Don't even get me started on how long it took me to write it correctly, I use to type Colonial before I realized I was using the wrong word.
Really, the one that always trips me up is Lieutenant, I can't seem to get the I before the E part right all the time.
ARG! I still can't spell lieutenant without having to look it up. and I'm a pharmacy technician and we got some pretty damn tough words like acetaminophen or tamsulosin, Lansoprazole. But f****** Lieutenant is a hard one, about looking up or spell check correcting me LOL
I'm always hesitant with 'apartment', because the French spelling is 'appartement'. After years of speaking mostly English it still takes me 12 seconds to link it to 'apart'.
Speaking of army ranks, I always get autocorrected spelling sergeant. I keep wanting to try seargeant or sargeant... I generally consider myself a good speller, but for some reason I can't for the life of me learn to spell "maneouvre" (or should that be manouevre? Or maneouvre? Or maybe manoeuvre. But definitely not "maneuver", though admittedly that would take away all of my frustrations of not knowing how to spell correctly).
This is even harder for brits since we say it Lef-tenant rather than the American pronouciation of looo tenant I'm not sure what the eytmology of the british pronounciation is since we say 'lieu' as 'in time off in lieu' as lew
I fixed this for myself by thinking of it as "bureau" (like, the FBI) and then adding -cracy to the end. It seems obvious, but I always had trouble with the word before I broke it down, and haven't had trouble since. In terms of my own over-used problem words, they seem to change over time. And every single time I get edits back that point out whatever the overused words were, my feathers ruffle when I read the global edits letter. "She wants to get rid of all my 'right?' usage? But that's how the characters talk, and it's in close third, so of course I used it in narrative, and... Oh. I used it four-hundred-and-eighty times in a fifty-thousand-word book? Hmmm. Maybe I could stand to lose a few...."
I before E except after C... or when sounding like A as in "neighbor" or "weigh." (I heard that in a Disney-esque educational cartoon 30+ years ago and still can't get it out of my head)
For me, it's the word melachonly. See, spelt it wrong already. (aka melancholy) I can never remember how it's spelt, and I always have to wait for the red squiggle to underline it before I know it's wrong. And no matter how many times I look at it and try to memorise it, I just can't. I can't even pronounce it. I know how it's pronounced but every time it comes out of my mouth, it sounds stilted and wrong even when I'm saying it right. And I'm never too sure if I'm saying it right lol. Also can't spell bureaucracy (I actually have to check the spell checker every time for this one). Thankfully neither are words I often use!
I almost always write "reasearch" instead of "research" and then immediately notice it and correct it.
I have two I consistently get wrong. Believe as beleive and as well as "aswell", I also have a problem with getting were and where right. I keep using the wrong one! Arrrggg.
Given that I used to sing, this is ridiculous, but even before I was dyslexic the words rhythm and musician drove me nuts. Now the only way I can spell them is to look for the red underline. A few others: license amythest acknowledge committee Anything with double letters. My dyslexia reads double letters as three or four letters onscreen so I have to try to remember--argh! remember is another one--to count my finger taps on the keyboard.
I have two. When I used to write technical documents a lot, I frequently had to use the word function. I spell it right, but by the time it gets to my keyboard it always comes out funciton. Fun-sit-on. Argh. The other is occasion. I have to spell it carefully or else it comes out ocassion or occaision. Double argh.
I always try to get rid of "up" and "thing." (I shouldn't say "get rid of." I should say "double-check that each use is necessary.") "Up" shows up in prepositions (including upon) and all these phrasals . . . basically a verb+prep that act as a single verb: blow up, give up, toss up. There's one starting this graph. Shows up . . . that's what I mean. I read that masculine writing has large amounts of specific directions. It's one of the ways that computers can guess if a man or woman wrote a piece. They can do it at much better than 50%, so there's something to that. I think pronoun usage comes into play too. Depending on the MC, I try to adjust. Anyway, "up" is very specific direction-wise. I wonder if men use it more frequently. Hmm . . . Also, "thing" is starting to bother me. It hides inside of nothing and something. i.e., no thing, some thing. That's so stupid, so indecisive. Though I guess nothing is kind of specific. The absence of everything (there's another one!) is very exacting. Anyway, I believe it's better to be specific with a detail, and "thing" is just fluff. It's verbal lint. So when possible, I try to use a detail instead. (disclaimer: not always . . . nothing (!) should happen always.)
I've got issues with not getting my finger off the shift key quickly enough, so I end up retyping things like: DAvid walked into the FIrst National BAnk. It's not consistent, but it happens often enough to be annoying, and I have to turn off all autocomplete and such on my devices because I need to make errors for my students to find when I'm typing for work. Also, I have to be bikeyboardal, which can mess me up. All of my keyboards are Japanese, which is pretty much standard QWERTY, but some of the keys are different. WHen I'm writing fiction, I switch my mapping over to English, which moves the quotation marks down from shift-2 to the right pinky, and moves the parentheses over (J-keyboard is shift 8 for open, and shift 9 for close parentheses). Apostrophe is shift 7. So when I'm writing fiction, I use English keymappings, because that's quickest for me, but when I'm writing for work, I use Japanese keymappings because I don't have the muscle memory for where things like dollar signs and ampersands are and need the visual assist. And yes, that "WHen" in the paragraph above was natural, and I noticed it, but decided to leave it uncorrected since it was such a beautiful example.
.......................................... .......................................... .......................................... ..........................................WHen ......................................... .......................................... ......................................... ........................................................................Iain Aschendale 2018
Something like half the time, I write "feel" when I'm going for "fell", and vice versa. Not because I confuse the words, but because there's something wrong with my fingers and/or typing technique. I often catch it right away, but not always. I always stumble on "bureau" and "bourgeoisie". I have to look them up every time. I sometimes forget if it's "wedge" or "vedge", maybe because V, to me, suggests a wedge. I sometimes need a reminder re: "prize" and "price" (but I'm good with "prise", which I rarely use anyway) as well as "graze" and "grace", but I can usually keep them straight.
