Sometimes I wanna yell.

[Randy]

There is no "E" ending the word LENS....but I see it every day on camera forums and auction sites. LENSE...... Now that I got that off my chest..... ;D

[PeterW]

Agree with you, Randy.

I'm also tired of seeing an extra "a" in aperture. It is NOT aperature.

I often see two esses in focusing, and sometimes an "e" in bellows, making it bellowes.

Excusable from someone for whom English is not a native language. For the rest of us it is just laziness, typing errors excepted.

There are spelling checkers - or dictionaries if you're that old fashioned.

Having said that I've got to be careful I don't inhabit a glasshouse.

PeterW

[daveh]

I have looked this up before. Lense is in some dictionaries. It is for example in Webster's. I prefer lens without the e.

focussing: present participle of fo·cus (Verb) (Merriam-Webster)

We are fighting a losing battle.

[Randy]

If you use the long form to post a message here on the Camera Collector, there is a spelling checker.

[daveh]

I have a spell check which works on anything and everything I type on the Internet. It is set to British English. therefore it tells me that colour is correct, but color is incorrect. If I were to load the American English version it would reverse this decision. Spell checkers do not house all English words: the fact that a word can be "thrown out" does not necessarily mean the word is spelled incorrectly.
The onboard spell checker picks colour as being incorrect, which is, of course, incorrect.

[mickeyobe]

I two half a spel checqure. Its uh verrey yousfool tule.

Yool neffer heere me skream.

Mickey

[pompiere]

I can forgive the occasional misspelling or alternate spelling. What drives me crazy are when people use a homonym and either don't proofread or don't know the difference.
Some examples: there, their, they're; your, you're; break, brake; pedal, peddle, petal; hear, here.

Ron

[photax]

Randy, sometimes I am in the need to take a look at an German-English translation program. This translation says definitely: lens, but there is also "lense" in connection with microscopes and other non-camera optical devices. Thank you for the "spelling checker" advice !

Ron, I made the break/brake mistake several times until Dave called attention to it. I learned English at school about 30 years ago and the only practice I had ( since joining this forum ) was corresponding to Italian and Eastern Europe people. Believe me, you would not understand a single word. Especially the Italian are used to insert as many "E" as possible

MIK

[nikkortorokkor]

A someone who has received the highest level of university education, but who also remains a chronic bad speller, I think that there are some 'natural' spellers out there, and then there are the rest of us. Natural spellers see a word and remember it, an picture it and 'see' how it is spelled. A very useful trait when using a language as enigmatic as English.

Like Dave, I too use a spell check for everything I type.

Homonyms constantly trip me up. Not that I'm not familiar with all the rules, it is just that when typing quickly, I'll inevitably and precociously mix 'em up.

I always advise students to try to leave a document for 5 days before proof reading with 'fresh eyes'. This helps pick up homonyms and other little pitfalls which one's eye will skip over if proofreading straight after writing. Of course, the 5 day maxim is impractical in many circumstances (that's why editors are useful!)

I was recently embarrassed by 'practice' and 'practise', and still check the dictionary to sort the verb from the noun (or I just ask my wife, for whom English is a 2nd language, and who has much better grasp of its rules than do I).

[PeterW]

Michael,

Like you, my spelling is weak despite having earned my living by writing for more than 40 years and being awarded two gold pens as Business Press Writer of the Year. My typing is also splattered with literals, which is why I use a spell checker.

This usually picks up most errors but, as you point out, it won't pick up homonyms. When it is combined with a grammar checker you sometimes get some amusing “corrections” which give terribly clumsy sentences. The classic example is “This is the sort of pedantry I will not put up with” corrected to “This is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put”. If the checker insisted on formal English, “This is the sort of pedantry I will not tolerate” would have been better.

A lot depends on whether you are writing formal or informal English, sometimes called common speech. I would add a qualification substituting reasonably well educated speech for common speech.

My English professor was fond of reminding us that English, like any language, evolved from the spoken word long before it was written down. Grammarians, mainly those in the 19th century, classified and categorised it with the excellent object of eliminating ambiguities. Unfortunately, most of them were steeped in classical Latin and Greek and substituted words derived from those languages for perfectly adequate and unambiguous Anglo-Saxon words.

He said, and I agree with him, that the whole point of grammar is to produce clear, concise and unambiguous sentences. He said he would cheerfully start a sentence with a conjunction or end it with a preposition if doing so made the sentence less clumsy or the meaning more clear.

On the subject of informal and formal English a good example is the use of a preposition in place of a subordinate conjunction. A perfect example is the comment “It looks like they're enjoying themselves” in the thread about the cyanotypes. This is perfectly acceptable informal English, but strict grammarians would say it should be “It looks as if they're enjoying themselves”.

Someone said “Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men”. It has been attributed to Douglas Bader, but others say it was first used by Oscar Wilde. It's origin doesn't matter but it was recognised by those 19th century grammarians very few, if any, of whom attempted to correct the English of Shakespeare who “invented” approximately 2000 new English words and several new forms of sentence construction. Nor did they try to correct the King James Authorised Version of the Bible which has many sentences starting with a conjunction.

Here endeth the lesson. Sorry to ride my OT hobby horse, Randy. But you started the thread.

PeterW

[Randy]

We grow too soon old, and too late smart.

[PeterW]

Is that an old Germanic proverb from your neighbouring state of Pensylvania, Randy?

PeterW

[Randy]

My relatives from Pennsylvania, my Grandfather was Menonite.

[PeterW]

Randy,

I guessed it might be from the word order, but yell away!

Sorry about the mis-spelling of Pennsylvania

So much for my saying I always use a spell checker .

PeterW

[pompiere]

Nov 7, 2010 7:10:45 GMT -5 photax said:

Randy, sometimes I am in the need to take a look at an German-English translation program. This translation says definitely: lens, but there is also "lense" in connection with microscopes and other non-camera optical devices. Thank you for the "spelling checker" advice !

Ron, I made the break/brake mistake several times until Dave called attention to it. I learned English at school about 30 years ago and the only practice I had ( since joining this forum ) was corresponding to Italian and Eastern Europe people. Believe me, you would not understand a single word. Especially the Italian are used to insert as many "E" as possible

MIK

MIK,

I was referring to the ignorant Americans who should know better. Your knowledge of English is better than many of the people here in the US.

Ron