Mine would have to be the use of the word "loose" instead of "lose". It drives me nuts.

It's quite common on a few boards I frequent and I have seen people referred to as being a "looser" on many occasions. Begging the question, looser than what? Something tight?

Do the magicians a favor, and look up how to spell their names correctly...and not butcher them....like
Harry Loraine
Dye Vernon
Alex Heckler....

Fully agree with Joseph on spelling the names correctly.

I'm not the best at grammar, but I always double check me spelling with an online spell checker

http://www.spellcheck.net/

If you download this tool http://www.iespell.com/download.php (or find one of the many similar ones) it puts a spell-checker into your browser. So no need to go to another site to check.

All the ones quoted so far are definite (!) annoyances. However, my biggest frustration is "it's" and "its" - where the former should only be used as a shortened version of 'it is', and the latter used for the possessive meaning. I see this everywhere, and seems to be a basic lesson not taught anymore.

*phew* Rant over.

What a lovely day it is today...

Thanks

For a proper name, I’ll often cut-and-paste, just to make sure it’s correct. Google will often help with suggestions as you type.

Possessives and contractions can trip a lot of people. English has many homonyms, which just adds to the fun.

their / they’re / there
your / you’re
to / too / two
buy / by / bye
cent / sent / scent
hear / here
pair / pear / pare
raise / raze / rays
vane / vein / vain

That’s also one of the reasons English is so useful for wordplay. Much of our humor is constructed from the hearer’s initially misinterpreting a given word.

MS-Word is a fairly common program that includes a spell checker [F7], but it won’t catch most mistakes of that kind. It also has an auto-correct feature that “watches” as you type, and catches many spelling errors. I’ll often type my message there, then cut and paste into the forum text box.

Then, as pradell says, read it again online, and edit if necessary.

{Humorous footnote} A while back I overheard a teacher explaining to some students that in English there is no second-person plural. I couldn’t help interjecting that, at least in the South, we have “Y’all”!

Definately.. opps I mean definitely. oops I mean oops!

I you use google chrome (just search google for download) it has a spell checking feature.

Is spelling that important? I have dislexia.

Great little program! Love it! Thanks!

Spelling, a skill no longer taught, we can see errors o TV, newsprint even political campaign signs. Are built in spell checkers to blame? I didn't even know that my iPad had a built in spell checker till I started to use it for these posts!

With the vast amount of people on the Internet who never managed to pass their 3rd-grade typing classes, I'd rather have the built-in spellcheckers (even if they do degrade actual spelling ability).

My computer is set up to read text back to me. Often, I will proof-read, and read over mistakes. The computer reads what I wrote.

Does anyone even use a dictionary these days?

Safari/Apple jut checks it automatically if you ask it.

shift + command + :

Just in case anyone doesn't know the shortcut.
I try to use it as little as possible though otherwise it becomes a crutch and you get lazy.

I use a dictionary pocket size comes in handy at times, spelling was not my best subject.

This has been said before: many Café users are not native English speakers (myself included). But what I find funny is that most of the spelling errors are usually made by native speakers! This is not surprising, though; it happens in every language. Everyone puts a bit more effort when writing in a language different from his/her own for the same reason one treads more carefully when in unfamiliar territory. Now, about grammar mistakes, that's a horse of a different colour...

I don't really mind grammar mistakes unless they are clearly a result of somebody being lazy. Same with spelling. If you do a pretty good job then it's alright, but if you type lik this cuz you think itz kewl then I won't continue to read your posts.