Despertar

the riding center

My college roommate used to write probaly instead of probably. Consistently, for three of the four years. I saw it often, because we used to IM each other all day, even when we lived together. I don't know who finally tipped her off to the misspelling (it wasn't me), but one day, totally mortified, she acknowledged it in kind of an ohmigod-I-had-no-idea-about-probably kind of way. I don't exactly remember, but I think I pretended I had never noticed. In truth, I had noticed every single time, for three years, and I had been judging her pretty harshly for it.

The thing is, it seems like it would be really hard to go that long without realizing the adverb probably stems from the adjective probable, and applying the conventions of adverb-building, unless you never read at all, or resist absorbing anything when you do. Also, the word probably appears a lot in all print media. In other words, no well-read person with a reasonably sharp mind could make that mistake.

On the other hand, I was mispronouncing the word groin (in my mind it was growin, not groyn) until about three years ago, when Meg corrected me. But it's easy enough to explain that away and keep my judgmental little bias intact. I spent my entire youth being too shy and bookish to talk to anyone, so while I probably absorbed way more than the average number of written words, hence my impenetrable present-day confidence in my spelling, I never had any idea how to pronounce the very same words. And in my mind, being well-read is more important/impressive than being well-socialized. I'm beginning to see the flaws in this philosophy, but that's how I feel right now, at least.

So you can imagine how utterly ashamed I am whenever I have a Krystle moment, such as last week, when I found out I was both misspelling and mispronouncing the word perseverance. I had been mentally and orally inserting a second r, to yield perserverance, and I didn't find out till I got a red squiggly line while I was gchatting Justin a corny pep talk about not caving under all his recent pressures. Fortunately, he is not the type to notice these things.

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To clarify, I don't judge anyone for the occasional typo--I don't think anyone can avoid those. But when I see Writing.com friends consistently misspelling the same words, I am faced with a moral dilemma. According to Emily Post, it's never okay to correct a non-subordinate adult's spelling, grammar or pronunciation. At the same time, I feel like if there's any group of people to whom that rule doesn't apply, it's would-be writers, right?

So here's my informal poll: If I happen to notice you've misspelled a word, and conclude that you sincerely believe in that misspelling, like maybe because I've seen it done before in your journal, do you want to know, or not?

And if not, why not?