The point is *moot* damn it!

I'm the last person who jumps into the grammar police cruiser to pull people over. After a complete undergraduate degree in English, I'm firmly in the "descriptive" camp rather than the "prescriptive" camp when it comes to grammar, etc. HOWEVER, the trend in blogging has made it blatantly apparant that an awful lot of people have heard words said that they've never read in print.

One such instance is the use of "mute" when they mean "moot". For some reason, I've seen this specific example no less than 4 times today. Another example I saw today is "Intensive purposes" instead of "intents and purposes".

Essentially, it has become a case of people attempting phonetic transcription of phrases they've heard spoken. This would be OK (remember I'm in the camp that's OK with change) if it weren't for variations in dialect and pronounciation, which will actually result in several different spellings for these kinds of words. My main example is one such instance. I, and most other residents in my part of the world have a pretty wide gap in pronounciation between "moot" and "mute" with a distincive "y" sound between the "m" and "u" in the latter. The first time I saw this switch, I really had to think about it and put it into context to figure out what was being said.

I guess what it comes down to is this: if blogs are your only source of reading, you may want to diversify or risk some pretty non-standard spelling (and the kind a spellchecker won't catch) that may unintentionally embaress you in ways you don't expect until this kind of thing settles down.