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I recently saw a real life crime mystery show where they proved a guy had written an email under someone elses address by noticing "Pittsburgh" was spelled with

I recently saw a real life crime mystery show where they proved a guy had written an email under someone elses address by noticing "Pittsburgh" was spelled without the 'h' in the email. He had murdered a girl and then sent emails to her family from her account saying she would be in 'Pittsburg'. Being from Pittsburgh the spelling immediately raised red flags for the family.

tzs 12y ago
I was watching a TV dramatization about the Steven Stayner kidnap case [1], and at one point the sheriff said something about dredging "the Bear Creek" to search for a body. I lived in that town from age 7 or 8 until I left for college (and was living there when Stayner disappeared), including a few years living near Bear Creek, and do not recall ever hearing anyone call it "the Bear Creek". It was just "Bear Creek". It immediately flagged the screenplay for me as having been written by someone not from there [2]. I thought this was kind of neat, because as far as I can tell there is no rule that determines what places get a "the" and which do not. It just seems to be arbitrary, and so someone just grabbing the name off a map has no way to know whether or not the locals put a "the" in front or not. I bet there are lots of little linguistic traps like this waiting to trip up people trying to pretend to be from somewhere they are not. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Steven_Stayner http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Steven_Stayner [2] It's possible, of course, that people from different parts of town referred to that creek differently.
- steveklabnik 12y ago
  > as far as I can tell there is no rule that determines what places get a "the" and which do not. I was recently looking up the difference between "the Ukraine" and "Ukraine," because people really prefer the second. It was said that 'the' is used when shortening the name: "the Bahamas" instead of "Kingdom of the Bahamas." "The Ukraine" comes from when it was a territory of the USSR, rather than a country in its own right, and when it gained independence, it was just "Ukraine." Some food for thought.

tzs 12y ago

I was watching a TV dramatization about the Steven Stayner kidnap case [1], and at one point the sheriff said something about dredging "the Bear Creek" to search for a body. I lived in that town from age 7 or 8 until I left for college (and was living there when Stayner disappeared), including a few years living near Bear Creek, and do not recall ever hearing anyone call it "the Bear Creek". It was just "Bear Creek". It immediately flagged the screenplay for me as having been written by someone not from there [2]. I thought this was kind of neat, because as far as I can tell there is no rule that determines what places get a "the" and which do not. It just seems to be arbitrary, and so someone just grabbing the name off a map has no way to know whether or not the locals put a "the" in front or not. I bet there are lots of little linguistic traps like this waiting to trip up people trying to pretend to be from somewhere they are not. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Steven_Stayner http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Steven_Stayner [2] It's possible, of course, that people from different parts of town referred to that creek differently.

steveklabnik 12y ago
> as far as I can tell there is no rule that determines what places get a "the" and which do not. I was recently looking up the difference between "the Ukraine" and "Ukraine," because people really prefer the second. It was said that 'the' is used when shortening the name: "the Bahamas" instead of "Kingdom of the Bahamas." "The Ukraine" comes from when it was a territory of the USSR, rather than a country in its own right, and when it gained independence, it was just "Ukraine." Some food for thought.