Spelling

[cesium62]

"A bit something on flawed data to not loose the bigger picture as to progress of melting this early in the season."

I hate it when the big pictures get loose.

[magnamentis]

funny you speak out my thoughts. while focusing on the data that are not flawed the development is quite interesting and awesome. i think there will be a few ahh...s and ohhh....s once the graphs are corrected LOL

[DoomInTheUK]

There's nothing like a bit of miss-spelling or grammatical oddities to bring out the pedant in us.
They're/their/there as well as too/ to/two are frustratingly common, but my personal pet hate is missing the NOT out of "I could care less".

[seaicesailor]

Please be patient
Non native English speakes like myself surely plague their comments with grammar and spelling errors (isn't it? ). And to add insult to injury the damn phone auto corrector doesnt (oops) help.

[Andreas T]

Being told I got something wrong isn't bad, if I do feel bad about it, it makes me try harder to get things right. I have pointed out maximum, phenomenon (singular) maxima, phenomena (plural) before, so I can't complain about being corrected myself. Sometimes I think being not a native speaker helps because I have to work more at understanding the words I use. Some of the natives I know have worse spelling than me.

[DoomInTheUK]

As a native speaker, I can attest that English can be hard enough - all of you non native speakers have my utmost respect.

Oh - and mistreating less/fewer makes me twitch too.

[ktonine]

Spelling and/or grammar mistakes in a place where many non-native speakers interact are to be expected.  An adept reader hardly even notices them except when they lead to unintended humor or when none of the reasonable interpretations seem appropriate. I always appreciate the humor

The rising use of phones to write comments also leads to cryptic responses from even native speakers.

And there are always the typing idiosyncrasies of individuals.  My fingers type whichever version of 'there,' their,' and 'they're' they feel like typing. Seriously, it's random.  Unless I slowdown and take conscious control of the typing I will be surprised - and usually annoyed - by the result.  My fingers also dispute the spelling of 'president.'  Again, unless I take conscious control it will inevitably result in 'presidient.'  Most of us know our limitations in this regard, but even when we scan a post for mistakes we're not perfect copy editors.  Some errors will slip through.

Pedants should also be aware of Skitt's law, Hartmann's Law, or McKean's Law.

[Meirion]

(1) Huge respect to all the non-first-language English speakers who post comments here which help me learn more about the state of Arctic sea ice.

(2) If one of the grammar pedants starts going on about fewer/less remind them that the rule was just a Georgian affectation like breeches and powdered wigs and deserves to go the way of all such. If you go back further to King Alfred you'll find he would have stood with me in the "8 items or less" queue in the supermarket rather than trying to get them to change the sign.

[Tor Bejnar]

... but my personal pet hate is missing the NOT out of "I could care less".

I enjoy the humor that the writer unwittingly could care less by not writing anything in the first place.

When I "can't stand" an obvious error that is more than grammatical (like seeing "up" when "down" was meant), I sometimes send a personal message to the author suggesting a correction. [See "My Messages - Send a message" in the ribbon at the top.] My wife thinks I'm pedantic when I do this, so I often try to tough it (my discomfort) out.

I have noticed errors of my own after I posted, and was glad for the "Modify" option. 

[johnm33]

As an English only pedant I admire and respect lucidity especially from not native speakers. So whilst I struggle to keep to my own standards, which come from reading rather than writing, if something is intelligible thats enough, and if not it's down to me, that's the price of being the lingua franca. That said has/as hooks me every time.

[plg]

Spelling and/or grammar mistakes in a place where many non-native speakers interact are to be expected.  An adept reader hardly even notices them except when they lead to unintended humor or when none of the reasonable interpretations seem appropriate. I always appreciate the humor

The rising use of phones to write comments also leads to cryptic responses from even native speakers.

And there are always the typing idiosyncrasies of individuals.  My fingers type whichever version of 'there,' their,' and 'they're' they feel like typing. Seriously, it's random.  Unless I slowdown and take conscious control of the typing I will be surprised - and usually annoyed - by the result.  My fingers also dispute the spelling of 'president.'  Again, unless I take conscious control it will inevitably result in 'presidient.'  Most of us know our limitations in this regard, but even when we scan a post for mistakes we're not perfect copy editors.  Some errors will slip through.

Pedants should also be aware of Skitt's law, Hartmann's Law, or McKean's Law.

I think you meant Muphry's_law  Mostly because the inevitable miscorrections that will ensue. Hilarious.

[OT: I always wondered how Joda's word order is dubbed into German. He would sound perfectly normal, not?]

BTW, I am not a "native" speaker, whatever that means. I was taught English as my third language when I was 5...

[cesium62]

Spelling and/or grammar mistakes in a place where many non-native speakers interact are to be expected.  An adept reader hardly even notices them except when they lead to unintended humor or when none of the reasonable interpretations seem appropriate. I always appreciate the humor

The rising use of phones to write comments also leads to cryptic responses from even native speakers.

And there are always the typing idiosyncrasies of individuals.  My fingers type whichever version of 'there,' their,' and 'they're' they feel like typing. Seriously, it's random.  Unless I slowdown and take conscious control of the typing I will be surprised - and usually annoyed - by the result.  My fingers also dispute the spelling of 'president.'  Again, unless I take conscious control it will inevitably result in 'presidient.'  Most of us know our limitations in this regard, but even when we scan a post for mistakes we're not perfect copy editors.  Some errors will slip through.

Pedants should also be aware of Skitt's law, Hartmann's Law, or McKean's Law.

However, "loose" is also commonly used by native english speakers when they mean "lose".  And unlike their, they're, and there, "loose" and "lose" are not homonyms.  "loose" and "lose" are not long words where we might get lost like "president".   There is no good reason that "lose" should be misspelled as "loose".   We don't write "roose" or "ruse" when we mean "rose".  We don't write "goose" when we mean "goes".  We don't write "truce" when we mean "toes".

The three Laws above don't apply here much.  The point is not  that people sometimes make grammar mistakes.  The point is that *this* mistake should not be made.

[Buddy]

Eye jest donut c wut the deel iz wit horrable speling

[magnamentis]

i'm sure you mean what i just thought this morning LOL

[DoomInTheUK]

Confusing precedent and president or Pacific for specific seems to happen a lot, but more in spoken English than in written, but it still makes me chuckle.

Oddly enough, I don't usually have a problem with the use or misuse of an apostrophe.

You can add macaroni cheese to the list of things I don't like.

[Tor Bejnar]

...
You can add macaroni cheese to the list of things I don't like.

Is it because of how it's spelled or were you being off topic?
 

[DoomInTheUK]

Both.

Hateful stuff all round.

[notjonathon]

You must be thinking of the pre-made stuff.

[DoomInTheUK]

It always seems the same to me - maybe I was frightened with it as a kid.

It always tastes of vomit, oh and meringue more often than not tastes of wet dog. Maybe I should take up smoking to kill off my taste buds.

[Laurent]

An Italian man story :
hum, hum.

[oren]

What about the anomaly of using anomoly as the new buzzword around here? I see it quite a lot recently.

[Neven]

Oh yes, that one has been annoying me for years!

[DoomInTheUK]

So how long do we have to wait before the anomaly becomes normality?

Will we just have to put up with anomalous anomalies up to and beyond the point where all the ice is gone?

[SCYetti]

I wish to speak on behalf misspellers here and elsewhere. If you haven't done so examine my screen name and you will realise. I speak with authority on misspelling.Spelling is really no big deal:
 
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Or rather...
According to a researcher (sic) at Cambridge University, it doesn't matter in what order the letters in a word are, the only important thing is that the first and last letter be at the right place. The rest can be a total mess and you can still read it without problem. This is because the human mind does not read every letter by itself but the word as a whole.
http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/

[Iceismylife]

Eye jest donut c wut the deel iz wit horrable speling

Eye Dew

[Iceismylife]

Oh yes, that one has been annoying me for years!

does that go back to the plystasceen?

[Andreas T]

Spelling also matters when you try to look word up on wikipedia etc:
compare
polynya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynya
with
pollyanna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollyanna

when I studied engineering in Germany many years ago a friend read the footnote pointing to data listed in the appendix and was very surprised when he looked the unfamiliar word up in a dictionary and that was without any spelling problems.