The Journal misspells 'kidnapped'
I have not noticed that before. I guess I was always distracted by that ridiculous "race" to the girlfriend's school, in which everyone presumably forgets that telephones exist.
shareActually, "kidnaped" or "kidnapped" are acceptable.
shareI suppose that it depends upon which writing style to which one adheres. I have NEVER seen the word spelled with one "p". The standard is "kidnapped," albeit more common in British English, I suppose.
shareMerriam-Webster, my bible, lists both; either one is acceptable but the "double pp" version being the most commonly used and "single p" as an acceptable alternative so they really didn't err.
It would have been amusing, though, if a newspaper had a typo in a headline.
I've never seen kidnapped spelled with one p, either. (It's an old word, so conventional spelling rules might not apply, but according to conventional spelling rules, if a syllable like that ends with a single consonant, the preceding vowel has a long pronunciation. So in this case, the a would be long and the syllable would rhyme with aped or raped. The vowel in a syllable that ends with a double consonant would have a short quality in its pronunciation, so the a would be short and the syllable would rhyme with sapped or fapped.)
Regardless, newspapers commit grammatical errors and still mispell words all the time, even in this age of computerized spellcheckers.
Actually, the mistakes are even more common, today. Most web sites and news publications are hiring very cheap and young "reporters," who depend upon spellcheck exclusively. Spellcheck should never be considered mistake free, for a variety of reasons.
shareAnd now it's artificial intelligence writing for us!
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