Incorrect and Misspelled Words

Something has been bothering me a lot lately. It's the horribly misspelled words I see in newspaper headlines and on TV news shows that run written messages on the bottom of the screen.

This morning, I heard a TV news reporter talking about a tragedy in a Kentucky town where four children were swept away by floodwaters. The man said at the end of his report, "This community is all shooken up over this tragedy."  I actually cringed when I heard him say shooken.

Last week, a sports writer in our local paper wrote an article about our basketball team's win of the previous day. The headline, in large bold letters, was Wildcats Ceased Control....  I looked at it and looked at it wondering what in the world he meant since they'd won the game. Then, it hit me that the proper word for that headline was Seized  I read the article and turned to an inside page to finish it, and there it was again, the same headline with the same incorrect choice of words.

The one error that I see over and over is the incorrect usage of your and you're. I have a hard time understanding why that one is missed so often. One is possessive and the other is a contraction of you are.

Another that I note frequently is losing and loosing. The first is to lose something, while the second is to loosen. They mean totally different things.

I'm well aware that many people don't have the love of words that I do, nor do they work in the writing world where words should be spelled and used properly. I can give those people a by, but I have a really hard time forgiving the ones who are writing the news or reporting it or sending their writing to editors. They, of all people, should be doing it correctly.

Do Journalism schools require grammar courses? If they don't, they should! Do people proofread their work? If they don't, they should.

There! I've had my moment to rant about something that irks me. Maybe it doesn't bother others as much as it does me. When you write a story, article, or poem, do yourself a favor. Use spellcheck and make sure you've done it the right way.