Authors and deliberately misspelled words

1. 90

   Urbane Chaosposted 14 years ago

   I came across something the other day that fascinated me.  I don't know why, maybe I'm just psycho, but I thought this idea was interesting.
   
   An article I was reading said that a lot of times authors that regularly publish online deliberately misspell words in order to protect their work.  In other words, it makes it easier for them to find plagiarized copies of articles that they wrote.
   
   I would think that by doing that it would take away from the readers experience.
   
   Has anyone ever heard of this before?  Does anyone actually do this?

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2. 74

   WriteAngledposted 14 years ago

   I've no idea if anyone does this, but if an article is full of misspelling I don't continue reading, because I assume it has been written by a dumb moron.

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   1. 90

      Urbane Chaosposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I agree completely.. Apparently, there are people out there that do this though.  I don't think it's all full of misspellings, but just a few here and there.  Still, if I'm reading an article and I come across even one misspelling then it causes me to stop and make sure I read it right..
      
      Then again, I'm picky about spelling and grammar use - so maybe it's just me..

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3. 72

   relacheposted 14 years ago

   I prefer my online work to have as few misspellings as are humanly possible.

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   1. 85

      rebekahELLEposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      i agree. i even go back and correct a misspelled word in a forum post..  I know some people do it on purpose for google searches for those who misspell words.

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4. 61

   GeneriqueMediaposted 14 years ago

   This isn't quite the revelation; Webster amid other dictionary publishers for example have been known to add in words that don't even exist for the same purposes.

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   1. 90

      Urbane Chaosposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Ya know, now that you mention that, I remember something similar they used to do with maps. 
      
      Instead of spending time to do their own research, some mapmakers would simply copy previous maps and incorporate them into their own. In order to prevent this, the companies that would spend a lot of time on research would create fake towns and put them on their maps.  If they found one of their competitors maps with a name of a town that they made up, they could go after them for a lot of money.
      
      I didn't know that Dictionaries did this as well.. I guess it's not as unusual as I first thought it was..

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