How Spelling Mistakes Will Ruin Your Amusing GIFs

There’s an animated GIF doing the rounds which sums up the plot of every episode of TV medical drama House. It’s pointed and cruel and funny — but the effect was ruined for me by a spelling mistake in one of the captions.

Here’s the full GIF (via TheHarveySpecter on Imgur):

I can just about live with the complete lack of capitalisation, even on the word ‘I’. It might be deemed a stylistic decision. But I can’t live with this sentence describing James Wilson (played by Robert Sean Leonard): i to am in this episode. The word required here is too.

Learning the difference between to and too is vital: this isn’t a distinction you can write off as something you’ll never encounter. Accuracy matters.

Lifehacker’s Mind Your Language column offers bossy advice on improving your writing.


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