This has been really getting on my nerves lately...

Published

Okay, it's HIPAA, not HIPPA. And, it's JCAHO, not JACHO. And, another one that's been getting to me lately: it's spelled "definitely", not "definately".

Thanks for listenting. Okay. Much better now...

No, it's not slanguage. :uhoh21: Perish the thought. :uhoh3: It's misspelling.

Occurrence (not occurrance).

We have really got to teach people how to spell. The glaring mistakes we make here really need to stop. Maybe if we all remind people nicely...

I'm not sure if you were being facetious above, but it's probably not a bad idea for those of us who are error-prone to maybe read what they are writing a little more closely. Not only do potential student nurses read these forums (like myself) but "outsiders" do as well. It's sad, but those few who post and look like uneducated idiots reflect poorly on all of us. You can make the most profound statement, but if it is spelled poorly or your grammar is awful, many people will not take you seriously.

I don't want to come off as an intellectual snob, but occasionally, as I read these forums, I think, "Do I really want to work with some of these people who sound like they haven't made it through third grade, much less nursing school?" I know many barely educated people who are very nice, but I don't necessarily want to work side-by-side with them in a life-saving profession!

I noticed one poster, in particular, in another thread who said she was having a hard time finding a job and couldn't understand why. I can't believe she made it through elementary school, much less passed the admissions test to get into nursing school! She consistently spelled the same words wrong... and not just a simple typo or a similar sounding word, she spelled a completely different non-word exactly the same way every time. If I were an HR person and she came into my office to submit an application or CV, she might be the most skilled nurse alive, but I would circular file her application before the door hit her behind on the way out! I wouldn't want an illiterate who can't speak (as evidenced by her spelling of non-words) representing my hospital.

OK, I sound like a jerk now... sorry. I'm really not! It's just one of my pet peeves that goes beyond annoyance. I probably made sixteen errors myself in this post! Isn't that the way it always goes? We piont out othres mispelings and typ0s and while doing so mkae our own? ;)

If it's worth posting at all, it's worth spending 15 seconds spell-checking it!

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The above works when writing about things people say, but sometimes it is better to put the punctuation outside of the quotation marks. I found this out in a former life as a technical consultant. If we didn't write things exactly as we intended the user to type them in, they'd come back to us. For example, we'd have to write:

Type your password in as "abcd!s7d", without the quotes. If we didn't specify "without the quotes" then people would type them in. Or if we didn't put the quotes there, they would type the comma (or period, if it ended a sentence) almost every time!

Eventually I threw proper punctuation in the toilet and just typed the password at the end of the sentence and skipped both the period and the quotes.

Not exactly nursing related, but related to the grammar/spelling police thread!

hmm...this is a very good point.

tee hee

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Prolly is a word people use, not just for shorthand on the internet.

How about "where you at?"

or "sholl is......" for "sure is".

They say "aks" for "ask" around here too.

I'm not really bothered by local or regional sayings and phrases in casual convernsations, or on the internet. I'm easy going that way. Prolly shouldn't post here, since it don't bother me none. I'm fiddin' to go to another thread, but I ain't sure where I at.

Actually I am bothered when people post in text message talk as if we charged here by the letter. "u" "ur", etc. bug me. I bet you anything when kids are turning in papers in grade school they are putting in "u" and "ur" thinking that is an o.k. way to write. LOL :)

The "u" and "ur" bugs me too. How lazy can a person be to not just type the extra couple of letters. For some reason, it also bugs me when people put "et" and "noc" in casual conversation posts. It looks weird and doesn't read very well. "I went to work last noc, et this happened..." Come on, "and" and "night" will work just fine and they are no more trouble to type out. I wonder if those people speak that way. That would really be weird.

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Specializes in Day Surgery/Infusion/ED.

I am tempted to ask people who write "et" instead of "and" if they say "et" instead of "and" when they speak. How much time do you save by writing two words instead of three? If the intention is to make the writer look smarter, sorry, it doesn't.

Personally, I am appalled when people write "appaulled."

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Specializes in 5 yrs OR, ASU Pre-Op 2 yr. ER.
I'm not sure if you were being facetious above, but it's probably not a bad idea for those of us who are error-prone to maybe read what they are writing a little more closely. Not only do potential student nurses read these forums (like myself) but "outsiders" do as well. It's sad, but those few who post and look like uneducated idiots reflect poorly on all of us. You can make the most profound statement, but if it is spelled poorly or your grammar is awful, many people will not take you seriously.

I don't want to come off as an intellectual snob, but occasionally, as I read these forums, I think, "Do I really want to work with some of these people who sound like they haven't made it through third grade, much less nursing school?" I know many barely educated people who are very nice, but I don't necessarily want to work side-by-side with them in a life-saving profession!

I noticed one poster, in particular, in another thread who said she was having a hard time finding a job and couldn't understand why. I can't believe she made it through elementary school, much less passed the admissions test to get into nursing school! She consistently spelled the same words wrong... and not just a simple typo or a similar sounding word, she spelled a completely different non-word exactly the same way every time. If I were an HR person and she came into my office to submit an application or CV, she might be the most skilled nurse alive, but I would circular file her application before the door hit her behind on the way out! I wouldn't want an illiterate who can't speak (as evidenced by her spelling of non-words) representing my hospital.

OK, I sound like a jerk now... sorry. I'm really not! It's just one of my pet peeves that goes beyond annoyance. I probably made sixteen errors myself in this post! Isn't that the way it always goes? We piont out othres mispelings and typ0s and while doing so mkae our own? ;)

If it's worth posting at all, it's worth spending 15 seconds spell-checking it!

There were 4 spelling errors found in this quoted post, actually, when i hit the spellcheck for my own post. In all honesty, you post did come off a bit snobbish.

I mean, that's what gets me when people are so particular about grammar and spelling at this board. Either the post complaining about it has its own misspelled words, or my personal favorite, the one who gripes about grammar, then spells it as grammer.:)

A few things that might be a good idea to keep in mind when reading the posts here:

  1. Some people just got home from work
  2. Some people have been awake for 20 hours
  3. Some people just got finished with their 4th 12-16 hour shift that week
  4. The way people type or spell on here is not necessarily a reflection of being an "uneducated idiot." This board isn't formal on that, otherwise there'd be quite a few people banned for it. Who's to say that the person who isn't up to par on perfect spelling and typing here, isn't up to par on professional typing and nursing? It's not for me to judge. I know from numerous sources that i am a damn good nurse, but i know that doesn't make me perfect person.
  5. If my spelling and grammar issues (and i know i have them) bother someone THAT much, all they have to do is click on my username, which take them to my profile, and click on the option to add me to their ignore list. Simple as that.

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okay, these are my pet peeves. it doesn't get to me when i read it but when someone says it, oh my gosh, it's like nails grating on a chalkboard.

umbil-eye-cus (accent on the third syllable) instead of umbilicus

"reversible isolation" - we have a night nurse that says this - it is reverse isolation, guys, please

"sonometers" instead of centimeters - this one really gets to me. especially one time when a night nurse was giving me report and told me my patient with a draining abscess had a "five sonometer opening." now i'd had her the previous day and the opening was about a half a centimeter, so i said, "what??!! yesterday it was barely this big" and held my fingers a half a centimeter apart. she said, "yes, that's how big it is, i thought that was five sonometers." but then again, that was also the nurse who didn't check o2 sats on the two babies with rsv all night because she didn't think the o2 sat machine should be going into contaminated rooms. :angryfire

you know, it's funny, but i was taught umbil-eye-cus in school by my mother/child professor. and she was pretty reliable, i thought. i never would have pronounced it that way if it hadn't been for her, since the more familiar term "umbilical cord" doesn't stress the "eye." oh here, i looked online, it can be pronounced both ways: um-bil-i-cus (ŭm-bĭl'ĭ-kəs, ŭm'bə-lī'kəs)

as far as "sonometers" goes, i have found that some people say "sontometers,"--it's an accent. i had a teacher from barbados who said this, and some nurses i've worked with from haiti say this too. but to me it sounds totally normal, it just works with the whole accent.

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Specializes in Day Surgery/Infusion/ED.

It's one thing to make an innocent typo, quite another to make egregious violations of grammar and spelling. I was reading a post earlier today and came across a word so mysterious that it left me scratching my head. I finally figured out that the poster had spelled the word phonetically--too bad the spelling was not even remotely close to the actual spelling.

Sad to say, there are people who post here who could use a brush up on basic grammar. I include myself among them.

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Specializes in NICU.

When my grandma was growing up, if she was going to rinse something off she said, "I'm going to wrench that off." She didn't even know rinse was a word until the age of 12 or so.

I'm not sure where people are from that say this but I hear it sometimes and I just don't get it.....adding an R to a word that ends in an A. For instance the name Diana being said as Dianer. If you are going to call your child Dianer, why name her Diana? I just think it's kind of funny. It doesn't bother me, it's just funny.

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Specializes in Happily semi-retired; excited for the whole whammy.

I agree about all 3, but in particular HIPAA and JCAHO.

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Specializes in 5 yrs OR, ASU Pre-Op 2 yr. ER.
When my grandma was growing up, if she was going to rinse something off she said, "I'm going to wrench that off." She didn't even know rinse was a word until the age of 12 or so.

I'm not sure where people are from that say this but I hear it sometimes and I just don't get it.....adding an R to a word that ends in an A. For instance the name Diana being said as Dianer. If you are going to call your child Dianer, why name her Diana? I just think it's kind of funny. It doesn't bother me, it's just funny.

The British accent is where i've always heard the "er." Like when people talked about Princess Diana on TV, they would say "Dianer."

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Specializes in Day Surgery/Infusion/ED.

Some people from the New England states do that also. JFK used to say "Cuber."

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