In the past week, I've seen an internal email wherein the author sent out a mass email using the word "orderves" rather than hors d'oeuvres. I certainly understand this, as it is a word that makes no sense spelling wise or phonetically. It is a very common, easy to make mistake. As for me, this was one of my spelling words in grammar or middle school and it was drilled into the class relentlessly and occasionally appeared as a surprise word in subsequent spelling tests. I maintain a general idea of how the word is spelled, but usually look it up before using it, if spell-check hasn't corrected it for me. And if all else fails, just substitute the word "appetizers".
Let's move on to a second internal email. The author sent out a mass email using the word "attain" instead of "obtain" several times in his message. Though I cringed, I thought perhaps the author was using talk-to-text/email or otherwise rushing and after all, attain actually is a word, so of course spell-check didn't correct it.
But. This. Makes. Me. Crazy.
I know many people insert apostrophes (incorrectly) into words that are simply plural and not possessive. But this is from a shiny marketing communication that was titled - you guessed it - "Underwriting Reminder's".
This is not from someone in my office. This is not from a small locally domiciled company. This is not from a large regional carrier. This not even a national company. This is from a huge International Insurance Company (albeit most of their business is in the USA), instantly recognizable by their logo. Don't they have people, or even off site marketing departments, that review, proofread, correct? I believe this was probably composed by a local marketing representative without being run past anyone else first. But seriously, who sends out a "professional" document without having someone take a look at it first? Who knows how many insurance agents received this document? Of course, many people wouldn't even see the errors because they also suffer from an apostrophe disorder.
Argh.
