{"id":97,"date":"2008-08-05T21:08:37","date_gmt":"2008-08-05T21:08:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/?p=97"},"modified":"2025-04-14T16:32:55","modified_gmt":"2025-04-14T21:32:55","slug":"are-you-the-one-in-five-who-do-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/verbs\/are-you-the-one-in-five-who-do-this\/","title":{"rendered":"Are You Among the Many Who Do This?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Can you guess which word I see misspelled most often? Did you guess <em>misspelled<\/em>? You\u2019re getting warm. Actually, it\u2019s <em>grammar<\/em>. From my experience, I think it\u2019s safe to estimate that 20 percent of the English-speaking world spells it with an <em>-er<\/em> ending.<\/p>\n<p>Before anyone points an accusing finger at anyone else, we might want to explore the word\u2019s origin (etymology). Could it have been spelled <em>grammer<\/em> at one time? If you look up <em>grammar<\/em> in the dictionary, you will indeed find that before Modern English times (1500 A.D.\u2013present), the word was <em>gramery<\/em>. So the instinct to use <em>-er<\/em> has historical roots.<\/p>\n<p>Like many words that are difficult to spell phonetically, you can use a trick (mnemonic) to remember the correct spelling of <em>grammar<\/em>: You do not want to <em>mar<\/em> your <em>grammar<\/em>. It may be a bit hokey, but we often remember tricks better when they make us roll our eyes.<\/p>\n<p>The point is that we need to realize that the spelling of words is just as evolutionary as grammar itself. If you were to read Chaucer, the author of <em>The Canterbury Tales<\/em> (c.1385), this is what you would see:<\/p>\n<p><em>And for ther is so gret diversite<br \/>\nIn Englissh and in writing of oure tonge,<br \/>\nSo prey I God that non miswrite thee,<br \/>\nNe thee mysmetre for defaute of tonge;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s hard to believe that these spellings (<em>Englissh<\/em>!) were all correct at one time. Today, we need Chaucer\u2019s work translated.<\/p>\n<p>So are we all \u201coff the hook\u201d with spelling? Maybe so, but at least SpellCheck, although it misses a lot of mistakes, will catch <em>grammer<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Can you guess which word I see misspelled most often? Did you guess misspelled? You\u2019re getting warm. Actually, it\u2019s grammar. From my experience, I think it\u2019s safe to estimate that 20 percent of the English-speaking world spells it with an -er ending. Before anyone points an accusing finger at anyone else, we might want to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-verbs"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7203,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions\/7203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}