STEPHENIE MEYER
Writer.
Not “Stephanie.”
LIZA MINNELLI
Star.
Two n’s, two l’s.
Same, happily enough, goes for her father, Hollywood director Vincente.
ALANIS MORISSETTE
Singer-songwriter.
In her surname: one r, two s’s, two t’s. Very easy to get wrong.
See also “irony,” this page.
ELISABETH MOSS
Actress.
Not “Elizabeth.”
FRIEDRICH WILHELM NIETZSCHE
Trouble-causing philosopher.
There are, I’ve learned over the years, so many, many ways to misspell Nietzsche.
GEORGIA O’KEEFFE
Artist.
Two f’s.
LAURENCE OLIVIER
Actor.
Laurence with a u. Knighthood made him Sir Laurence Olivier, or Sir Laurence for short. Not Sir Olivier, an error Americans are prone to. (He was also eventually Lord Olivier, but that’s a different honour [sic].)
EDGAR ALLAN POE
Writer.
I’d venture to say that Poe’s is the most consistently misspelled author’s name in the Western canon. His central name is not “Allen.”
CHRISTOPHER REEVE
Actor.
Played Superman.
GEORGE REEVES
Actor.
Also played Superman.
Thus, I imagine, the frequent misrendering of Christopher Reeve’s surname.*8
While we’re here, let’s also take note of:
KEANU REEVES
Star of Bill & Ted comedies, Matrix uncomedies, and John Wick unintentional comedies.
CONDOLEEZZA RICE
Politician.
Mind the double z.
RICHARD RODGERS
Composer of numerous landmark musicals, most famously partnered with lyricists Lorenz Hart (The Boys from Syracuse, Pal Joey, etc.) and Oscar Hammerstein II (Oklahoma!, Carousel, The King and I, etc.).*9
Not to be confused with Richard Rogers, the architect of London’s Millennium Dome.
ROXANE
The love object of Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac. One n.
The writer Roxane Gay is also a one-n Roxane.
The eponymous heroine of both the 1978 Police song and Steve Martin’s 1987 film (inspired by Rostand’s play) is Roxanne. Two n’s.
PETER SARSGAARD
Actor.
Wasn’t the vampire in True Blood.
FRANZ SCHUBERT
Austrian composer.
The American theatrical impresario brothers Sam, Leo, and J.J. were the Shuberts. Same goes, then, for the Shubert Theatre (and Shubert Alley) in New York, and the Shubert Organization.
MARTIN SCORSESE
Director.
Not “Scorcese.”
ALEXANDER SKARSGÅRD
Actor.
Was the vampire in True Blood.
The ring diacritic in his surname is often omitted, perhaps because no one can bother to figure out where it’s hiding in their keyboard.
SPIDER-MAN
Superhero.
Note the hyphen, note the capital M.
DANIELLE STEEL
Prolific novelist.
Before I came to work for the company that publishes her, I managed, in a book referring to her, to let her name go to print not once but a half dozen times as “Danielle Steele.” Yeesh.
BARBRA STREISAND
It’s a bit late in the history of Western civilization for people to misspell her first name as “Barbara,” but it still happens.
MOTHER TERESA
Nun, missionary, now a Catholic saint.
No h.
TERESA OF ÁVILA
Nun, mystic, now a Catholic saint.
Nope. Still no h.
If you’re utterly jonesing for a saintly h, I commend to you Thérèse of Lisieux.
TINKER BELL
Fairy.
Two words, the latter conveying the sound of her communication, the former conveying that her job was to mend pots and pans. Really.
HARRY S. TRUMAN
President on whose desk the buck stopped.
The middle initial doesn’t stand for anything, so for decades copy editors have amused themselves, if no one else, by styling his name as Harry S Truman. Truman seems to have (mostly) signed his name with a perioded S, so let’s do it that way.
TRACEY ULLMAN
Funny actress. Note the e in Tracey.
LIV ULLMANN
Less funny, but no less remarkable, actress.
FELIX UNGAR
In Neil Simon’s 1965 Broadway comedy The Odd Couple and the 1968 film thereof, the quintessential fussbudget is Felix Ungar, with an a.
In the later TV series, he is Felix Unger, with an e.
NATHANAEL WEST
Author of The Day of the Locust.
Not “Nathaniel.”
WINNIE-THE-POOH
Bear.
A. A. Milne styled the bear’s full name with hyphens (though the character is also called, hyphenlessly, Pooh Bear). The Disney folk do not.
ALFRE WOODARD
Actress.
Not “Woodward.”
Joanne Woodward, though.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
Writer, though it hardly does her justice to refer to her so plainly.
Neither “Wolfe” nor “Wolf.” Perhaps you’re thinking of, respectively, Thomas and the Man.*10
ALEXANDER WOOLLCOTT
New Yorker contributor, Algonquin Round Table denizen, and compulsive quipster, the inspiration for the character Sheridan Whiteside in the George S. Kaufman–Moss Hart comedy The Man Who Came to Dinner, a role originated by the actor Monty Woolley (and eventually played by Woollcott himself). Called, for short, Alec.
Neither Woollcott nor Woolley is to be confused with the writer Wolcott Gibbs, a longtime editor at The New Yorker, who described Woollcott as “one of the most dreadful writers who ever existed”—and who, you may recall, is the author of every copy editor’s favorite maxim, “Try to preserve an author’s style if he is an author and has a style.”
FLORENZ ZIEGFELD
Impresario.
Frequently misspelled (and mispronounced) “Ziegfield.”
PLACES
ANTARCTICA
Two c’s.
ARCTIC
Also two c’s.
BEL AIR
The name of the Westside Los Angeles neighborhood is generally given unhyphenated. The Hotel Bel-Air is, though, hyphenated.
While we’re here: Los Angeles has, unofficially, an Eastside and a Westside. New York City has, more or less officially, an East Side (including an Upper East Side and a Lower East Side) and a West Side (including an Upper West Side, but only people who refer to Manhattan’s Sixth Avenue as Avenue of the Americas would ever refer to a “Lower West Side”). Discerning fans of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit will note, in the show’s opening credits, the eternally incorrect newspaper headline “EASTSIDE RAPIST CAPTURED.”
BLEECKER STREET
In New York’s Greenwich Village.
Not “Bleeker,” though one occasionally, even on local signage, encounters it misspelled.
BRITTANY
The French province Bretagne, that is.
Or the late actress Brittany Murphy.
Not Britney Spears, though.
An increasing number of women whose parents were clearly not paying attention are named Britanny.
CAESARS PALACE
Hotel and casino.
There’s no apostrophe in Caesars because, we are told, Caesars founder Jay Sarno decr
eed, “We’re all Caesars.”
CINCINNATI
Not “Cincinatti.”
COLOMBIA
South American country. Two o’s.
Columbia, with a u, is, among other things, a New York university, a recording company, a Hollywood movie studio, the District also known as Washington, the Gem of the Ocean, and the female representation of the United States.
FONTAINEBLEAU
Both a French château and a Miami Beach resort hotel.
GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL
Magnificent Beaux Arts structure located at the junction of Forty-second Street and Park Avenue in New York City—a junction and not an intersection because the streets meet but do not cross.
That the building is often referred to as Grand Central Station does not make that its name. That said, if you’re going to characterize a busy and/or crowded place by saying “It’s like Grand Central Station in here!,” you should go ahead and do that because that’s what everyone does, and there are occasions when idiom outweighs*11 accuracy.
LAGUARDIA AIRPORT
Hellhole.
The person after whom the thing was named is fabled New York City mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, but there is no space in the airport’s official name.
While we’re here: The official name for that G in LaGuardia (or for any midword capital letter, whether it’s the D in MacDonald or the P in iPhone or the S in PlayStation) is “medial capital,” though it may also be called a camel case (or, more self-reflexively, CamelCase) capital.
MIDDLE-EARTH
Nerd heaven.
Hyphenated, and the “earth” is lowercased.
MISSISSIPPI
Some people, present company included, cannot ever spell it correctly without singing the song.
PICCADILLY CIRCUS
All told, four c’s.
ROMANIA
The spellings Roumania and Rumania are obsolete.
That said, if you’re quoting the last line of Dorothy Parker’s poem “Comment,” it remains, inarguably, “And I am Marie of Roumania.”
SAVILE ROW
Not “Saville.”
SHANGRI-LA
The hidden Tibetan paradise in James Hilton’s 1933 novel Lost Horizon. Note the hyphen, note the capital L. That some dictionaries offer it as “Shangri-la,” with a lowercase l, strikes me as effrontery. Surely Hilton, who made up the name, knew best how to spell it.
TUCSON, ARIZONA
Not “Tuscon.”
OTHER BITS AND PIECES OF SOCIAL, CULTURAL, AND HISTORICAL ARCANA THAT TURN UP, WITH REASONABLE FREQUENCY, IN MANUSCRIPTS, OFTEN MISRENDERED
ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND
The full title of Lewis Carroll’s 1865 deceptively lighthearted fantasy,*12 though it cannot be denied that people have been calling it Alice in Wonderland pretty much since it was published. The 1871 sequel is Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. You may drop the second half of that title; don’t drop the hyphen in “Looking-Glass.”
THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED
There’s only one “the” in the title of this F. Scott Fitzgerald novel.
THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI
The English-language title of Pierre Boulle’s novel Le pont de la rivière Kwai. (Boulle was also the author of La planète des singes, first published in English as Monkey Planet. You may know it best as Planet of the Apes.)*13
David Lean’s film thereof is The Bridge on the River Kwai.
BULFINCH’S MYTHOLOGY
Written by single-l Thomas Bulfinch, not by a double-l passerine bird.
THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL
The title under which Anne Frank’s journal was first published in English.
The Diary of Anne Frank is the title of a play by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, as well as of its film adaptations.
FINNEGANS WAKE
A novel by James Joyce that you’ve either not read, not comprehended, or both, despite what you tell people.
No apostrophe.
I repeat: No apostrophe.
FLORODORA
A onetime cultural touchstone, now a nugget of obscure and frequently misspelled trivia,*14 Florodora was a musical that played in London’s West End in 1899, ran even more successfully in New York beginning in 1900, then enjoyed numerous tours and revivals for decades. (Little Rascals aficionados may recall its shout-out in Our Gang Follies of 1936.) Its hit number, “Tell Me, Pretty Maiden (Are There Any More at Home Like You?),” was performed by a sextet of identically gowned, parasol-wielding young ladies accompanied by six identically suited, top-hatted gentlemen.
According to theatrical legend (this one, rara avis,*15 seems to check out as accurate), all the original Florodora Girls married millionaires. One of the replacement Florodoras, Evelyn Nesbit,*16 not only bagged a millionaire, the unstable, to say the least, Harry Kendall Thaw, but achieved lasting notoriety when Thaw shot to death Nesbit’s lover, the architect Stanford White, in a rooftop theater at Madison Square Garden in 1906. Thus ensued the Trial of the Century, not to be confused with the 1921 Trial of the Century of Sacco and Vanzetti, the 1924 Trial of the Century of Leopold and Loeb, the 1935 Trial of the Century of Bruno Hauptmann, or the 1995 Trial of the Century of O. J. Simpson, shortly after which, thankfully, the century decided to call it quits.*17
FRANKENSTEIN
The title of the novel by Mary Shelley (in full: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus). Also the title of (among other adaptations) the 1931 Universal film directed by James Whale and starring Boris Karloff.
Though confusion between the two commenced almost immediately upon the novel’s publication, Frankenstein is not the name of the manmade man concocted and brought to life by scientist Victor Frankenstein (Henry Frankenstein in the Karloff film and its immediate sequels) from dead tissue secured in “charnel-houses…the dissecting room and the slaughter-house.” Shelley calls him, among other things, “creature,” “monster,” “vile insect” (that’s a good one), and “daemon.” The 1931 film bills him, simply, as “The Monster.”
It’s not OK to call Frankenstein’s monster “Frankenstein,” and people who willfully advocate for this make me cross.
GUNS N’ ROSES
That the name of this band is not Guns ’n’ Roses is vexing, but so, I suppose, is being named Axl, much less Slash.
IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
The issue here is not of spelling but of definition. The Immaculate Conception is the doctrine that Mary, the future mother of Jesus, was conceived in her mother’s womb (by the standard biological means) without the taint of original sin.
The belief in the virgin birth*18 of Jesus is the belief that Jesus was conceived through the Holy Spirit, without a human father, and while his mother was, indeed, still a virgin.
The former is not the latter. In the words of Christopher Durang’s homicidal nun Sister Mary Ignatius: “Everyone makes this error; it makes me lose my patience.”
JEOPARDY!
With an exclamation point!
JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR
No exclamation point. Or comma, for that matter.
THE JUILLIARD SCHOOL
You learn to spell it correctly the same way you get to nearby Carnegie Hall: Practice.
LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER
Smutty D. H. Lawrence novel.
Note the second e in “Chatterley.”
LICENCE TO KILL
The 1989 James Bond film. Universally spelled, Brit-style, with two c’s.
LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST
Americanizing out the u in Labour’s is impudent; omitting either apostrophe is just plain wrong.
MOBY-DICK; OR, THE WHALE
Much confusion swirls around that hyphen, which in the original 1851 publication of Herman Melville’s novel appeared on the title page but now
here else. If you hyphenate the novel’s title and otherwise leave the whale’s name open as Moby Dick, you’ll be safe. That said, just about every film adaptation I can track drops the hyphen entirely.
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