Monday, January 12, 2009

My Lifelong Misspelling

I'm usually a real spelling and grammar nazi. Well, today I was quite surprised to learn that I've been spelling a common word completely incorrectly for my entire life. You know the word, stationary, right?

Well, I thought I did too... it means not changing/moving, or it means the paper stuff for writing letters. And, that would be the problem. The word defined by the latter is not stationary, but stationery.

I am honestly surprised that this mistake has slipped through the cracks for as long as it has. I guess stationery is another one of those words with the -ery ending, like cemetery. Strange.

Just wanted to share. A friend of mine who is quite good with words apparently was not aware of the subtle spelling difference either. Maybe it's a common mistake.

2 comments:

Jimmy said...

I found out I was misspelling ridiculous for about 30 years about a year ago.

crestfallen7 said...

Hmmm...I've always been aware of the differences but sometimes got confused which one had the "a" and which one had the "e" - I'd imagine this is a common mistake for sure, though I'm surprised you hadn't heard of the two spellings.

Quantcast