某天晚上約十時左右，正當栗子妹做校對做到天昏地暗之際，看見以下句子：
Typhoon signal no. 9 was hosted yesterday morning.
本想就此略過，但總覺得有點不對勁；回頭細看，方發現撰稿員把 hoisted (懸掛) 錯拼成 hosted (主辦)！
之後看見另一句：
A car crushed into the fallen tree because of the heavy rain.
Crushed into？立即查字典，原來是 crashed into (碰撞) 才對！(crush 解作「搗碎」)
正當我為自己一雙明目沾沾自喜之際，卻看見老板在文稿中加了以下一註：
skillful à skilful
天啊！若不翻字典，誰曉得前者是美式拼法，後者才是英式拼法？！美國人不是喜歡把兩個 l 縮減為一個 l 的嗎？
美國人不是喜歡把兩個 l 縮減為一個 l 的嗎？
回覆刪除Really? I haven't noticed. I remember enrollment. It's the Brits who 慳 an 'l' here, no? Any others?
[版主回覆10/18/2008 13:07:00]Dear Teach: I was thinking about 'travelling' and 'traveling' at that time. Sorry about my rash comments.
嘩！做校對真係辛苦喎！
回覆刪除[版主回覆10/18/2008 13:04:00]井兄：誰說不是？尤其是晚上做校對，很容易早伏！
又：【同班同學】故事不錯，明晚 AMC 加場，可考慮一看啊！
做校對要落足眼力，真係得閒要補補眼先得嘞 ！
回覆刪除[版主回覆10/18/2008 13:03:00]Nicole：唉，對眼早已做到天殘地缺，怎樣補怕也沒用~
哈!我到現在先知skilful唔係s-k-i-l-l-f-u-l咋!
回覆刪除[版主回覆10/18/2008 13:03:00]南爾：其實兩個拼法都沒錯，不過老板堅持要用英式，沒奈何......
à 是啥意思﹖
回覆刪除[版主回覆10/18/2008 13:02:00]把 skillful 改為 skilful 的意思。
有時老板只會圈著一個字，或是在旁加飛仔，甚麼也不寫，都唔知佢相點~
時常都有美式和英式的分別.
回覆刪除[版主回覆11/12/2008 09:09:00]祈櫻子：係呀，有時差別還要很大呢！The Teacher 的 audio blog 有介紹，有閒不妨一聽。
栗子妹：一個小小的英文字母，就會改變了整句文字的意思；不過，有時候會不會是作者故意弄虛，用另一個文字，誇張地表達作者對事件的看法？譬如用 hosted 不用 hoisted是在意表示颶風的威力﹝可能當時風力強勁如主導了一切﹞？又譬如用 crushed into 不用 crashed into 是要強調說明車禍的嚴重性﹝可能是車禍中的汽車已撞得稀巴爛﹞？
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天曉得！慧行就見得多這類作者，不過他們一般都會在用字上加上一個引號以茲識別。
[版主回覆11/12/2008 09:10:00]慧行先生：也有這個可能性。不過看今次接到的稿，我肯定是作者串錯字居多。
It took me awhile to find this blog again. I was going thru my cheat notes file and stumbled upon this rule:
回覆刪除The Brits double the "l" in a suffix if the "l" is preceded by a vowel. The Americans do so only if the preceding vowel is stressed in pronunciation.
But the examples of skill and enroll are not suffixes, so I guess they don't follow this rule.
[版主回覆11/12/2008 09:14:00]Thanks a lot, Teach! I didn't know that there is such a rule in American English.
To me, the spelling of English words is always chaotic.
I don't know why, but I love the term 'cheat notes'.
You're not the only HKer who likes the term "cheat notes". Some like it so much that they translated it into Cantonese and call it "貓紙". I've heard the expression used by some 大人物
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