Mind Your To's and Two's

Like any self-respecting nerd, I spend a lot of time on the internet.  Since I'm not much of a gamer, a fair bit of this time passes in the noble pursuit of snickering derangedly at the World Wide Web's myriad proofs of what a varied and bizarre world this is.

In other words, I really like funny blogs.  One of my favourites is Cake Wrecks, even if it contributes to my constant desire to eat everything that holds still long enough.  It makes up for this by reliably making me laugh uproariously.  On the other hand, it also reliably kills any tender sprig of faith in humanity, or at least humanity's grasp of basic grammar, that might have sprouted over the week.  Of the repeat offenders, one of the worst is "too/to/two."

Tempting though it might be to say "it's an incompetent baker thing" and leave it at that, it isn't.  This confusion crops up everywhere.  People will advertise their businesses in crowded public spaces using the wrong freaking word!

At least part of the reason for this ubiquitous error, I lay at the door of spell check.  In most regards, it's a life-saver, or at least a dignity-saver and/or coherence-saver.  The exception, as I've previously mentioned, comes up when you type the wrong word.  It's a word! It's spelled right!  It just makes no sense, and spell check, not being actually sapient, can't tell.  The typist, who relies on spell check, in turn doesn't catch the mistake because it isn't red-underlined, annnnd there you go.



There might be a generational correlation, here; it would be interesting to see if people who grew up well before spell check became common exhibit less tendency to make wrong-word errors, both in typing and, because spell check enables not paying attention, in handwriting.  It's definitely not a grammar cop vs. non-grammar cop thing; you know how I am with grammar, spelling, and so forth, and I still fall into the wrong word trap now and then.

I've even typed the wrong "too" (or two, or to) occasionally.  Thus I know from experience that it's really embarrassing.  This is really basic, grade-school stuff!  It's not even noon on a Tuesday, and already I've seen to two many errors like this.  If I find another one, I'm going too scream.

See!?  See how frustrating it is!?  Excuse me while I go cuddle the dictionary.  Let's please, please be more careful and less reliant on spell check.  We might not look any less silly, but at least we'd look silly for different reasons.  As for the bakers...I don't even know.  They're probably hopeless.