Bad Spellers Of The World Untie!

A few days ago I wrote about Lonelygirl15 and how it had been discovered that she was not an angst ridden teenager, but a figment of some filmmakers imagination. Just today the New York Times published a great article about it that includes Lonelygirls real name (Jessica Rose), and where she’s from (New Zealand) etc.

In my article on September 8th though, I did something pretty typical, I misspelt something, namely Lonely, I actually spelt it Lonley, which still looks right to me :-) Unfortunately because Lonleygirl15 slips past the spellcheck, and i’m dyslexic it went live. As it turns out a lot of other people can’t spell lonely either, take a look at this:

lonelygirl stat

Yep, over a 1,000 people hit my site because they misspelled lonelygirl15, and that’s just since since September 8th. Not only does it indicate a lot of people are misspelling it, it also indicates how huge a story this is and how many people are interested in it.

In many ways I am an unlikely blogger because I suffered so badly at school due to my poor written work. Oral exams were almost always an A, and written projects always a C, so when I left school I vowed never to write again. Here I am now 3+ years into blogging, and I accept that mistakes will happen, but they don’t define my work, my world, or my perception of my self. Although I still have some very good friends that read my blog and just beg me to get an editor. I wonder, does the value of getting my thinking and ideas out there in the world outweigh the possibility that my credibility will be hurt when people discover that I am a total grammar and spelling dunce.

It’s awful to admit but on the occasion that i’ve been a participant in online dating, i’ve skipped over profiles that made heinous spelling errors. Am I a spellist of the worst kind…

4 Responses to “Bad Spellers Of The World Untie!”


  1. 1 john winsor

    Karl -

    I’m right there with you. I’ve had to resort to having someone edit my stuff. The blog, however, stays raw!

  2. 2 Asi

    Karl,

    LoL, that an amazing stat!

    1.I like the idea that the rawness of blogging allows some spelling mistakes - it allows us to be “profesionnal” bloggers even we (most of us) are not professional writers.

    2.I also had a stream of traffic from lonelygirl, through an old link in the blog that either a fan or the people behind her set up. (http://www.lonelygirl15.com/index.php?paged=4) the recent interest in the story has stirred up another wave of interest on which a few hundred visitors rode into my blog…

    good to be back

    A.

  3. 3 Natalie Ferguson

    Man, I’ve been there. I spelt the name of a company wrong, then went to correct it, and spelt it wrong again… and have had a lot fo traffic from it. Weird!
    The biggest spelling mistake I’ve noticed on Google is ‘accommodation’ and ‘accomodation’. The number of people who spell it the wrong way!

  4. 4 Don Myers

    Too funny. I work with many poor spllers in our business. I have to say that all the spell check software has not helped teach spellin or grammer. I did find a perfect shirt to sellebrate to state of spellin.

    check this shirt out. http://www.tshirtbordello.com/product_info.php?products_id=57

    Don

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