Medical forums/communities are full of typos too. "I have lose bowls." It shows how despite a high literacy rate in America and near 90% high school graduation rate, that basic writing proficiency, which many of us may take for granted, is still difficult for many. Unlike communities which may self-select for education or IQ, everyone gets sick, so you see the full tapestry or range of humanity. It can also explain why the college wage premium is so wide and persistent, as the skills gap between college grads and non-grads is still so stark (secondary-school grade inflation obviously does not help either).
I am not a native English speaker and so my language is lot easier based on pronouncing vs spelling, but here I would make a case to defend the English speakers. Whenever I'm in a rush or getting tired, trying to type my stream of consciousness as quickly as possible in English I have noticed I will start to make mistakes similar to this. But the issue is, since I'm frequently in a lot of rush to get many things done I won't have time to recheck everything, so I'll try to get my content out as soon as possible, figuring that people will still understand, and that's the main idea. I could choose to either provide more output, helping more people, or try to fix any grammar issues and help less people. But of course, I know what the correct spelling should be, it is just that frequently even to my surprise I have written it out a bit differently. But my point is, I wouldn't jump to judging people about this or making it be about education at all.
Arguably the problem is with the English language itself. Loose vs lose, and many other examples like they're, their, etc, the spelling and pronunciation don't match at all, intuitively and not logically. So every time brain has to do extra cycles to translate what you hear as your thoughts to special spelling rules.
English definitely has not only numerous footguns in spelling, but there are also the words that it seems nearly everyone thinks they know the meaning of, but do not. The two that leap to mind being nauseous¹ and bemused.²
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1. The New Oxford Dictionary has given up, and offers the common, but technically incorrect definition as its first definition, while the American Heritage Dictionary places that definition at number 2.
2. Here, the dictionaries are holding firm on the correct definition and do not acknowledge the common misapprehension of the word’s meaning.
Could you please let us know what the misunderstood meanings for those words are.
I legitimately only know one meaning for each of those and from a quick look in a dictionary my understanding of those words seem to stem from the original meaning.
As mentioned elsewhere, “nauseous” is often used where “nauseated” would be correct. Likewise, “bemused” is often used where “amused” is meant. A recent example (published in a national magazine):
”Everyone was confused and then bemused when the runner-up, who had written under a pseudonym, turned out to be…Graham Greene.“
I would also like to add “to sanction” being used to meant to punish, although according to the OED, this meaning (in legal contexts) dates to the early 19th century, but every time I encounter it, I always have to stop and puzzle over the context since the verb meaning of “sanction” also means to give approval to.
For the first, pedants like to point out that a statement like:
"I was feeling nauseous" is incorrect and should be "I was feeling nauseated", as nauseous is "causing nausea" but that's just pedantry and dictionaries now reflect that and now also list it as "affected by nausea".
It's pedantic yes, but more importantly it's prescriptive. It's taking as a given that language has a "correct" way to do things and pushing back on natural language evolution.
