You are right the Qiaochu_Yuan’s request is probably hopeless—but I just don’t understand mis-speller’s reasoning on these particular words. Ok, cannon v. canon is understandable, but why go to the effort of writing out all those letters if one is going to get McGonagall wrong? Something like “McG” seems better in every way—more accurate, less effort to type.
But obviously I’m thinking about this wrong in some way, given observed behavior.
Because people don’t know? Because sure they’ve seen it spelled right, but human memory is flawed and if they see it spelled right alongside many misspellings, they may not know which is right and may be too lazy to check?
You are right the Qiaochu_Yuan’s request is probably hopeless—but I just don’t understand mis-speller’s reasoning on these particular words. Ok, cannon v. canon is understandable, but why go to the effort of writing out all those letters if one is going to get McGonagall wrong? Something like “McG” seems better in every way—more accurate, less effort to type.
But obviously I’m thinking about this wrong in some way, given observed behavior.
Because people don’t know? Because sure they’ve seen it spelled right, but human memory is flawed and if they see it spelled right alongside many misspellings, they may not know which is right and may be too lazy to check?