Category: Spelling

Okay, I’ve been seeing this one a lot lately, and it’s really starting to get to me.

People: “Would of” is not a thing. Don’t type that.

The correct phrasing is “would have.” The contraction is “would’ve” and when you say it out lot, it does sound a little like “would of,” but that’s so, so wrong. And it makes me think that you are incredibly stupid because when you type “would of” instead of one of the proper forms, technically, your sentence no longer means anything. Or, it means something that doesn’t make any sense.

See, “have” and “of” have very different meanings. “Have” is possessive in favour of the subject, most often describing a missed opportunity of some description. “Of” in this case, would make it to mean that the “would” belongs to the object. See the following improper sentence:

Paul would of eaten the cake.

You can sort of make this sentence meaningful by adding a comma, turning “would” into a title, and making “eaten the cake” the name of a place.

Paul, Would of Eatenthecake.

And now it’s stupid. See what you did? Stop being stupid! Write it this way:

Paul would have eaten the cake.

Or this way:

Paul would’ve eaten the cake.

And it will be correct. And you will no longer be stupid. I feel like I shouldn’t have to add this, but the same rule goes for “should have” and “could have.” Stop putting “of” where it doesn’t belong! ARGH!

Fun fact: The “would have [verb]” construction is, in the English language, known as the Conditional Perfect. This is mostly irrelevant to everything.

Good morning, Internet!

I see you’re back to learn more about spelling with your old pal, Ryan. It makes me very happy to see you here, because it makes me very sad to see easy words misspelled.

This lesson will focus on a set of words that are are similar in appearance, but are very different in application: Breath and Breathe.

Breath is a fairly easy word to spell, but it’s very common for people to forget that they need to add an E on the end when they want to use the word breathe instead. I see the word breath used instead of breathe all the time, so I’m going to teach you the difference between the two words.

The word breath is a noun. Breath is the air that is inhaled and exhaled during the act of respiration. Breathe, on the other had, is the verb for that action.

For example: Morning breath is gross, so brush your teeth before you breathe on anyone.

If for some reason you can’t remember which one is which, just remember that while the second E in breathe is silent, the first E makes a longer sound than the one in breath. If you hear the E as “eh” then you only have the one E. If it makes an “ee” sound, you’ll have to tack a second E on the end.

Hopefully you’ll take this lesson to heart. Already, getting this pet peeve off my chest is helping me breathe much easier.

Thanks for sitting in on today’s lesson, and be sure to tune in later for more spelling tips!

Good morning, Internet

I’ve noticed that quite often, you’re terrible at spelling. Sometimes I’m bad at spelling too, but 99% of the time, that’s because I typed too quickly and/or didn’t proofread my work. I’m thinking that you just don’t have a hot clue when it comes to putting letters in the correct order.

So every once in a while, I’m going to go over a word that you get wrong very consistently, because they bother me so very much.

The first word I want to teach you is Definitely. This is a tough one, and I’ve come to the conclusion that not a single person in the world besides myself knows how to spell it correctly.

I’ve seen it misspelt in many different ways, but never the correct one. Definately, definetly, defiantly, dafinetely. I could list examples until the cows come home, but I feel like it would be more productive to simply give you a tip on how to get it right.

Definitely has a lot of consonants. If you sound the word out, they’re all pretty easy to pick out and get correctly. It’s the vowels that are usually the focal point of misspellings. Here’s the trick: there are four vowels in definitely; in order they are E, I, I, and E (we’ll consider that pesky Y a consonant for now). If you look closely, you’ll notice that the consonants form a palindrome!

So all you have to do to get definitely right is to remember that short sequence of vowels, E-I-I-E, and then sound out the consonants all around them. It’s helpful to note that the word is also built in a consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel pattern (and for this purpose, Y is a vowel).

Alright, Internet, you’re now equipped to go out there and spell definitely correctly! Go out onto the message boards and YouTube comments and Twitter to wow your friends with your fancy new spelling ability!

I hope you’ve enjoyed your lesson as much as I did teaching it. Tune in later for more helpful spelling tricks!