I was a professional proofreader for almost a decade, and the downside of doing that for living is I find errors in practically everything I read. (The *Times*, *The New Yorker*, *The Atlantic* and many others are a pleasure to read in that regard -- they care.)
I've done a fair amount of writing -- magazines, books, liner notes, etc. -- and even with my eagle eye (so-called) and even after having my wife (a former language teacher at Boston University) proof my work, I still discover mistakes in my own writing, invariably AFTER my blunders are immortalized in print and I can't do anything about 'em! (So, mea culpa.)
Like more than a few of us here (I suspect) I scan my local Craigslist for guitars practically every day and have been doing so for a couple decades now. At some point I began noticing that many people have trouble spelling the word "acoustic."
So, for my own amusement, I began keeping a list of all the spelling variations I came across. To date my list contains something like 50 or 60 different spellings of the word.
Who would have thought it was even possible to spell one word so many different ways?!
The list is especially fun to read aloud, as every variation can be pronouned differently: "actousic," "acuistic," "acusting,"etc.
