It's a gift, and a curse

I am the first to confess, I am not perfect. As much as typos irk me, I know that I am often guilty of leaving behind evidence of my rush to the finish. Occasionally I neglect to hit the "ABC" spell check before I publish a post, or hit "send" on an e-mail. I cringe when I catch my own typos after they've been published. I feel strongly that the English language should be common if we are to be effective in our communication. We cannot each have our own way of spelling things.

Some words, like "judgment," are so often misspelled that I think the wrong spelling should be adopted. I would go so far as to argue that the correct spelling is wrong because it offends my sensibility that there's no "e" between the "g" and the "m" ... but there's not an "e" and I'm not in charge, so I live with the phonetic aberration. Occasionally, to amuse myself, I pronounce things phonetically so for judgment, the "g" should be hard. But I digress.

This evening, my hubby and I attended a meeting of our home-owner's association. There is a new development going in right behind us. On the other side of our 6-foot (inadequate) privacy fence a road will be going in to support the new development. Part of the new development will be Medical Offices, Condos or something similar.

At the start of the meeting, a big 3'x4' professionally mounted poster showing the land was set up in the front of the room. Spiral bound sets of maps and info were passed out to the dozen+ home-owners in attendance. The cover page matched the poster. We were able to take our time reviewing the information provided. The developers were very helpful and clearly interested in our support.

After a brief presentation they fielded questions. Lots of questions. The meeting lasted about 45 minutes. After they had wrapped up, I asked the head developer the only question I'd pondered for most of the meeting. What does "Comerical" mean? I'm not familiar with that term. His response? Embarrassed confession to a typo they hadn't caught. I'd say that's one heck of a typo. Comerical = Commercial. I'd thought it might, but my goodness...it certainly lends credence to the following claim, even if there aren't enough letters in the jumbled version!

Aoccdrnig to a rsecheearr at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is that frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by itslef but the wrod as a wlohe.