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.

[IHeartKingThistle]

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.

[TheUnstoppableWindmill]

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

[BobblyGussets]

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.

[CambridgeBlue]

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!

[K8Middleton]

Read better books.

[eddiemairswife]

What about 'tow the line'?

[SimoneDeBeaver]

ahem, Pipkins there certainly are professional proofreaders around

[IHeartKingThistle]

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!

[Alibabaandthe40nappies]

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'.

[ShowOfHands]

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

[RenterNomad]

This is depressing.

[IHeartKingThistle]

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

[BeccasBridesmaid]

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.

[BeccasBridesmaid]

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....

[ThreeBeeOneGee]

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.

[BeccasBridesmaid]

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

[SimoneDeBeaver]

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.

[pigsDOfly]

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.