Thursday, February 24, 2005

An eggcorn database

A Web site is keeping track of eggcorns, those homophones and other mistakes that are easy to find when you're combing through stories.

I've been checking in there daily to keep up, with the aim that keeping mistakes fresh in my mind will make them easier to spot on the job.

The latest mistake is on "playwrite" for "playwright," and the site lists five references "spotted in the wild," in newspapers, blogs, etc. Then it quotes from the Columbia Guide to Standard American English:
A playwright, like a shipwright, makes or builds something (the word wright comes from an Old English form of worker and is related to wrought); to write plays is to do playwriting, although the playwrighting spelling also occurs. Edited English usually insists that a maker of plays is a playwright and that the craft be called playwriting, not playwrighting.

3 Comments:

At 6:24 PM, February 24, 2005, Blogger cl said...

Nicole, this recent catch inspired me to rename my blog: Our news clerk wrote a feature obit on a doctor who had "a cheerful bedside manor."

 
At 12:21 PM, February 28, 2005, Blogger Nicole said...

I keep thinking of a brightly colored Barbie mansion some little girl forgot to put away.

 
At 8:25 AM, May 14, 2008, Anonymous Anonymous said...

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