Several years ago, in an intentionally un-named city, as an exec in one of the large ad agencies in town, I was asked to address a HS Extended Education (read "work study") business class on how ads are made.

The speech went fine.

Two days later, I received a thank you note from the teacher which read (honestly) "Us at Westfield would apprecieate thanks you for comming  to our class."  (all spellings as in note.)

THE TEACHER!!

HIGH SCHOOL!!

We also had kids bring in vocabulary lists that their teacher's had typed and photocopied.  One list had 40% of the words misspelled on it.  We didn't see the list at first.  The child asked for a dictionary, we gave it to him down and he looked up the words.  Then the child came to the desk and said he couldn't find some of the words.  That was because none of those words were in any dictionary.  These were not  typos either.  The words were just misspelled.

Aug 19, 2010 -- 3:56PM, Cesmom wrote:

Aug 18, 2010 -- 7:40PM, Girlchristian wrote:

Aug 18, 2010 -- 5:31PM, farragut wrote:

An interesting word misuse that I see often here on the edge of Dixie is "ideal" in place of "idea." I have not been able to decipher the thought processes of the miscreants, but chalk it up to ignorance.

Ooh, that one drives me nuts! Something that also drives me nuts isn't necessarily grammar or an usage error, it's when people say "warsh" instead of "wash." My mom does it and some other people I know that came from Michigan (and Colorado) say it, but it seriously makes my skin crawl much like nails on a chalkboard.

That made me laugh out loud.  My husband is from the south, and I have to give him a hard time about how he says some things...adding the 'R' sound to the end of a word seems to be a common theme for him..."warsh", "yeller", etc.  After 16 years, I still look at him like, did you really just say that? 

Yup, I've given up on saying, "Mom, there is no "r" in wash." It's pointless!