Near-Sighted, Far-Fetched

After missing more than one day of posting, I start to feel antsy and maybe a little guilty: it doesn't matter to more than a dozen people, tops, but it seems to me that I signed on for something and I have to honour my commitment. But I was working really long hours, and it was just crazy-busy, and I can't just write any old junk, it has to be on-topic and inspired, to boot, and that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

But at least I'm not posting about how my life is so messed up that I'm going to kill a bunch of people, and then actually go out and do it, like these folks.

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The Gilded Moose is a hilariously biting website which makes fun of celebrities, celebrity media, and gossip blogs simultaneously. "BREAKING: Jake Gyllenhaal Not Involved in Anna Nicole Smith's Son's Death", reads one typically breathless headline, as an excuse to show a nearly shirtless picture of popular obsession target Gyllenhaal.

I can't hold the website responsible for mistakes in the comments section, of course, and I hold regular folks to a lower standard than published authors (though I really do wish people would pay a little more attention to what they write), but I was surprised to read this in the comments section of this posting:

She's afraid of faces.. near-sided? Um needs an eye exam?

"Near-sided"? Hoo boy.

Granted, in casual English, "sighted" and "sided" do sound very similar, but still. This is clearly someone who's never even thought about what the word actually means--who's probably never written it down before and had no reason to guess that "near-sighted" is actually about sight, which is a little mind-boggling.

It turns out that "near-sided" is an actual word, mind you, used in...well, I don't know what it is, exactly--geology, I guess--but you can see its use here if you're so inclined.

But then you get someone who talks like a doctor and may actually be a doctor using "near-sided" instead of "near-sighted", and you fear for the medical profession as a whole.