Defiant Language

The way I see it, there are two types of people in the world. Those who speak English, and those who don't.

Hang on. Allow me to rephrase that slightly.

There are those that use the English Language as their primary method of communication, whether by writing, speaking, or sign language.

And there are those that use a different language. We have no use for these people at the current time. I am only interested in the English Language users.

We can divide the remaining group up into the three categories I previously mentioned. Those that speak English, those that sign English, and those that write English.

I'm only interested in the ones that write.

Of the English Language writers, we can then divide this group into two sub-groups. Those that can spell...

...and those that cannot.

The good spellers, we have no use for at the current time.

The bad or non-spellers, we can further divide into sub-groups.

• Those that cannot spell no matter what, and have given up trying, finally accepting the fact that spelling is completely beyond their scope. We have no use for these people at the moment. (NB: I am not in any way dissing these people - there are many people out there who, while extremely smart, have simply no room left in their ginormous brains for something as trivial and unimportant as spelling a word correctly. I have at least two friends who fall into this category and are successful, clever guys, despite the fact that they can't spell for toffee. They're also both left-handed and their handwriting is atrocious, so maybe that's the issue. I remember one of them writing the word masochism and spelling it as if it were the name of a New England town. Y'know - Narragansett, Naugatuck, and Massakissum.)
• Those that can kinda spell most of the time but make obvious mistakes like tommorow, embarassment, accidently etc. We have no use for these people. (again, not a put-down, just that we aren't dealing with you guys right now.)
• Those that cannot spell but think they can. These are the people we are concerned with.

The people that think they can spell but actually have no business trying to are all over the interwebs. I'm not talking about the deliberate misspellings like teh or pwned, or the shortening of words like U - those I can live with.

I'm talking about confidently launching into a word like definitely and putting an A in it instead of the second I.

Definately.

 Even that I can sort of cope with.

But then there's another sub-group. The people who believe that definately  doesn't need that second E.

So then it becomes DEFINATLY.

Ugh.

However, there is a moment when sometimes, just sometimes, this word gets mistyped.

We've all done it. Your mind is running so fast that your fingers can't keep up, and you accidentally forget which order the letters come in, or your brain doesn't send the message to your fingers fast enough, and you end up transposing two of the letters.

In this instance, sometimes the word DEFINATLY becomes DEFIANTLY.

Hurray! You've managed to spell a word correctly! The wrong word, but...

This in turn can lead to some interesting Facebook status updates.

For example, say you are definitely angry with someone (let's call him Bob for the sake of argument) and wish to express this sentiment on your Facebook wall.

"I am defiantly mad at Bob."

Wow. Strong words. You're not only angry, but defiantly so. Good stuff, get it off your chest.

But say you have been coveting that pretty blue dress in the window of M & Co. for a while and have been waiting for payday to roll around so you can go in and make a purchase...

"Woo Hoo! Payday tomoz! I am defiantly gunna buy that blue dress at M&Co.!"

Paints an interesting picture.

*Strides forcefully up to counter, dress in hand*

"I'm buying this dress! Don't even try not to sell it to me! I'm defiantly buying it!"