To wind up the work week and provide some amusement for word nerds, here are a few errors spotted recently in print or online, some of them in places where someone really should have known better/proofread:

  • …wore a vile of her blood (vial)
  • balling her eyes out (bawling)
  • …his behaviour won’t phase people at all (faze)
  • …gain piece of mind (peace)
  • …these women will somehow reign them in (rein)
  • …the quaint essential picnic (quintessential)
  • …getting great clients…alludes many freelancers (eludes).

On the other hand, I also spotted some great invented words:

  • Microvisit: stopping by to talk to someone for 140 seconds or less (Urbandictionary.com)
  • Uppercase voice: to raise your voice or accentuate part of a sentence to stress significance, as you would when typing (Urbandictionary)
  • Zerotasking: to do nothing or have nothing to do (Buzzwhack.com).
  • Reinventing the flat tire: to make the same mistake made before.

Be careful out there, people! Spelling matters, and so does the right word.