Some of you may know that I am a poor copywriter. So I take the taxi and the train to get home. And because I stay in the Northern Suburbs the taxi drives down the main road of Bellville. This is mostly a bland experience: it is a short journey and the taxi drivers and ‘taxi guards’ are pleasant.
Yesterday I saw a sign that might entice lesser beings to part with some cash: Gatsby’s. Sometimes, when reading certain websites I see people use fashionista’s. As a plural for fashionista. Gatsby is not a new word; fashionista, however, is. Do a search for gatsby in google.co.za and you only find about 9000 results. Fashionista has even fewer results: 4880.
Now, I’m thinking that perhaps, just perhaps, people treat new words differently. They might write balconies, not balcony’s, or even balconys; it looks wrong, innit? But gatsby’s and fashionista’s, to your everyday tuck-shop owner or 24.com editor, might look perfect.
And I wonder: when these words become slightly more mainstream, will we get their spelling right?
16 October 2008 at 1:43 pm
Perhaps Gatsby’s have a higher keyword score on Google Adwords than fashionista? Did I spell that right? Firefox is redlining it…
17 October 2008 at 8:01 pm
Not a clue, Thomas. I’ll guess that more people are searching for Gatsby’s than for fashionista or fashionista’s. But I’m far more curious to know why people misspell certain words more often than others.