screen again, Kara composed herself and typed only,
<Kara> ... sounds painful.
* Cyborg DIES
<Robin> SNRK
<Beast_Boy> ... cant... breathe
<Flash> HANDS HANDS JEEZ
<Raven> you have to excuse Flash. he types faster than he can think
* batgirl has joined channel #Titans
<batgirl> yo guys. whats up?
<Robin> Wally was just telling us about a new combat move he invented.
<Raven> yes, tell her about it, Wally
<Flash> i htae you all
- The Stealth Parody fanfic Doom: Repercussions of Evil is naturally full of these.
- For one brief shining moment before the author deleted it in shame, there was a Redwall fanfic which persistently referred to Martin the Warrior as "Martian the Warrior".
- There is a Buffy The Vampire Slayer/Fullmetal Alchemist crossover in which Major Armstrong is accused of being an "expositionist" after one of his shirt-busting episodes.
- Metal Gear fanfiction is full of "soliders." Now, three characters in the series are named after states of matter, but it's doubtful that's what the authors are referring to.
- Light And Dark The Adventures Of Dark Yagami often has this problem, expecially in Dark's fight with Blud in Chapter 13. ("BUT NOW YOU WILL DIET!"). The author has several recurring mistakes, like writing "pies" instead of "piece" ("Die you pies of shit!") and putting "fort" instead of "thought". ("I fortez je was mort!"
- In Lady Jaida and Rave's epic series The Shoebox Project, Remus Lupin is portrayed as a grammatical fanatic who constantly corrects his friends' extreme abuse of the comma, apostrophe, and other such punctuation marks. Sirius Black is shown to be the worst offender, prompting Remus to stop in the middle of several conversations/letters in order to chide his friend about this.
- Repeat after me, Mr. Black: I do believe in commas. I do. I do.
Films
- In Hot Fuzz, the local newspaper is extremely prone to this. The town council eventually kills the editor for this.
Literature
- Dor of the Xanth novels has legendary horrible spelling. This was taken advantage of when his king wanted him to travel with honesty, knowing he'd misspell it as ONESTI which was the actual name of the place they were headed. His misspelling also physically changed a bouquet into a bucket, much to everyone's amusement/frustration. When he sought out a spelling bee to correct his homework, he wound up with something along the lines of... "Eye want two go two Mundania sow eye Khan sea a bare oar a hoarse..." Well, not that bad. But pretty close.
- No, it really was that bad.
- The Legend of Rah and the Muggles features a few, which should come as no surprise. There's mention of a bright star shinning in the sky (the fact that this references a period in the Back Story when there wouldn't have been any bright stars in the sky, shinning or otherwise, comes under another trope) and a dinning room (clearly they're very noisy eaters).
- This troper has seen a "Dinning Room" sign in real life.
- Not a sign, precisely, but a block of wood on one of the "dinning" room's windowsills, yes.
- Not even the The Bible is immune to this trope. In one 1530 edition, "Azazel" (an actual Rogue Angel of Satan) was mistaken for "ez ozel", Hebrew for "goat that departs", and translated accordingly. The result entered our lexicon as the modern word "scapegoat".
- The interchangeability of "for Azazel" and "as a scapegoat" in Hebrew might be more closely related to said wilderness/demon's function as receiver of goats before typo intervention — early translations of Leviticus 16:8-10 use the phrase "two goats... one for the LORD and one for Azazel." More amusingly, Azazel is credited with the invention of makeup in the Books of Enoch: the original rouge angel.
- This troper read the entirety of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy "trilogy" (twice) thinking one of the main character's names was Ford "Perfect".
- You are not alone. Douglas Adams writing in an introduction to a complete edition of Hitch Hiker's (to spell it as it's printed on my copy), relates "This was a joke that missed American audiences entirely of course, since they had never heard of the rather oddly-named car, and many thought it was a typing error for Perfect."
- A Song of Ice and Fire shows a raven eating an egg, picking out bits of "white and yoke".
- Intentionally invoked by the writers of Going Rouge: An American Nightmare, a collection of critical essays about Sarah Palin, referencing the title of her memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life. Not only will the two books be released on the same date, but a second "Going Rouge"—subtitled "The Sarah Palin Rogue Coloring & Activity Book"—is also scheduled for that release date.
Live Action TV
New Media
- This quote and this one from QDB are amusing.
- Three words: Tires don exits.
- There used to be a spoof website for a company named Games Worksop. Unfortunately, it seems to have been removed — all that turns up on a search for "Games Worksop" on Google is 2000 misspelled pages...
- Quizilla does not have a spellchecker, apparently; but users seem to like using external or in-browser ones, resulting in things like "Does your best friend have fillings for you?"
- Well, if you happen to be best friends with your dentist....
- This troper remembers seeing frantic messages ejaculated all over Game FA Qs asking for help with "Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Mammaries". Now that image is permanently engraved in her head.
- This troper saw the following comment on an art site: "I laughed so hard I nearly snorted cock out of my nose." An epic Freudian slip if I ever saw one. It was followed seconds later by this posting from the same author: "COKE, GOD DAMMIT!"
- A scoundrel at shortandhappy.com used to go out into chatrooms pretending to be a 14-year-old girl named "Amber" looking to cyber, mess with the head of whichever poor chap engaged him, and post the results on his website. One such "client" had the unlucky username of dragon_worrier2001... And the jokes just wrote themselves.
- "Is Barack Obama Muslin?"
Poetry
Print Media
- Roughly 75% of the "Headlines" segment on The Tonight Show consists of newspaper articles with ludicrously bad errors of some form or another (the other 25% being mere poor judgment). To reiterate, these are professional journalists.
- Though there is no actual accreditation to be a journalist, which is probably part of why article quality is so often so very low.
- A scientific journal made reference to the Large Hardon Collider. Ho Yay for particle physicists!
Sports
- A note for those of you who share this troper's love of sports message boards: Johan Santana is "dominant". Tim Tebow is "dominant". LeBron James is "dominant". None of them are "dominate". They do frequently "dominate" the competition. But no-one is a "dominate player".
- Hey, who are you to question the sexual orientation of sportsmen?
- It's still not an adjective!
Tabletop Games
- White Wolf Tabletop Games books are notorious for not having the best copyeditors in the world, meaning first editions have some... problems. Requiem For Rome both uses "angles" for "angels" and calls Jesus the "Song of God" on the same page.
- It's worth noting, though, that a very large percentage of mistakes in more recent White Wolf books can be traced back to the editor service that the company uses (Scribendi). There are several documented cases of errors being inserted into the books by the editors themselves. Requiem For Rome is one of the more commonly-cited cases, as is Saturnine Night from the Promethean line. Some of the PDF supplements use someone else for editing and the difference in quality is plainly visible.
- More likely a case of bad editing while replacing the term "Mage", but many entries in TSR's Encyclopedia Magica refer to people taking points of "dawizard", or something about "iwizards". Find & Replace is not always your friend. [3]
- So da mage and da wizard were walking down the street...
- iWonder how much memory the iWizard will have when it's published. iMean, you can hardly cram a single fireball in 1 gig of RAM, right?
- I don't think an iWizard is a very good idea. At least, some of them aren't going to work. The book specifically talks about a Silent iWizard.
- In one entry in an early Monster Manual the incidence of a beastie being at home was referred to as ' % liar '
Video Games
- One Yu-Gi-Oh! video game was released shortly after Upper Deck changed all "Magic" cards to "Spell" cards. The programmers obviously did a mass replace, ignoring card names — but that means there's many cards that enhance the mysterious "Dark Spellian".
- One popular song from Touhou is called "Septette for the Dead Princess". This is the name given on many, many websites (including all Youtube videos of the song), meaning apparently no-one in the English-speaking fanbase ever thought to look up the spelling of the word "Septet". (Admittedly, this was originally ZUN's mistake. But come on, people.)
- The battle arena in Final Fantasy VII has two options after each battle: "Off course" and "No way". "Off course" was supposed to be "Of Course", but the symbolic meaning is more clear considering this is the game with the Gold Saucer.
Web Comics
- Even webcomics as professional as PvP fall victim sometimes (panel four).
- "break" used for "brake" in Misfile here.
- It's apparently been corrected.
- Barry T. Smith frequently falls victim to this (though he usually corrects the mistakes when they get pointed out on the forums); he's admitted that this is due to a mixture of
lysdexia dailysex poor spelling ability, and spellchecker failure.
- Used for a punchline in Questionable Content [[#360]].
Web Original
- This troper recalls coming across a piece of original fiction on the Net several years ago where he immediately determined the author had changed his main character's name from "Eric" to "David" with an unconditional global replace upon coming across a reference to "the United States of AmDavida".
- "Original"? Unlikely. An unconditional global replace like that hints at PLAGIARISM!!!
- Lampshaded in Paul Robinson's Instrument of God where the story mentions that when 246 is holding up a copy of a law, he is holding an "ordinance", but when he is referring to weapons, they are "ordnance".
- An amusing depiction of the Cupertino Effect, a character called "Jeff K!!!!" who attempts to spellcheck his aggressively incorrect English.
Western Animation
- Respek Knuckles!
- The Futurama episode "The Day The Earth Stood Stupid" ends with Fry defeating the Brainspawn by writing a book full of misspelled words and Plot Holes, sending the aliens back to their home planet "for no raisin".
- "The Adventures of Letterman", an animated segment of The Electric Company, played with these kinds of errors ("feet" for "feat", among many other misspellings).
Real Life
- Any amusing personal examples should be in Troper Tales.
- The nephew of Francis Ford Coppola is named Nicolas Cage, not Nicholas with an h. Repeatedly seen on this very wiki.
- In real life, a major railroad ordered a sign cut in granite for their national headquarters. The Norfolk Southern Corporation had to wait several weeks after unveiling the sign indicating it was the headquarters of "The Norfork Southern Corporation." (An associate of this troper sardonically stated if the sign writer had indicated a lot of people's opinion of the railroad it would have read "The Norfuck Southern Corporation.")
- Subverted with the best slogan ever seen on a T-shirt: "Your retarded"
- When decoded, the messages left by the Zodiac Killer have spelling◊ that would put squirrelking to shame ("hunting wild game in the forrest" and "man is the most dangerous anamal"). Though the lack of punctuation is likely because he didn't bother putting them through the cipher, the rest is just ridiculous.
- Maybe Squirrelking is the Zodiac Killer?
- And ironically, it kept professional codebreakers busy for ages, because they didn't think of the possibility of spelling errors, and kept assuming that the code was far more sophisticated than it actually was. It took some amateurs to finally break it.
- This Troper recently read a news article where a group of people were rallying to change the rules of the National Spelling Bee Championships(!!!) so that commonly misspelled words would be ruled acceptable. He thinks that the very idea is silly, as correct spelling is a hallmark of the championships.
- This has been put into practice in Germany on a large scale, where the Neue Rechtschreibung (New Orthography) has incorporated many common errors and made them the proper spelling, supposedly to make learning German easier on children and immigrants alike — causing a lot of frustration for those of us who paid attention in class the first time around and are now punished for it. This has resulted in a state of affairs where nobody really knows how anything is spelled anymore and mostly just guesses.
- In Danny Wallace's autobiographical book Friends Like These, he sends a text about how he's hanging out with "a hardcore German raper". Guess which word should have had an extra P in it.
- This site with many actual[citation needed] answers 6th graders gave on tests, is full of this, as well as Critical Research Failure, Captain Obvious and You Fail Logic Forever. One especially noteworthy example is "Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick raper, which did the work of a hundred men.
- Lee Harvey Oswald's spelling, as seen in his personal journals, was notorious for its errors.
- Engrish, in all its special, special glory.
|
|
