You know when people or businesses use improper spelling for effect?
eg. "Rogz for Dogz" or "Phantasy Star"
What is that called? I simply can't find the answer anywhere.
What is the word for intentionally incorrect spelling?
March 6th, 2006 by elledee
39 Responses to “What is the word for intentionally incorrect spelling?”
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Teaching English to Preschoolers with iPhones
We (i.e. the creators of Pain in The English) developed a series of iPhone apps to teach preschool kids how to recognize letters and words. (My wife developed the characters and I did the coding.) Our own 4-year old daughter has been enjoying them. They are now available on Apple's App Store. You can search for "bitskis" on your iPhone, or visit the official website at bitskis.com.
If you have kids and own an iPhone, please check it out. It's $2.
Slang? lol.
interesting question! i’m sure there must be a word for it. i suppose it is a kind of poetic license, i.e. deviation accepted in context – though something like "phantasy" is not really deviation, it’s invention. very interesting indeed!
let’s create a term for it. i propose "allowed mutation"!
p.s. what the hell is a rog?!
Wow, I can’t believe there isn’t already a word for this! The phenomenon’s common enough that you’d think there would be a word in, at least, marketing/branding jargon. But I can’t find anything like one.
"Allowed mutation" is fine, although such a common practice deserves something punchier. And it definitely isn’t slang; there’s such a thing as the "standard" spelling of slang terms, whereas this is non-standard spelling of both slang ("dogz"–at least, I *assume* this refers to "friends" and not "canines"; I’m not familiar with the expression "rogz for dogz") and non-slang ("phantasy") terms.
I think the most popular ones are “Nite” for night and “Lite” for light.
If the word does not exist, this is your opportunity to coin one, which could actually end up in dictionaries.
I would suggest something to the effect of “poetic spelling”
How about something like "zpelling" or "reezolving" or "signiphying" or something? You know, take the verb "to spell" or one of its synonyms and apply the very action to the word itself: if you zpell the word "spell" you get "zpell".
Oh, and Dyske, I probably wouldn’t count "nite" or "lite", because, sadly, most people who use them don’t do so intentionally.
Hi porsche,
But if you do a search on Google for "nite" or "lite", you will see that there are many company and product names that use those spellings. They have to be intentional, since they go through expensive trademark process.
I think it is because there are so many intentional usages that many people started assuming them as correct.
In fact, I’ve seen some products for kids that use "nite" and "lite". If you grow up seeing them in this manner, you would have to assume that they are correct. So, I would think it’s the other way around; it started with intentional usage and spread to unintentional usage.
John Peel (the late DJ and music god) called it Phonetic Spelling – so I concur with Dyske. It’s been around for years. JP used the term to describe the UK 70’s pop band Slade, who had a habit of using phonetic spelling in their song titles e.g. "Cum on, feel the noize"
actually, phonetic spelling is slightly different. phonetic spelling is when you spell things to make the proper pronunciation more obvious. things like spelling "choir" as "quire" and the like. i think a distinction is worth making between that and the use by advertisers of alternate spellings, though obviously the two could and probably do overlap a lot of the time.
I've been doing some recent research into this exact phenomenonenonena !
I've been looking through old volumes of "Dialect Notes" from the early 1920's, specifically articles about spelling variations in advertising written by Dr. Louise Pound. In her paper "Spelling-Manipulation and Present Day Advertising" (1923) she makes note that "manipulated spelling", as she calls it, has been around for some time, but had really taken off in the few years preceding the published article.
In the paper, she also calls it "re-spellings" or "spelling-perversions", but there doesn't seem to be a single term at that time for this orthographic effect in advertising.
One potential cause for the introduction of the technique in advertising she attributes to the influence of the spelling reform movement which was dying in popularity around this time.
The movement has a fascinating history in itself. The main justifications for the movement were twofold. One, it was believed that a simplified orthography would help children learn to read and write much quicker as they wouldn't be confronted with the crazy exceptions in the English language. And two, it would greatly reduce printing costs as there would be fewer type to set as the words would be shorter. Noah Webster and Benjamin Franklin were early supporters of spelling reform, and the movement reached it's zenith in 1906. Andrew Carnegie had donated $280,000 towards the cause, the National Education Association had adopted a revised list of 300 simplified words to slowly integrate into the education system and president Roosevelt felt so strongly about the system that he issued an order in Sept 1906 that the government printing office (then the largest printer in the world) start to use the system in all its publications. This last measure was too extreme for Congress which put pressue on Roosevelt to overturn the decision which he eventually did in Dec 1906. It was all downhill from there for any institutionalized form of spelling reform.
Under a simplified spelling scheme, words like "kissed" would become "kist", "surprise" would become "surprize" with a Z, "night" would be "nite" etc… These alternate spellings were being published all over the place in the early 1900's and advertisers were taking full advantage of these unique and memorable new orthographic forms. "Soft Sole Kosy Toes slippers", "Locktite Tobacco Pouch", "Electric Auto-Lite Company", "Nu-tone tonic", "Holsum Bread", "Az-Nu enameling hoods", "Klenzo tooth paste"…. the list is endless.
Dr. Pound has writen numerous articles on word-coinage most of which were published in early Dialect Notes volumes. I encourage everyone interested in this topic to have a look at them. One of them entitlted "The Kraze for K" is my favorite… If anyone is interested, i will be writing a few blog entries about Dr. Pound's work in this area, and also on the fascinating history of the spelling reform movement and it's effects on advertising on my blog (http://www.ayre.ca).
I propose: "Adsing".
More often people use the term "ads" to refer to the [actual spelling] word: advertisement.
I think unique spellings have less to do with fads or ignorance than the fact that they 1) draw attention to your product, 2) create a memorable brand name, 3) can be protected as a trademark, and 4) can create instant product recognition (Kleenex must have something to do with being clean).
It's called divergent spelling. At least the wikis call it that. =)
ref:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling
Colloquialisms…I do not know if this would be entirely applicable to this; however, it is pretty close. It may not be applied specifically to the spelling, but more the word itself. Good try? Perhaps..
At the risk of running off on a tangent, I believe that "Cum On Feel The Noize" was by Quiet Riot.
When kids misspell words it is called an invented spelling.
When freespellers intentionally misspel a word it is also called an invented spelling.
What is interesting about the invented spellings at http://www.freespeling.com is that the freespellings are almost always orthographically plausible spellings. They do not deviate that much from the accepted norms.
There are usually 5 ways to spell most English words. In fact there are usually 4 ways to spell most phonemes. Someone reading these plausible misspellings would have no difficulty deciphering them.
Such freespelling was the norm before 1755 when the Johnson dicitonary spelling began to be considered the one way that a word should be spelled.
These high frequency spellings account for 85% of the spellings in dictionary. To see the most likely way that a phoneme is spelled, go to http://www.foolswisdom.ocm/~sbett/spelling-patterns.htm
It takes only 3-7 months for a child to learn how to spell in most languages. It probably doesn't take much longer to learn how to spell the five most common ways in English.
What is difficult is to remember which of the plausible spellings is "correct". Which spelling matches the lexical spelling.
you guys r really dorky talking about the spelling of stuff. i was looking for misspelled words to do a homework assignment and found this instead.
you guys should find something else to do with your lives.
you guys must be old
actually im also trying to find misspelled words for an advertisment project..
and i agree you guys must have no life.
espacially joe.
get laid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet
What is the word for intentionally incorrect spelling?
Invented spelling CHRAIN for *train
not always intentionally incorrect
Phonetic Spelling KUM for *come
Plausible Spelling ACOMODATE for *accommodate
Reformed Spelling: ACOMMODATE for *accommodate
Poetic spelling TYGR for *tiger
Variant spelling THRU for *through, THO, ENUF
Spelling Manipulation PHISH for *fish
Mutation
Texting (abbreviation) GR8 for *great
Neologism (attempted) BYTE
Trade Names KODAK KLEENEX
Archaic Spellings: YE OLDE for *the old, AULD
Ye or þe is an approximation of the old AS letter "thorn"
A variant spelling is in the dictionary so it is not
"incorrect" In fact over half of the 300 respellings recommended by Pres. Roosevelt and the SSB were variant spellings. They were just not the most popular correct spelling.
The approval of the USGPO style guide was never an executive order. Congress refused to pay for documents containing spellings that were not in the dictionary. Most of them were in Funk & Wagnalls Dictionary so altho Roosevelt withdrew his support after the editorials in the Hearst controlled papers, I am not sure how much this altered the USGPO house style.
It did have a major impact on spelling reform and usage.
Most of the 30,000 teachers and educators who had agreed to use the more phonetic spellings reneged.
There are about 2000 variant spellings in English dictionaries. thru is a variant spelling of through. It is not considered to be the preferred spelling altho it probably should be since it is shorter, more phonemic, and easier to spell. (see http://www.amereicanliteracycouncil.com)
*lite for light, popular in beer commercials, was a variant spelling before 1755 and it is probably still a recognized variant in some dictionaries.
It is not used that much outside of the ad world and SMS texting. You can check the web freqeuncy at
http://spellweb.com/dualwebber.php
More on spelling in general at http://www.spellingsociety.org
Does it need a name? How about "suedoe" spelling. "Suedoe" is an intentional mispelling of "pseudo" which means false.
I've heard it referred to as "divergent spelling," as someone else pointed out above.
Also, Slade did "Cum on, feel the noize," originally and Quiet Riot covered it on their Metal Health album. Not to mention umpteen others including Oasis of all people who did an awful cover of it about 10 years ago.
Divergent, variant, invented, creative, phonetic, poetic, text abbreviations, archaic, phenomes, manipulated spellings, re-spellings–wow. Who knew there were so many appellations for deliberate misspellings?
So what do you call deliberate mispronunciation by word freaks? Hmm…maybe I should start another thread for that.
I had to chuckle over the "geek" kids' posts (whom I actually suspect to be only 1 kid), who don't seem to appreciate wordplay. I guess they aren't old enough to know that surfing PITE is a favorite post-coital activity for word-loving non-smokers!
Jeez, Patricia ~ what is it your love-making that leads you to PITE afterward? Too muh verbalization? Or not enough? ;->
Wow, reached you guys by accident, and I love this site!
Was looking for the etymology of the word "hi", but I'm not still happy with what I have found so far.
I began to laugh when I read Patricia's reaction and comment about geek 1 and 2 (we all know there's only one child with multiple, yet identical personalities).
"They" would be scratching their heads if they read the "post-coital" comment. See…it pays to know a few words geek.
I think the point about words being unintentionally spelled has it's merit. I belong to one board that uses the Wiki way to collect information and there are a high amount of entries that spell government without the n. I had seen it so much I started to doubt myself and had to look it up in a dictionary.
I understand the points made about intentional mis-spellings. It seems a little unfortunate for those that spell incorrectly on a constant basis without even knowing it. I wonder what it says about our education system. I have a close relative that is not from this country and he spells better than most people I run into on the streets of this country on a daily basis.
why the hell are yall leaving these responses when people actually need answers.?!
yall actually need lives
is the answer purposely?
A friend sent me the link to this interesting site when I recently posed the same question myself. Having read the discussion and considered the various suggestions, how about “SPERV”? Being a diminutive of “spelling perversion”?
Hmmm. This is all very interesting to me, but I am looking for the word for intentional misuse of a word, not intentional misspelling. Can anyone help me? My example would be from when my friend and I would be surprised by something, one of us would say, “I think I’m having a cataract,” instead of “I think I’m having a cardiac [arrest]” or “I think I’m having a coronary.” We got started with our “mis-phrase” years ago, and I only now am wondering what this linguistic occurrence is.
Thanks!
Ian, I don’t think there’s a word for that, but I would call it a “misnym.”
METAPLASMUS I think this is the work you are all looking for :) Hope this helps
I meant to say word
To Ian, what about “malapropism”? It’s not exactly what you are looking for, but it’s close. It describes the word misuse exactly, but does not require the misuse to be intentional. Of course, you could just say, “intentional malapropism”. I have a friend who does this both often and unintentionally. My favorite was his description of a philanthropist as a philanderer.
The only problem with using “malapropism” is that they must sound similar. If all of Ian and his friend’s words sound similar to the original, then the puzzle is solved. If, however, the word replacement is arbitrary, then that won’t do at all.
Actually, Name, a malapropism is a ridiculous, absurd, or humorous, misuse of a word. It isn’t necessarily similar in sound, but usually is. As such, I would say it is exactly what Ian has described, except, of course, for the intentional part. I’m not sure what you’re describing. If the word replacement is purely arbitrary, say, “I think I’m having a lamppost.” instead of “I think I’m having a coronary.” then I guess it wouldn’t be a malapropism. It certainly wouldn’t be funny or ridiculous. It also wouldn’t be what Ian was describing. It would just be a pointless non sequitur.
Well, to be fair, I’d never heard of “malapropism” before. I should also allow that Wikipedia, which was my source, isn’t necessarily accurate. I also usually look for alternative sources to see if they match up with Wikipedia. I somehow missed doing that this time.
So, according to Wikipedia, the words must sound similar with no concern over whether it’s intended. Ian’s example does sound similar, but that doesn’t mean that all of he and his friend’s replacements do. He didn’t state that they all do.
Having corrected my previous failure to examine other sources, it seems that it’s common that they sound similar, not required. It also does not seem to be required that it be intentional, especially considering the source of the word: “Mrs. Malaprop.”
In short, my bad.
However, in light of a more in-depth search, I have to disagree on the arbitrary replacement. I would consider the above example of “I’m having a ‘lamppost,’” rather than a “coronary,” to be a malapropism as well.
“I’m having a lamppost!” Actually, I think this is hilarious! I need to suggest this to my friend as a replacement for “cataract.” Non-sequiturs have always been fun to me. I like nachos.
Porsche, I enjoy all your posts, by the way.
I couldn’t find Victoria’s suggested “metaplasmus” in my dictionary, so I hereby dub the metaplasmus to be any unidentified animal that looks kinda like a bird/duck/beaver/anteater. Or maybe that’s a metaplatypus. I don’t know.
Aaaaanyhoo, I think I’m gonna go with “intentional malapropism.” Thanks to all who posted!