Misspellings

“… promising lightening quick data rates …”

Hyphens, Mispronunciations, Misspellings

I saw this two days ago in a news article about a new mobile phone.

Problems:
1. A word is misspelled.
2. A hyphen is missing.

Explanation:
The news article was about the BlackBerry Storm.

One of the Web pages in the article discussed the data-related features of the Storm.

While discussing the data technology, the article author wrote “The smart phone operates on Verizon Wireless’ 3G EV-DO Rev A. network in the U.S., promising lightening quick data rates and Internet surfing.”

First, while trying to play on the “Storm” model name, the author misspelled “lightning” as “lightening”.

I believe that this first problem relates to sloppy pronunciation of the noun “lightning”.

Second, while trying to modify “data rates” to indicate a high speed, the author failed to put a hyphen between (sic) “lightening” and “quick”.

I suspect that this second problem relates to a general decline in skill with hyphenation.

Solution:
“… promising lightning-quick data rates …”

“Accredidation”

Devolution toward Simpler, Mispronunciations, Misspellings, Nouns

I heard this during a radio broadcast this morning.

Problem:
This is a mispronunciation.

Explanation:
The radio broadcast was about The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB).

The news reporter said that UTMB would not lose its “accredidation” in spite of yesterday’s announcement that 3,800 employees there would be laid off.

The noun is correctly spelled A-C-C-R-E-D-I-T-A-T-I-O-N because it comes from the verb “accredit”, which ends with a “t”.

Therefore, the final two syllables of the noun “accreditation” should be pronounced as “tation” (starting with a “t” as in “tango”) instead of as “dation” (starting with a “d” as in “delta”).

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (without the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “accreditation” — 38,100,000 matches
  • “accredidation” — 85,500 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used the correct spelling versus the incorrect spelling by a ratio of 446-to-1, which is superb.

However, this ratio does not tell the complete story because it covers spellings, not pronunciations.

I believe that the mispronunciation of “accreditation” is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It is simpler to say “dation” than it is to say “tation”.

Solution:
“Accreditation”

“Contenting with a clutch in stop-and-go traffic …”

Adjectives, Misspellings, Verbs

I saw this in a ConsumerReports.org article.

Problem:
The article writer used the wrong verb.

Explanation:
The full sentence was “Contenting with a clutch in stop-and-go traffic, for instance, can be tiring.” in a ConsumerReports.org article titled “Should you shift to a manual transmission?”.

The verb “content” means to make satisfied or content.

Substituting this definition into the sentence yields “Making satisfied with a clutch in stop-and-go traffic, for instance, can be tiring.”, which makes no sense.

I believe that the writer got confused by the second “t” in the adjective “contentious”, which means quarrelsome.

The solution comes from the fact that the adjective “contentious” relates to the verb “contend”, which ends with a “d” and means to struggle in opposition, not to the verb “content”, which ends with a “t”.

Solution:
“Contending with a clutch in stop-and-go traffic …”