The Origami Forum

There's something that's been troubling me for a very long time.... in my guestbook and also in requests I get per email I see a lot of different wrong spellings and usages of the word Origami.
Starting from the almost correct "oragami" to question about "how to make oragomies".
I wonder how this can happen when they come from a homepage where the word Origami is mentioned definitely more than once (and visible in the title all the time...)

Just wondering if anyone has had similar experiences and if someone knows an explanation

One of my scholar in the school asked me last week for something about Origamo.

Lols... interesting question. Maybe a considerable number of people don't pay much attention to terminology (or "foreign words" -- but would a Japanese audience be as likely to spell it incorrectly?) Then, when leaving messages, they can't be bothered to check the spelling, assuming you would know what they meant anyway?

It might also be related to their pronunciation, like commonly misspelt English words ("mischievious" vs. mischievous, etc.)

Iko wrote:Then, when leaving messages, they can't be bothered to check the spelling, assuming you would know what they meant anyway?

But they are almost bombarded with the correct spelling of Origami on my homepage so it's really hard to not notice how it should be spelled.
And also... how did they come to an Origami page in the first place ... searching for "Oragami" on google doesn't lead to my homepage on the first few pages of search result that I checked.

Iko wrote:It might also be related to their pronunciation, like commonly misspelt English words ("mischievious" vs. mischievous, etc.)

Yes, that might be a big factor. I've noticed that in some English accents Origami almost sounds like "Oragami"

Daydreamer wrote: But they are almost bombarded with the correct spelling of Origami on my homepage so it's really hard to not notice how it should be spelled.
And also... how did they come to an Origami page in the first place ... searching for "Oragami" on google doesn't lead to my homepage on the first few pages of search result that I checked.

People are too awed by the pictures to read the text?

True... but seems like some stores tag their sites with variations of word spellings to catch more results (a search for "oragomi" came up with books at playchild.com as the third result), which could also be encouraging the misspellings.

In your case, maybe through a chain of other sites?

HEH!
And I thought only that only me found people that can´t even SAY origami!
See, I had a teacher. He knows very much of Electromagnetic stuff. But, geez, when he saw me doing origami, he couldn´t even say the word!
I really doubt he could spell it!

The simple answer is that there are a lot of thick and lazy people out there. I get around a couple of emails per week asking the following:

can u send me the diagrams for youre oragami sliver dragon!!! i really want it!!! (sic)

If they can't spell, use grammar, follow simple intructions such as 'please do not ask for diagrams as they don't exist', or demonstrate manners, then they won't take the time to learn to spell a seven lettered word correctly.

Stephen

Well, my solution for now is that I changed my guestbook script to replace misspellings by the correct spelling of Origami before adding them, that way Origami at least appears correctly in my guestbook

Sadly, there are a lot of stupid people with computers. But at least they make the effort; they at least call it origami, spelled correctly or not.

How many of you other folders get requests for "them thar folder paper thingamies yew do"? Some days I would be happy if someone at least tried to say the name.

When I put some of my origami into a fair the judge filled out the evaluation form with" Orgamy".

Well, I suspect people just don't proof read what they write. I had someone place an order for a boomerang from me, and their name was Nixon (I assume since that was their email address), but they put the first line of their address as Noxn

I have seen someone spell it 'origarmy'. Wierd! Anyway.