There was a storm in a teacup on an online satirical news website earlier this month, over the spelling of three similarly-sounding words landed one writer in a huge pickle, and an editor having to explain things to him in a schoolteacherly way.
TheSpoof.com was the scene for the incident, which much resembled a Playground Spat, with the writer seemingly unable to distinguish between the words 'pallets' and 'palates', which led to confusion on a large scale.
Moys Kenwood, 57, the editor of the site who is mainly responsible for adding superfluous commas, said:
"It was neither nowt nor summat really. Trouble had been brewing after one writer submitted a story that confused 'pallets' with 'palates', and 'palates' with 'pallets', and this resulted in the fraying of tempers."
As Kenwood went on to point out, 'pallets' are a form of packaging, flat -usually wooden - structures, used as a base used for the unitization of goods in the supply chain, whereas 'palates' are not.
The word 'palette' is a French word, meaning ' something to put paints on'.
Other similar words to these are 'pilates' and 'pirates', and 'pervert' and 'prevert', but these have altogether different meanings, and potential writers should familiarize themselves with the words' meanings before using them, or, indeed, before accusing others of using them incorrectly.
