Technical terms...
 

BRAKE == (1) a device for slowing or stopping a vehicle or other moving mechanism by the absorption or transfer of the energy of momentum, usually by means of friction (2) anything that has a slowing or stopping effect.

BREAK == (1) to smash, split, or divide into parts violently; reduce to pieces or fragments (2) to destroy or interrupt the regularity, uniformity, continuity, or arrangement of; interrupt

how about idle vs. idol (no joke - there is a post titled idol on the tech board right now)

Looser. Loser.

That one always makes me smile: "You are such a looser".

Raise vs Raze. That really tripped a up kid I knew. What a maroon.

Their, there, they're.

should have. not should of.

Best,
Tom

On the boards that I frequent, I think brake and break are the most common.

Not as common, but loose, lose, and loss.

affect / effect

Exotic / 928

layed / laid

Now that's funny!

1(+-)

On CL I see:

Trailor all the time instead of trailer. For some reason it bugs the S**T out of me.

Anything with apostrophe's.

See how I did that?

Dose vs Does...

One I see here a lot: (seriously, search on the word peddle here)

Pedal - the device you press on to activate said brake.
Peddle - Selling said device door to door.

Incidentally these are the only two words in the English language that are both homonyms and antonyms.

There is no word that rhymes with "orange" either.

I'm full of useless information, as anyone who's been around here a while can attest to.

Watt ewe guise tulking baud?

Irregardless. Orientate.

Yes, I know they are both 'legit'. Regardless and orient are fine.

Phase/faze

Its, It's

Duel or Dual mufflers?

Dueling mufflers could be fun... :)

I have given up on the "your" thing instead of "you're" for you are. Fully over half of the people here (and this being a fairly intelligent bunch) can't figure that one out. I suspect about half the teachers in the US don't know either because obviously they didn't correct many for all 12 to 16 years of education.

As a result, I expect "your" to become an acceptable use for the contraction in the dictionary sooner rather than later.

Did someone bring up there, their and they're? Well, that's just too difficult for way too many. If you don't have that down by now, you'll never get it right.

Here's an obscure one: complimentary/complementary.

Hopefully soon spellcheck will catch poor homonym usage and all will be good in our lazy world. :)

Uhhhhh those two drive me NUTS. Irregardless is a redundant word and orientate means to face East, but it is NEVER used correctly...

Seems the British use that form of the word frequently as an alternative to orient. Do people not give an orientation to new hires?

Then and than.

They do.

And, in curtain circumferanstances, lamentations are given as well.

One can lament, but not lamentate.

Unless, of coarse (to put a fine point on it) one is disorientated

(which is more lamentatable than being disorientated...I think).

The acception being, of coarse, when one is referring to distressed plywood, which is commonly also called lamentated wood (I think).

English in not my native tongue but I always try to use/write and speak it correctly.
Most of the times, if I'm not sure about something, I'll look it up.
And I use spell check.
Not that my English cannot be improved, I'm sure it can.

It drives me nuts when people ignore plurality and abbreviate there are to there's, although it usually occurs verbally the mistake can carry over to the written word. There's a lot people who do it, especially news anchors.

"there're" it sounds right, but always looks funny to me.

I can sort of live with mis-spellings of English words when talking about the anodised colour of aluminium because most of the culprits don't really speak Engish! ;)

But what really annoys the crap out of me is the mis-use of apostrophes. Even my kids don't get it. I'm even thinking of dis-owning them. :mad:
Actually, what really pi$$es me off is that I paid mega-bucks for their education and ended up with thi's. :(

It seems that apostrophitis a world-wide epidemic ... did I just invent a new word? :eek:

"There's" can be correct. Most of the time it would stand for there are, however one can say, "There is one reason." IOW, there's.

I have looked up the problem with using 911's as the plural noun instead of 911s, even though it's not possessive. It seems that in writing there's (see?) some clarity given with the use of the apostrophe.

I'm there'd (like that?) be debate in English class.

There's casual usage and there is more formal usage. They're kind of the same, but they are different in tone.

Here's another one I find interesting; the Brits will say "Ford are introducing three new models" whereas Americans will say "Ford is introducing three new models".

I wonder if this is because the Brits see a company as a "company of people" (which I believe is the etymology of that usage of the word company) whereas Americans see a company as a single entity.

That would bring up "General Motors are introducing......" I don't know the corporate structure now, but before they were General Motors as in 5 divisions, which were really separate companies.

Yeah. I thought of that example while I was posting.

I wonder if they say "The government are planning..."?

y'all funny!

Is this y'all's yawl?

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1281296892.jpg

Refudiate vs. Repudiate. :)

Evidently, one can refute but not repude, at least not in English.

Sherwood

The man wouldn't utter
(even mutter)
one word about
cow parts -
until he was ordered
to utter udder.