3 ms·
sorry for the total aside, but this article reminded me of one of my deepest typo curiosities: why is the misspelling ratio -> ration so common? there are lots
by leetcrew 7y ago
sorry for the total aside, but this article reminded me of one of my deepest typo curiosities: why is the misspelling ratio -> ration so common? there are lots of words that can have a character erroneously appended and still be a correctly spelled (different) word. for example: most verbs in english (ride -> rides, bake -> baked, etc.). but for some reason, I see ratio -> ration all the time. 'n' isn't even that close to 'o' on the keyboard! it really jumps out when you subvocalize; the 'n' changes the pronunciation a lot.
- hanniabu 7y agoMaybe when they go to tap the space bar they end up clipping the 'n', just a guess.
- pacbard 7y agoI wonder if it has to do with the suffix -tion. Maybe muscle memory is triggered when the letters “tio” are typed at the end of the word and “n” is automatically added to the end of the word.
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoI suspect this. Also note that spell checking won't detect it; you won't get a helpful red underline to warn you.
- caymanjim 7y agoI'm fairly sure this is why I do it. I'm an average typist and above-average speller, but -ion spills out whenever I type it. There are almost no words ending in -io, and there are a lot ending in -ion. For some quick numbers, the OSPD database I have here has 1432 -ion words and only 47 -io words.
- shalmanese 7y agoI always type ratio as ration but never type radio as radion.
- FriendlyNormie 7y agoNot sure if it would be this, but autocomplete on some platforms sometimes happily replaces a correctly spelled word with a different word it incorrectly assumes makes more sense contextually, and you won’t notice it happened unless you’re paying close attention as you type.
- ianai 7y agoWish this wasn’t so abusive to the user at times.
- frosted-flakes 7y agoYou can sometimes make it less aggressive. I turn off autocomplete completely because my phone has a hardware keyboard, but I set it to medium for the software keyboard (in landscape mode or if I bring it up manually).
- colordrops 7y agoThe one I see all the time is defiantly in place of definitely.
- skolskoly 7y agoI do this all the time. When I was young I believe a saw a ratio-n typo in a math textbook, and for many years I believed that it was a synonym. Like a fraction, but a ration. Combine this with the -tion problem that others have mentioned and it definitely rolls off the fingers quite easily.