Forum Moderators: phranque
I am wondering is there any list on the most commonly mispelled business words? I am concentrating on ecommerce, merchant accounts and web hosting. I am also building seperate sites for different countries and working in the mispellings to snag some extra traffic. Sometimes not even mispellings but just the american english version and the british version.I have an Indian site and a Chinese site both in English though I will translate the Chinese one to Chinese, Japanese and Korean latter. I lived and worked in Singapore and malaysia for 7 years so I recognize that certain nationalities mispell certain english words more often.I feel it would be very beneficial if we made up a list of words that are commonly mispelled. The floor is open for suggestions.
Commonly misspelled words [library.cornell.edu].
NFFC. Excellent utility on misspellings. Have launched 5 more pages with misspellings for testing, still just in meta keys.I was just thinking that it would be nice if each domain had one page with a high percentage of misspellings designed to pull in quality traffic.The only problem being it will look like ****.What if we made a game out of it and we have 10 misspelled words and 3 choices, 1 right and 2 wrong.We could place this in an inconspicuous, believe thats the right spelling, part of the page. My sites are ecommerce so the questions and misspellings would have to be business related and relevant to the traffic I want.Just throwing ideas off the wall.
As to Chinese, I am not even sure that you could misspell in that language. Where is Woz when you need him? WOOOOZ! (Wonder if he sleeps in on Sundays?) Cyberbear: Drop him a sticky-mail and wake him up!
Hmmm. Misspell characters?? Well as technically you don't spell characters, you draw them, you cannot misspell them, Yes??? But you can misdraw them, which is something I don't do 'cos I simply don't draw them.
The biggest challenge I have with chinese is the pronunciation. Two words can sound so close and yet mean something completely different. I refuse to say certain words as if they are mispronounced they would get me kicked off this board for profanity.
Even then, there are homonyms in Chinese, such as "read" and "reed" in English, and so people often have to explain which word they mean by way of context. But then I digress.
>>Where is Woz when you need him? WOOOOZ!
Right where he always is!
>>(Wonder if he sleeps in on Sundays?)
Er, is that MY Sunday or YOUR sunday, and is it Yesterday or Tomorrow?? In anycase, the answer to all the above is YES!
>>Cyberbear: Drop him a sticky-mail and wake him up!
That would work, only I don't have the Stickymail to Mobile Phone connection worked out yet. Brett, how do I do that??
There fora (not forums...) are as enjoyable as always.
Onya
Woz
>>>(Wonder if he sleeps in on Sundays?)
>Er, is that MY Sunday or YOUR sunday.
Well, I posted a few minutes past midnight my time and you are 9 hours ahead of me, so for once we were on same day of the week.
Seriously though: I guess it would be technically possible to misspell in Chinese if you get one of the two bytes needed wrong, right? But that would change the meaning completely, wouldn't it - or even create a total nonsense word. Not like spelling Sweden Sweeden, or restaurant resturant, when you can still figure out what the writer meant.
Hope you haven't gone to sleep already.
- Jan
Yes, but No.
If you were typing in the byte values raw, like hand editing HTML, then technically Yes. But remember this from [webmasterworld.com...]
<<<<<As to typing Chinese, a quick description, there are various systems around. Not sure about Japanese or Korean, but with chinese you type the PinYin (Romanisations) using regular letters and then choose the correct character from a list. Quite simple really. >>>>>
All the characters are kept in a database. You must type in the Romanisation first. Typing something wrong, like 'sweeeeeeeeeden' would not have any available characters in the database lookup. Hence this possibility in very unlikely.
But typing 'dian' would give you the character for electricity, and all the character combinations starting with that character. You could then choose the appropriate character set, or narrow down you choice by typing the romanisation for the second character as well - 'dian shi' would give you TV and all the related possibilities, or 'dian hua' would give you telephone and all the related possibilities, and so on. Sort of like data mining where you are continually refining your choices.
However you could make a mistake in choosing the wrong character from the list, unlikely but possible.
Typing a romanised URL (http://www.renren.com - meaning peoplepeople.com) is another story though and subject to the same misspelling that any other romanised language is.
Clear? As Mud?
Onya
Woz
following ihelpyou's post in Google Forum about text ads, I wen looking for his entry. So I typed in 'search engine optimiSation' but he wasn't there! Then I realised that you would all be spelling it wrong - 'search engine optimiZation', and there he was.
Over at Spellweb.com
search engine optimisation vs search engine optimization
Webcrawler
4 votes for search engine optimisation
222 votes for search engine optimization
Fast
950 votes for search engine optimisation
12,992 votes for search engine optimization
yes, fewer entries for the "correct" spelling, but also an opportunity yes??
'there's money in them thar misspellings!'
Oh, and over at Infoseek
0 votes for search engine optimisation
0 votes for search engine optimization
Hmmm..
#2,
someone over at SEF is looking for a program that will produce misspellings! He He He,
Onya
Woz
PS., just who is this 'Miss Pelling' person anyway, must be a good looker as everyone is talkin' 'bout 'er.
PPS., misspelling.com is for sale, minimum bid US$1950
You are right though. 'optimization' is misspelled all the time. At GoTo there were 272 searches for it as 'optimisation' last month and 3100 searches for at spelled 'optimization'.
This misspelling could get you a few targeted hits though.
I must say you were pretty sharp in finding me there. ;)
All your ihelpyou, not my market.
Onya
Woz
So if you have a global market, these common spelling differences could be to your advantage over your competitors who are not aware of these common differences.
Now if only I could find a URL which expands on this....
Or a quick read of the London Times online should help as you'll come across a lot of these common differences.
The only downside has been on directories such as Looksmart and ODP where a well-meaning editor has changed it to the American spellings - oh well, can't win all the time!
Also take a look at
United Kingdom English for the American Novice [hps.com], it's manages to be both informative and patronising.
I have just worked in a large number of misspellings into 9 of my sites and am already seeing results in Inktomi. I have put misspellings in the Meta Keys which Inktomi likes and also in the text of several site maps. On the site maps the mistakes are pretty obvious, but I am going on the premise that people will not read all the text on the sitemap, and will usually follow a link. On one site I have about 25 links. Each is a keyword rich sentence with a few misspellings and a hyperlink in blue. The hyperlink text is always spelled correct and usually what the people will focus on.I will let you guys know the results. I am really looking forward to the extra traffic it should bring. I really love this site and the way people band together to help each other. May we all get lots of traffic from misspellings.
US English = USA + Canada
UK English = England, Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Brunei, and the likes.
The English spoken in Europe tends to be mostly UK English, whilst the English spoken in emgerging countries where English is very much a introduced language is often a mixture of the two. Chinese English Students for example are very confused because they are caught between the two and don't know which way to turn. My advice to them is it is more important to be understood than correct.
This is in my opinion also applicable here in choosing keywords and phrases. Differences in spellings can be quite lucrative.
Onya
your priend!
Woz
PS. you should see some of the mistranslation here! Ha Ha Ha! Maybe we should start a thread in Foo for a laugh??
I had to comment on Woz's last comment, however and clarify. In Canada, we use UK English - NOT that of the US. In business, certain companies may use American spelling because of strong business ties to companies south of the border, however, officially we use Canadian (ie. British) English.
Thanks,
Dion
:)
A very warm Welcome to WmW! Wow! To my knowledge we are now 2 from Montréal!
I agree with you that we use mostly Brittish spellings in current documents. Shame on you Woz! :)
Bienvenue Dionysus!
"Dear Sir,
I was visiting your site and noticed that you consistently misspelled the word harbor. You may want to look into that as it really doesn't reflect well on your site. Aside from that, it is a very nice site and easy to navigate."
"My wife and two children will be visiting Tortolla in June and wanted to know the cost of a 2 cabin catamaran for one week. Please advise."
I wrote back:
"I much appreciate your note regarding the spelling of harbor but as I am Canadian and live in the British Virgin Islands, I tend to use the Concise Oxford Dictionary, in which the correct spelling is harbour. However, I always appreciate hearing of any possible problems on our site.
"I can certainly help you with finding a 2 cabin Catamaran ... but not sure where Tortolla is. Perhaps you meant Tortola? (Snide grin). Not to worry, it is a common error."
______________________
How do you spell Canada? C eh N eh D eh! Born and raised in Toronto with a 6 year stint in Siberia. (Um ... I meant to say Beaconsfield, Montreal).
BTW, also in Montreal and also on Mac. :)
Quelle hasard!
:)
Further research since that time has of course proved me wrong and I bow my head in shame.
I am just chuffed that someone would take the time to plough through old posts! Welcome Dionysus and thankyou for the admonition.
Et tu Macguru!
Onya
Woz
Why is atomatically, um, autiomatically, bugger, autmoatically, hmm, automaically, oops. automaitcally, um. automatcially, hang on, automaticalely, eep, automaticallly, um, automaticaly, hmm, automaticalyl, oops, automaticlly, um, automatocally bugger, automtaically, oops. uatomatically, um, utomatically, um automatically (at last!) producing missplellings funny?
