Spellings Sew Sneeky

I get why people type "sneak peak" instead of "sneak peek." None of us are immune. (I, for one, make a ton of typos.)

What I don't get is why professional wordsmiths, like the writer and editor behind this AOL News link, haven't learned to double check the spelling before publishing it to a

professional site. It's like "lead" in place of "led" -- an issue proofreaders know to watch out for.

Wonderings and Googlings (Wherein I wonder about words, then I Google them)

"it doesn't faze me" = 612,000 hits
"it doesn't phase me" = 1,740,000 hits

Some of the latter are, no doubt, people explaining how to use the word "faze." But one appears to be a bona fide error by an AP writer that got past an AP editor then past a Charleston Daily mail editor.

Either way, I'm shocked that the "phase" version occurs almost three times as often as the one with "faze."

Wonderings and Googlings (Wherein I wonder about words, then I Google them)

definately = 14,400,000 hits
definitely = 134,000,000 hits

"Definately" is one of the most common mistakes I see on message boards and forums. So I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it gets 10% as many hits as the correct spelling. Still ...

By the way, the first hit for "definately" is from the Urban Dictionary, which calls it "idiot-speak for 'definitely.'"

The first hit for "definitely" is a link explaining how to spell it.

Wonderings and Googlings (Wherein I wonder about words, then I Google them)

All who doubt the word-conspiracy theory I wrote of yesterday, behold: Not 24 hours after I blogged that the word "Columbia" was out to get me by trying to pass itself off as "Colombia," I found this in a story I was editing:

(The restaurant) Botero, features ... original paintings by the Columbian artist along the walls.

Diabolical.

So I thought I'd do a Google search see whether this spelling is spreading its poison across the Web. Yup.

Bogota, Columbia -Colombia = 72,800 hits

Cute Pun, But Only If Intended

Saw this headline on a Barron's blog:

Equities Rally As Fed Shows Its Meddle

That could be one of two things: a deliberate play on "mettle" -- or not. A pair of single quotation marks in that headline could have gone a long way.