Sight versus site: one more time!
 

A sight is something one goes to see.

A site is the location of the sight.

I'd like to start a similar thread on high tea vs afternoon tea! :-)

Do I sight you because of this site but maybe the far sighted are over the hill rather than under the hill. Is High Tea with alcohol and afternoon with pablum? Youth wants to know :)

Also, cite is to quote authority, sighed is to have exhaled, side is a lateral part, and Sayed is an Arabic name.

Am I the only person left who writes it as pabulum? Pablum is a brand name, if I recall correctly from my youth......Perhaps this could be another thread for warring orthodoxies.

Ha! too funny!

personally, i refrain from correcting those on their grammar unless they have struck a nerve with me. in the big scheme of things, it isnt so important. many people just type fast for these forums and eschew proper grammar.

A multi-lingual Dane once told me that he had more trouble learning English than any other Indo-European language, including Icelandic. I asked him why.

"Well, because of your bizarre orthography. Sometimes 'read' is pronounced 'red' and sometimes 'reed' - and this kind of confusion is ubiquitous."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_orthography

Though the tough cough and hiccough ought to plough them through the dough.

And a site can be a sight and a sight can be a site.

I'm sightless in gaza!!

Actually, I'm intrigued by how many people on this forum put "nite" instead of "night".
Is it now standard spelling in the US?

Yes, there's our old friend "high tea" where they thing that "high" means "posh".

Yes, oldie, some people do thing the strangest thinks.

Underhill:

Not so.

A sight is indeed something to see - and nothing else. A site is a location where all manner of things might happen.

Stonehenge, Pompeii, the Acropolis at Athens, Angkor Wat or the medieval church at the end of my street are "sights" only if you think they're just there to be gawped at.

If you're interested in interpreting the millions of clues about their history they contain, or that lie buried, or want to understand how they've related to their environment and their people since they were first built, they're "sites".

Archaeologists investigate sites, not sights. Historians interpret sites. Urban planners, conservationists and local communities debate what to do with sites. Governments squabble over encouraging or limiting access. Sites are living parts of a society: sights are the boring backdrops of tourists' photographs.

The flowers in my back garden are a splendid sight - or would be if the damn things remembered it's spring. But that garden is far more interesting as a site, stuffed as it is with relics of what people have been doing to that bit of land for the past two or three thousand years.

Oldie, according to The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000

"Nite" is defined as NOUN Informal Night.

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but people use "nite", "tho", etc., as shortcuts, not out of not knowing the correct spelling, usage.

I have been enjoying the book "Eats Shoots & Leaves", by Lynne Truss. It's not about spelling, but punctuation (think about the title with and without commas). At what point do you sigh, remind yourself that language is a dynamic thing, and give in to the lowest common denominator?

Robespierre (or anyone):

Have you ever read "The Chaos"?

http://paul.merton.ox.ac.uk/language/poem.html

You have hit the proverbial nail on the head.

Maybe part of the confusion comes in when people go to historic "sites" to see the "sights". So they end up saying "we want to see the historical sights of Rome" when they really mean the "sites". I not only visit the sites, but when I'm there I often am impressed by the sight I see, as well as the site in general. The Colliseum is a site, but it is also a sight, so no wonder people sometimes get confused.

Is anyone else worried that our language is being hopelessly corrupted by internet 'text typing' and other aforementioned shortcuts? Not that I think it's a terrible thing to shorten medieval spellings of 'night' and 'though' to 'nite' and 'tho'... I'm more worried about the fact that many younger folks today no longer know the difference between such shortcuts and the official version. They speak in acronyms, sometimes no longer knowing what the acronyms stand for (indeed, or what an acronym is).

I don't speak through ignorance here -- I teach at a vocational college, and there are many students who have their GED rather than a diploma, or should never have received their diploma based on lack of reading, writing, speaking or math ability.

Our language is slowly and silently slipping into ebonics :(

Incidentally, it's "Colosseum." ;-)