A character in the book I am reading just cut a 'slither' of cake. WTF???

[IHeartKingThistle]

I'm seeing this everywhere. Has the word sliver just disappeared?

How on earth could a slither of cake possibly ever make sense? It's making me feel all cross.

DON'T! I had a barbecue on Saturday and 3 separate people asked for a slither of cake. I had been drinking. I THINK I managed to keep it on the right side of jokey .

I wonder whether they'll come to the next one.

Oh God, that's horrible! You MUST correct these people: they NEED to know!

I always thought people meant it as a joke , i.e., they knew "sliver" was the correct word but used "slither" intentionally for comedic effect. Perhaps I have too high an opinion of people.
If it makes you feel better, I spotted a mistake in a Salman Rushdie novel last week.

How irritating! Does anyone else get unreasonably enraged by people confusing peak and peek? I'm always seeing it on blogs - 'have a peak at our latest creation' etc. Really winds me up!

Read better books.

What about 'tow the line'?

ahem, Pipkins there certainly are professional proofreaders around

Simone, how do you get into proofreading? I've recently left English teaching and just finished a stint of GCSE marking which I enjoyed more than I thought I was going to.

Oh and K8, quite right, grabbed it in the library, should have known better.
Waferthin yep, I was almost as offended by the paltry amount of cake being consumed as I was by the butchering of the English language!

My grandma used to say this. It makes me :) and by turns for that reason.

The other thing that I've noticed people saying is 'oh I'm really weary of him/her', when they mean 'wary'.

I see wonder/wander confused on here a lot too.

This is depressing.

It's fine - that was from 2007. Now we have a whole new generation of MNers to bore educate.

Cambridge I get the rage about misuse of 'peak', peek' and 'pique'!!

Also, 'sliver' vs 'slither'. And 'cue' vs 'queue'.

And many, many more.

I've come home.

Nooo, I missed out a single quotation mark before the word peek. And I actually shouldn't have used a single quotation mark, it should have been a double.

I'm going to hang my head in shame in the corner now....

I have a friend who refused to believe the existence of the word 'brusque'. She thought it was just that people couldn't spell 'brisk'.

I can see 'sliver' going the same way.

Wasn't it the title of a film? Quite a rude one, I seem to recall. May have starred Sharon Stone.

Three Yes, it's the title of a film. I think Alec Baldwin is in it, along with Sharon Stone.

Becca - no need to use double quotes . You can just choose whether you want to use single or double, then you use the other if there are quotes within speech or quotes (clear? )

IHeart I'm afraid I'm not much help with getting into proofreading, because it's always been part of my job in one way or another since leaving university, so I just relied on old colleagues when I went freelance.

I have been seeing this slither thing in books for some time now and it drives me up the wall. I actually stopped reading one book because it occurred so many times, along with several similar howlers, that I just lost patience with it.