Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a puzzle that’s full of misspellings–only on purpose. Given a definition, you have to provide the common incorrect spelling. For example, how would you misspell the word defined by the following? “A confection made from...
McPaul lives in Montclair, New Jersey, but grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania, where several casual restaurants spelled the name of their establishment as dinor rather than diner, as in Stan’s Dinor. This spelling variant is largely limited to...
If you’ve ever sent a really important email and only later caught an embarrassing misspelling right there in the message header, there’s no longer any need to blame yourself. Blame Tutivillis, the medieval demon who introduced errors...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski is puzzling over theatrical productions from an alternate universe, where the titles of familiar plays include a scrambled word. For example, what’s the Shakespearean comedy in which Titania, Oberon, and all the fairies...
The intentional misspelling of business names to attract attention is sometimes known as sensational spelling or divergent spelling. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Sensational and Divergent Spelling” Remember our...
Andrea in San Diego, California, noticed a new restaurant with a name spelled in a curious way. Is there a term for this kind of intentional misspelling used in advertising? Onomastics is the study of naming, and a good source for information about...