UTMC

OK, so in my frequent perusal of local Craigslist motorcycle ads, I often come across people trying to peddle "helments". So having too much time on my hands and cynical curiosity, I went looking to see how often this misspelling (and I assume accompanying mispronunciation) occurs in different cities throughout the country. I spot checked ads which had "helment" in the title to see if they also had it in the body of the ad and unfortunately, most of the ones I checked did. Are the results of this very unscientific survey an indicator of the effects of dialect, education, religious propensity, red-state/blue-state, heat and humidity, what? I don't know -- perhaps others have ideas?

City & Number of ads selling "helments"
----- ------------------------------------------
Atlanta 49
Dallas 36
Miami 18
Phoenix 14
Minneapolis 5
Seattle 5
Boston 4
SF Bay Area 4
Chicago 2
San Diego 2

What is the third dimension of a physical object?

1) Width
2) Depth
3) ?

Just curious.

I think we need the number of ads spelling it correctly as well before searching for conclusions. If two cities have roughly the same number for sale but wildly different numbers of "helments", that's interesting, but it could just be a similar percentage of the differing total helmet sales.

Toronto 2/300, that is 298 "helmet" and 2 "helment"

Piccini, depends on what the first 2 are.

rolly wrote:I think we need the number of ads spelling it correctly as well before searching for conclusions. If two cities have roughly the same number for sale but wildly different numbers of "helments", that's interesting, but it could just be a similar percentage of the differing total helmet sales.

Of course. So with the number of "helmet" ads opposed to "helment" ads, it's:

Atlanta 1 Helment to every 13 Helmets
Dallas 1 to 20
Miami 1 to 27
Boston 1 to 33
Minneapolis 1 to 45
Phoenix 1 to 57
Seattle 1 to 64
Chicago 1 to 94
SF Bay Area 1 to 95
San Diego 1 to 132

Switched a couple of cities around but didn't change things all that much. A thought occurred to me: Maybe it's the motorcyclists' equivalent to nucular vs. nuclear?

Wish the damn rain would stop...

As long as you've got time on your hands, you might check for occurrences of.

"Helmut" vs "Helmet", "Break" vs "Brake", and my personal fave, "Duel" vs "Dual" (usually in conjunction with "sport").

i like Duel better, sounds like you're choosing a weapon!

oh, and don't forget Breaks vs. Brakes. love it, i just luuuvs me some mispelling!

Since N is nowhere near E or T I am puzzled by this. Could this be a genuine attempt to spell Helnmet?

I blame our brains. They interplonate like mad. In fact, I originally read the thread title to be 'Helmet Thresd'.
I also blame our brains for the move 'Skyline', for after actually seeing it without knowing better, and then finding out that the Google Query 'Skyline WTF' is statistically significant, and noting very heavy appearance of brains in the latter half, there can be no other conculsion.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who notices these things.....

My bad spelling habbits is the leading reason I usually just say "Hat" or "Helm"
I also have other reasons for using Helm, but fear of getting called out is high among them

I too, am somewhat of a grammarian, and I mutilate the English language every day. What I was trying to ask in the above post was, "Is the word Height, or Heighth?"
The word heighth makes my skin crawl, and I refuse to believe that it's a real word.

On a related note, when I get really tired my words come out in weird random order, anyone else experience this? I feel like the kid from Flowers for Algernon.

Ahhh, I read it as a multiple choice question, i.e. "is the 3rd dimension 1. Width, or 2. Depth?" Silly me.

rolly wrote:Ahhh, I read it as a multiple choice question, i.e. "is the 3rd dimension 1. Width, or 2. Depth?" Silly me.

42

8 in DC.

12 on the third Tuesday in May

piccini9 wrote: 42

only in base 13

314 hits on ebay.

http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid ... Categories

7 "helment"s for sale in the detroit CL,

i want a duel-sport!