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[personal profile] muckefuck
So maybe I go on too much about bad spelling, but sometimes I find it simply baffling. I mean, I understand that anyone can have a bad day (like [livejournal.com profile] rollick with her recent Brauhaus post) and that it's difficult to look up a word if you've never seen it written, only heard it, or to remember the spelling of a word in a language you don't speak. However, how do you explain this sign on a plant in the staff lounge:
VARIEGATED PHILADENDROM
(Philodendron scandens)
Now, setting aside for a moment the fact that the plant is decidedly not a member of the Philodendron genus (as we learned from last year's plant quiz, it's actually an Epipremnum aureum, also known as a "pothos"), how does it escape the person typing up the card that there might be a connexion of some sort between the scientific name and the popular? And how did they find (and correctly spell) the former when they so badly munged the latter?
Date: 2004-05-17 10:30 am (UTC)

From: [identity profile] cpratt.livejournal.com
Spelling's interesting regardless of whether or not it's bad. For instance, your usage of connexion - that spelling always startles me, largely because Connexxion is the name of a Dutch bus company. I checked it just now, and it's in fact the oldest spelling of that word in English; it's just that Webster et al give connection as the proper spelling, and as an American, that's what I'm most comfortable with. I'm curious; are you English, or is it just that you're used to the UK spelling from working in academia?
Date: 2004-05-17 10:42 am (UTC)

From: [identity profile] muckefuck.livejournal.com
I picked up a lot of British spellings in my Precocious Years and I've never been able to put them down again.
Date: 2004-05-17 10:43 am (UTC)

From: [identity profile] kcatalyst.livejournal.com
Clearly the person doing the typing knew that the scientific name was incorrect! And therefore there wouldn't *be* any connection between the two! Duh.
Date: 2004-05-17 10:50 am (UTC)

From: [identity profile] muckefuck.livejournal.com
Your "Duh!" has suitably chastened me.
Date: 2004-05-17 10:54 am (UTC)

From: [identity profile] niemandsrose.livejournal.com
I SAW THAT I SAW THAT I SAW THAT! Friday night at the library! The one in front of the GIC says that same thing! Eeeurgh!
Date: 2004-05-17 10:55 am (UTC)

From: [identity profile] mollpeartree.livejournal.com
Cut and paste from a plant website for the Latin name, freestyle spelling on the common name? Or was the whole thing handwritten?
Date: 2004-05-17 11:02 am (UTC)

From: [identity profile] muckefuck.livejournal.com
No, all typed up and neatly printed! That must be how it happened, but I still find it jaw-dropping that you wouldn't proof it before you printed it without some primitive pattern-recognition centre in your cerebrum going "Aroo?"
Date: 2004-05-17 11:06 am (UTC)

From: [identity profile] mollpeartree.livejournal.com
Oh, who has time to read anymore?
Date: 2004-05-17 11:10 am (UTC)

From: [identity profile] niemandsrose.livejournal.com
No, but you'd think that whoever gave enough of a rat's ass to make the little signs at all would've had more invested in them than that.
Date: 2004-05-17 11:17 am (UTC)

From: [identity profile] muckefuck.livejournal.com
See, that's what really baffles me. I mean, a spelling mistake in your blog or in an e-mail--whatever. Everyone understands that's prose that you toss off without much thought. But this was a whole Thingey for the Green Committee--they put up little signs saying Can you name this plant? a week beforehand to draw attention and so on.
Date: 2004-05-17 11:22 am (UTC)

From: [identity profile] niemandsrose.livejournal.com
O...h. I thought it was somebody's labor of love, you see. But now that I know it was a committee, that explains everything.
Date: 2004-05-17 12:17 pm (UTC)

From: [identity profile] rollick.livejournal.com
Curs yu andd you're mokery.
Date: 2004-05-17 12:23 pm (UTC)

From: [identity profile] muckefuck.livejournal.com
Kip ewer implications two year cell!
Date: 2004-05-17 12:47 pm (UTC)

From: [identity profile] zompist.livejournal.com
That does seem pretty stupid. I think intelligence largely consists of the ability to (indeed, the inability to not) make connections-- to look at the two words and think, huh, those are probably related.

The stupid person, on the other hand, would probably wonder why we're wasting our time worrying about stuff like that.
Date: 2004-05-17 08:41 pm (UTC)

From: [identity profile] go-wade-in.livejournal.com
people don't take much pride in their work anymore.

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