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Bad Spelling Pays on eBay
peebeejay writes "People say that as long as they're understood, spelling is unimportant. These people are unwittingly making others a lot of money online, according to this article in the NY Times (DNA sample and clean boxers required). So, aside from clarity and respect for your reader, there's another good reason to either spell correctly or use a spellchecker: get bidders to find your eBay items and give you their money! Or you can go ahead and see how many people bid on your 'labtop computers,' 'camras,' and 'earings.'"
.. whenever I use ebay, I always try "alternative" spellings of words. Of course, being from the UK, I'm used to spelling things like 'color' incorrectly [its a JOKE!] :-)
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
According to the article, Mother of Perl is spelled incorrectly. Shows what they know.
unnix licsene for olny $699!!1!
I was looking for a BikeE recumbent bike. There weren't any on Ebay. I tried "Bike-E" with a hyphen. There was an almost brand new demo model listed for $500. (They retailed for about $1200 at the time, I think.) I bought it, didn't even take it out of the box, relisted it with the correct spelling, and sold it for $850 seven days later. (I did have to pay for the bike to be shipped to me, which was about $35, I think.) I have also found that you can buy items that are poorly described and relist them with more thorough descriptions, links to the manufacturer's website, better photos, etc., and they will typically sell for higher than you paid for them.
This valuable piece of advice given in the spirit of the article - ie with a crappy header that'll ensure only people looking really hard will find it.
Bidding starts at $5.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
...is why Microsoft could make the claim that people would go to mikerowesoft.com and get confused.
Because people are that fucking stupid.
experts say the Internet -- with its discussion boards, blogs and self-published articles -- is a treasure trove of bad spelling.
They had to ask experts?
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Homer: "Look at these low, low prices on famous brand name electronics!"
Bart: "Don't be a sap, Dad. These are just crappy knock-offs."
Homer: "I know a genuine Panaphonics when I see it. And look, there's Magnetbox, and Sorny!"
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
LOL! Priceless - look at the description for http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =3456315281&category=177
Choice quotes
"I am not lying when I say that this labtop is hands down one of the fastest computers I have ever seen in my entire life. On the other hand, I am also completely clueless when it comes to computers so please bare with me."
Oo-er - are we getting our clothes off together? (It's "BEAR with me")
"keyboard has more buttons than I know what to do with"
"a floppy drive, a CD rom drive, and another drive that I have no clue what to do with"
"And...a rechargable battery"
"some disk that I suppose you'll probably need"
and to top it off "Chances are that you'll probably want to run this computer by a shop and get it cleaned out"
Then he says "if you have any questions email me." Yeah, like he's really going to have a clue amout MHz, GB, serial ports etc. I wouldn't recommend asking anything more difficult than: "What colour is it?"
He also can't spell "I nicked it" - he says "this is not my computer (I'm selling it for a friend)"
I've always said that the best (and worst) thing about eBay is that it's full of stupid people. It's not just bad spelling that can get you the bargains, often people under-price their "Buy it now" items, or advertise things incorrectly, i.e. "This laptop has a 500MHz processor", but the model number they've stated suggests it's a 1GHz.
This 'feature' isn't going to go away because the NYT has mentioned it. The problem comes from clueless people, who will still be clueless now! I doubt people deliberately mis-spell items on eBay and now are thinking "perhaps I should spell things correctly from now on"
P.S. Remember to take full advantage, if you find cluelessness on eBay, "View Seller's Other Items" might be your key to many more bargains!
perl -e 'print "Just another Perl newbie\n";'
The registration is free and you don't even need a valid e-mail address. What's with the complaints? The 20 seconds you have to spend *once* to input bogus information is certainly a fair price for the online content of the NYT.
Sheesh. People here would complain if you hung them with a new rope.