Grrr....just saw this again. Drives me nuts!

Yes, I did wonder (and I mentioned auto-correct ...but spellchecker would have the same effect.) However, the fact that you know it is pronounced differently should let you know it is a different word. The fact that you also thought they were both spelled the same is actually ...incorrect. It's not acceptable. Or at least not acceptable yet. That's why I enclosed the two dictionary definitions, which I got online yesterday. They're up to date.

If we decide that incorrect word usage is actually correct—just because we never heard otherwise before—we're screwing with our ability to communicate. I feel that, as writers, we should be striving to keep our tools—words—as sharp and precise as we can. Let them get dull and sloppy and they won't work very well any more.

 

The thing is, text-speak, if it were spoken out loud would be normal speech, wouldn't it? All it's doing is substituting a number or symbol for a letter of the alphabet. Characters might WRITE in text speak, but they won't speak in text speak. So you wouldn't use it in a passage of spoken dialogue, would you? Igpay Atinlay? Another dimension altogether...

 

That's a great example of a similar mistake. I was wracking my brain trying to think of a similar example. That's perfect. Cloth is a noun. Clothe is a verb. Like breath, and breathe. Excellent.

Same root word, but different pronunciation, different spelling and different meaning. Not so difficult, really.

 

I'm also not keen on allowing the language to 'evolve' out of ignorance of the rules either, or from simply being too lazy to learn them.

Fair enough, ditching stuff that really makes no sense, like the split infinitive, etc. To boldly go. Or to go boldly. That doesn't really matter, does it? Either way, the meaning hasn't changed. Or words which have outlived their original era and now carry entirely different meanings, like 'gay.' But once we start using one word when we actually mean another because we, personally, can't tell the difference? And then we stubbornly insist that our mistake is just fine because ...hey, that's what I DO and it's a free country, right? ...then we're in bother.

What is language? Language is an arrangement of sounds (spoken) and symbols (written) that have mutually agreed meanings. It enables us to communicate complicated or subtle concepts to one another. We have to spend time learning and adjusting to the mutually agreed meanings, though. We're not born knowing them.

If we can't be bothered learning the mutually agreed rules and start making up our own instead, pretty soon we're not going to be able to communicate very well, because we're no longer using the same language. We'll have to start guessing what the other person means—resorting to arm-waving, pointing, etc. One or two bad guesses, and the whole thread of a conversation or written piece will get muddled. We've all seen this in bad writing, and heard people speaking who simply didn't make sense, even though they were supposedly speaking English. This is just going to get worse if we start applying the mutually agreed rules only if, and when, we please.

Not caring about preserving a working language is an extremely regressive direction to take.

 

Oh, I'm not denying I'm wrong. But 'Breathe' still looks wrong to me. It looks like a misspelling of 'breath'.

I know that doesn't make sense, but neither do a lot of things in the English language.

 

Maybe it's because Mississippi isn't an English word. Or maybe because first grade teachers need the entertainment.

 

EM EYE DOUBLE ESS EYE DOUBLE ESS EYE DOUBLE PEE EYE

 

I want to go back to when the Internet was that simple.

 

No you don't. Dial up modems you actually had to put the headset of your phone on and hours to download 240 x 360 8 bit pictures and monotone ringtones for your Motorola Micro Tac? Never again, Mon Homme.

 

Hahaha, I know exactly where you saw it too. I also made a note of it in the Short Story contest

I always recommend throwing stories in a text to speech service and let it read it to you. That would prevent those types of errors.

 

I think it's because it's a native American word. Lots of these have double s's in them. I think it harks back to the way they were originally pronounced, with a lot of sibilance. The kind of rattlesnake native to Michigan is called the Missasauga rattler. Then we have Massachussetts, etc. Missouri. These words with the double consonants are not English words.

 

Actually, I've seen it four places in the past three days! One MS. One short story. One blog and one article in a reputable newspaper. That's why I kind of lost the plot at the top of this page. It's a mistake that's happening far more often than it should.

 

I think it’s kinda nuts that word processors don’t notice this yet. If I use “choose” where I meant to type “chose,” Google Docs will tell me.

 

Phonetically it makes sense.

Breath- the vowels are a diphthong and pronounced 'eh' or like a short e sound.

When you add an e on the end, now you have the effect of the vowel on the preceding vowel or diphthong and it is pronounced 'e' or a long e sound.

Look at similar phonetics:

Pete and pet
Cake and cat
Brake and brack
Lake and lack

Choose and chose don't buck the rule so much as English phonetics is absurdly complicated and inconsistent. The double o diphthong is different from the ea diphthong.

 

Pep and Pepe
Sac and Sake
Breathe and Bequeath

The English language has just enough exceptions to make pretty much every part of it confusing. Much respect for anyone trying to learn this as a second language.

 

I carefully lead the detective to the place I'd found the lead bullet. "Thanks. This is a great lead," says the detective.

Yes, it's a pretty stupid language, and considering this I don't really see why 'My chest was so tight I felt as though I couldn't breath' seems so wrong.

 

It's wrong simply because it IS wrong. Unless you want to ignore the dictionary and go your own way on it. It's the wrong word. It's even the wrong part of speech. Breath is a noun. Breathe is a verb.

You could equally start spelling 'kayak' as 'cake,' but it would be the wrong word—and used in the wrong way, could cause a great deal of confusion. It's not right or wrong because it's kinda like another word. Breath and breathe have the same root word, but they have evolved into two different words. Same with cloth and clothe. You wouldn't write "I want to cloth the poor and heal the sick," would you? Nor would you want a piece of clothe to make a dress. You also wouldn't say "I want to see him again, before I breath my last." They are two different words with two different meanings.

Leed would probably be a better spelling for "leed me home," but so far, it's not used as such. If you saw somebody 'leeding' the parade, it would probably (hopefully) strike you as the wrong spelling. Similarly, you don't 'sodder with led.' We no you no better.

You just need to learn what the accepted spelling is for every word and what meaning is attributed to that particular spelling. That's what learning a language is all about. Personally, I'm not a fan of the French language habit of word gender. La and le, and all that. But I can't just ignore the convention because it doesn't make perfect sense to me, and expect to be understood by speakers of that language. It is what it is. If you want to speak the language correctly, you learn the conventions. You don't buck them.

 

Pfft. Man. U. forever!

 

But why do you not have the same issue with the fact that the word 'lead' can apply to three different things?

Just because our language dictates this is so, doesn't make it any less stupid or wrong than using 'breath' for both meanings.

In fact my example was wrong, as the first and last 'lead' mean the same thing. A better example would be:

 

I'm not arguing that some of the conventions we use aren't kind of stupid. However, I'm also not going to start altering accepted spellings to suit me either.

I think you're missing the point here. It's not whether these conventions make sense. It's whether the conventions exist. If they exist and you want to choose to ignore them, fair enough, go ahead. But I wouldn't start submitting writing for publication that is filled with these kinds of personal preferred spellings, because until the convention changes, they will be seen as SPAG errors.

Just out of curiosity, would you be happier if 'breath' was spelled 'breath' (as it is) and 'breathe' was spelled 'breeethe?' That would make sense from an phonetic point of view. Maybe we should spell 'breath' as 'breth?' What's that 'a' in there for, anyway? Hey, we could go to town on this, couldn't we?

 

I don't understand why no one between author and final print caught them or called them out. Are there no longer editors or proofreaders at these publications?

 

Sadly, no there aren't, at least not in newspapers these days. My husband is a retired journalist (news sub), and he goes mental every time he encounters mistakes like this. But sadly, staff have been cut from most of these publications, so not only are the reporters and journalists working under lots of time pressure, but nobody is checking their work either. If 'breath' was the worst error that got made, we'd be lucky.

 

This makes me sad.

 

It's like the difference between sit and seat. You wouldn't enter a room and look for a sit. (Sit is the motion you make when you park your arse. It's a verb.) You wouldn't tell somebody to 'seat down.' (Seat is the bench or chair WHERE you park your arse. It's a noun.) They are two different words that are related, but not interchangeable.