Tag: QuickStudy for English

A few days after I discovered the horrifying error on the QuickStudy cover, I sent an e-mail to both the publishing company's customer service department and the company's president:

Mr. Gabbard;

While I was at my local Kinko's recently, I plucked a copy of your QuickStudy English guide from a nearby rack, hoping to amuse myself a few minutes while waiting in line. Unfortunately, upon reviewing the book's cover, I was less amused than I was saddened.

Among your list of selling points for the book at hand was a list of "commonly mispelled words." I would hope I needn't point out the pathetic irony here, but seeing as an untold number of people involved in the design and creation of your book missed it, I'm compelled to do so: you misspelled the word "misspell," which incidentally is one of the English language's most misspelled words. If the absurdity of the mistake weren't so laughable, I probably would've slit my wrists with paper cuts from the very book I was holding.

... Continued

I don't know if I've become a grammarian because I'm a writer, or if I've taken to writing because I like studying the rules of the English language. Either way, I've acquired somewhat of a superpower (it's a blessing and a curse) for spotting English mistakes.

That's why, when I stopped by Kinko's today and noticed a rack of QuickStudy pocket guides on various school subjects, my spidey spelling sense started to tingle, compelling me to pick up a copy of The QuickStudy for English.

Among other things, as you can see, it boasted a list of "commonly mispelled words."

If you don't get what I'm after here, then I recommend you pick up such a list yourself — just not this one.