acrossed

[Kyung]

A Acrossed maybe one and two lanes, the number one and number two lanes.

Acrossed, not a word; right?

Would you leave it alone? Would you fix it? I mean, that's what he said. I'm not using sic just because it's not wrong. He said it. People say things like this all the time.

I'll probably leave it, but just looking for how other people do things.

[Marge Teilhaber (TILE hobber)]

I'd assume that "I crossed" or "uh, crossed" was really uttered and most likely put in "Crossed maybe one or two lanes." I've never heard that particular misuse of the English language!

[Patricia Babits]

Kyung, is that the direct quote? Just checking because a lot of people say "acrosst" for across, and I was wondering if that's what this could be.

[Kyung]

He could have said acrost. But it's not standard and should not be used as a preposition or an adverb according to some grammarians. I also think that acrost looks funny.

[Brenda Rogers]

Acrost and acrossed both look funny because they're both wrong. Unless I'm editing to audio (I don't usually), I don't even catch that because I don't write it that way. It shows up as "across" in my transcript.

[Kyung]

Well, I wrote acrossed. And I double checked the audio, and it sounds like acrossed or acrost. I know what you're saying those.

Part of me feels like I should fix it, but part of me says I write what they say, good, bad, or wrong.

[Phil Stillerman]

The only things I would do is [sic] "acrossed" and shoot the speaker. It's wrong. There's no such word.

[Kyung]

Ah, if only we could. But I think this kind of thing has become commonplace like ast instead of asked. Or I seen instead of I seen. All of which makes me shudder.

[Phil Stillerman]

Becoming commonplace does not make it right, nor does it make ast, or acrossed words.

[Brenda Rogers]

Of course it's not right. But if I hear "ast" or "aks" I don't put it that way in the transcript; I write "ask." If someone inappropriately uses "seen," I don't [sic] it, because it's just too common. So with acrost (however you choose to spell it) being akin to these, I would treat it the same way and not use [sic]. If we sic'd every grammatical mistake, there wouldn't be many pages that would be [sic] free. It would be truly sic(k). :)

[Patricia Babits]

In my opionion, if someone says ast instead of asked, that's a pronunciation thing. To me, it's still the same word, so I would put asked in the transcript. I don't see it as the same thing as fixing a grammatical error.

[Brenda Rogers]

would you consider acrost the same thing, though, just a pronunciation thing? That's how I see it.

[Patricia Babits]

Brenda, yeah, across is acrost. I agree with you. It's just countrified speech. My kid was even saying it for a long time, but I finally got her to stop. I married into a hillbilly family. LOL!

Back East people would pronounce wash "warsh" sometimes, and I can't imagine putting that in a transcript!