sensational spelling
{{Short description|Deliberate misspelling of a word for special effect}}
{{Globalize|date=February 2025|2=Anglophone}}
{{More citations needed|date=June 2021}}
Sensational spelling is the deliberate spelling of a word in a non-standard way for special effect.{{cite book|title=I Before "E" Except After "C": Spelling for the Alphabetically Challenged|publisher=Citadel Press|year=2008|last=Rozakis|first=Laurie E.|author-link=Laurie Rozakis|page=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780806528847/page/24 24]|isbn=978-0-8065-2884-7|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780806528847/page/24}}
Branding
File:Weet-bix- Early 20th century Tin.jpg branding]]
Sensational spellings are common in advertising and product placement. In particular, brand names such as Krispy Kreme Doughnuts (crispy cream), Weet-Bix (wheat, with bix being derived from biscuits), Blu-ray (blue), Kellogg's Froot Loops (fruit) or Hasbro's Playskool (school) may use unexpected spellings to draw attention to or trademark an otherwise common word.{{cite journal | last = Ross | first = Nigel | title = Writing in the Information Age | journal = English Today | volume = 22 | page = 40 | publisher = Cambridge University Press | year = 2006 | issue = 3 | doi = 10.1017/S0266078406003063| s2cid = 143850443 }}
In popular music
Some bands in the mid-1960s (e.g. The Byrds and The Monkees) adopted sensational spelling. The Turtles successfully resisted an effort by their label, White Whale Records, to name them "The Tyrtles."{{cite book|title=The Virgin Encyclopedia of Popular Music|editor=Colin Larkin|editor-link=Colin Larkin (writer)|publisher=Virgin Books|date=1997|edition=Concise|isbn=1-85227-745-9|page=1196}} Although similar, The Beatles is a word play that fuses 'beat' and 'beetles'.
Other examples include Def Leppard ("deaf leopard") and Led Zeppelin, in which "lead" was deliberately misspelled to make clear it is pronounced {{IPAc-en|l|ɛ|d}} (as in the metal lead){{cite book|title=Led Zeppelin The Story of a Band and their Music 1968-1980|year=2005|author=Keith Shadwick|page=[https://archive.org/details/ledzeppelinstory0000shad/page/36 36]|publisher=Hal Leonard Corporation |isbn=0-87930-871-0|url=https://archive.org/details/ledzeppelinstory0000shad/page/36}} rather than the other pronunciation of "lead", {{IPAc-en|l|iː|d}} (as in "lead singer", "lead guitarist", etc.)
See also
- Cacography
- Catachresis
- Eye dialect
- Inventive spelling, the use of unconventional spellings in language learning
- Lolcat
- {{sectionlink|Ough (orthography)|Spelling reforms}}
- Pet Sematary
- Satiric misspelling
- Spelling reform
- Typographical error
- Typosquatting