[Theforum] Confusables (was: confidentiality of survey results)

[Madhu Menon]

At 11:31 PM 12/8/2001, rudy wondered out loud:

>which i had never been to before, but which i suspect is gonna
>kill off the best part of my saturday --

My Saturday will disappear in about ten minutes, with nothing but a mild 
fever and leftover chicken salad to show for it :(
But "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" offered some comfort :)
(He's much funnier than Jay Leno)   [1]


>ah, here it is -- "confusables"
>
>    http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/notorious.htm

Bookmarked. A few revelations, like the difference between "amoral" and 
"immoral". Interesting...

Let me know if you need more such reading material :D

Oh, what the heck, it's a Saturday, so here's one:

http://kenlayne.com/2000/2001_12_02_logarc.html#7630106

Watch Ken Layne dissect and destroy a poorly-written op-ed piece on Yahoo. 
Reading this is useful in learning how to avoid hyperbole and poor 
introductions in stories.

If you don't automatically reach the correct bookmark on the page, search 
for "Today's Jackass" :))

I really enjoy reading (and writing) this kind of stuff ;)


>but alas, nothing that i could see about the name for our homophonic
>misspellings...

I didn't make myself clear enough. I'm actually looking for the reason that 
people, who *know* the difference between homonyms, go and make a mistake 
in their email anyway. I've noticed that I've done this on a few ocassions 
when I was thinking deeply about what I was writing. Perhaps my brain then 
transferred more power to the thinking grid from the spelling grid. (Gosh I 
sound like a Star Trek episode!)

I doubt we'll find a lingual term for it. It's something to do with 
psychology...

Thanks,

Madhu

[1] Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien: hosts of late night talk shows on NBC in 
USA. :)
http://www.nbc.com/leno and http://www.nbc.com/conan respectively

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Madhu Menon
User Experience Consultant
e-mail: webguru at vsnl.net