One more from me I was just reminded of.

People who say Epsom instead of Epson (Epsom is a suburb of London).

When people say "compact" for Compaq. That's just idiotic. My boss used to do that. I never corrected him but I would shudder every time he did it.

In an almost related tale of woe, I was once 'corrected' by a different boss when I told a supplier that we weren't averse to using VoIP technology for our new phone system. In his next sentence the boss stated that he wasn't 'adverse' either. Sorry, Ed, I'm afraid that's exactly what you were.

Could be worse. you could be dealing with someone over the phone who has trouble with the siemens* in their computer

*memory of course!

brassicGamer wrote:

(Epsom is a suburb of London).

Internationally it is a kind of salt.
One of its uses is to relieve constipation.
.

Mag Sulfate. Very useful stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesium_sulfate#Uses

VileRancour wrote:

http://i.imgur.com/oX7fiqB.jpg […]
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Uuuhhhh, wat??? ^^"

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

VileRancour wrote:

http://i.imgur.com/oX7fiqB.jpg […]
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Uuuhhhh, wat??? ^^"

I LIKE IT!!! 😁
It'll be free frocks and jollies forever, you'll see!

ゴミ　means garbage so I guess they misspelled dump. 😜

On topic, I try to differentiate between keyboard-induced misspellings (aka typos - pressing an adjacent key or pressing them out of order) and ignorance-based misspellings. Typos I don't mind much unless they are excessive, but I find blatant misspellings visually annoying.

I mostly see good to excellent spelling & grammar around here so I don't have nay pet peeves particular to Vogons, but I can share some of the ones made by my fellow countrymen that really grind my gears, especially in technology related circles where a decent grasp of English is expected:

• Gratuitous use of apostrophe-s, they put it everywhere! e.g. Dell PC's , Apple Mac's , 80's games
• Overuse of capitalization, e.g. Compatible with WINDOWS, LINUX and ANDROID
• There are so many horrible misspellings of the word joystick that it's not even funny.
• Jack Power (referring to the DC jack on a laptop (sounds like a character straight out of a TV show))
• Bluethoot
• CompaqFlash cards
• Gammers

Surely I'll remember some more after I post this 😵

"Missle" instead of "missile". Seen this in quite a few games... once even in the title.

Sometimes it's complicated to write correctly when your native language isn't english and you doesn't use it very often. Personally, I hate translators. They just don't work right. They're maybe usefull for easy things or simple words, but not for complete sentences or texts.

ramiro77 wrote:

Sometimes it's complicated to write correctly when your native language isn't english and you doesn't use it very often. Personally, I hate translators. They just don't work right. They're maybe usefull for easy things or simple words, but not for complete sentences or texts.

True. I only use translate features when I'm on some Russian website or forum and even after translation I still have to figure out what is being meant.

Topic 46105

What a goldmine.

133MHz wrote:

ゴミ　means garbage so I guess they misspelled dump. 😜

捨てる (suteru) means to discard, so yep, safe assumption. 😀

Gratuitous use of apostrophe-s, they put it everywhere! e.g. Dell PC's , Apple Mac's , 80's games

I've come to let it slide when one is trying to pluralise an acronym/abbreviation.

CD's. PC's. I think it's an OK concession when it's possible the reader might assume the 's' is part of the acronym/abbreviation.

Otherwise, yes, apostrophes are used like they're going out of fashion!

Omfg.....to all you native english speakers: try typing perfectly dutch, chinese, german, russian etc. Then we talk again, ok?

meljor wrote:

Omfg.....to all you native english speakers: try typing perfectly dutch, chinese, german, russian etc. Then we talk again, ok?

To be fair english is not my mother tongue and sometimes I see native english speakers make cringe-worthy mistakes. I don't think this post was aimed at non-native english speakers that make some innocent mistakes here and there.

meljor wrote:

Omfg.....to all you native english speakers: try typing perfectly dutch, chinese, german, russian etc. Then we talk again, ok?

I would never criticise a foreigner speaking my tongue. Besides, there are very many English speakers who have an extremely poor grasp of their mother tongue!

brassicGamer wrote:

meljor wrote:

Omfg.....to all you native english speakers: try typing perfectly dutch, chinese, german, russian etc. Then we talk again, ok?

I would never criticise a foreigner speaking my tongue. Besides, there are very many English speakers who have an extremely poor grasp of their mother tongue!

Not only many English speakers...alas, The Netherlands is swarming with them! 🙁