Satiric Misspelling - Hidden Puns

Hidden Puns

Occasionally a word written in its orthodox spelling is altered with internal capital letters, hyphens, italics, or other devices so as to highlight a fortuitous pun. Some examples:

• After the controversial 2000 U.S. Presidential elections, the alleged improprieties of the election prompted the use of such titles as "pResident" and "(p)resident" for George W. Bush. The same effects were also used for Bill Clinton during and after Clinton's impeachment hearings. These devices were intended to suggest that the president was merely the resident of the White House rather than the legitimate president of the US.
• Similarly, the controversial United States law, the USA PATRIOT Act, is sometimes called the "patRiot Act", "(pat)Riot Act", "PAT Riot Act", "PAT RIOT Act", or "You Sap At Riot Act" by its opponents.
• The perception that membership in the United Nations is counter to US interests and sovereignty is denoted by the terms "Un-ited Nations" or "EU-nited Nations" (similarity to EU - European Union). Similarly, the perception that the United Nations is ineffectual (castrated) is denoted by the term "EUN-ited Nations" (similarity to eunuch).
• Feminist theologian Mary Daly has used a slash to make a point about patriarchy: "gyn/ecology", "stag/nation", "the/rapist".
• In French, where con is an insulting word meaning "moron", the word conservateur (conservative) has been written "con-servateur", "con… servateur", or "con(servateur)". The American English term neo-con, an abbreviation of neo-conservative, becomes a convenient pun when used in French. In English, the first syllable of conservative can be emphasized to suggest a con artist.

Along the same lines, intentional misspellings can be used to promote a specific negative attribute, real or perceived, of a product or service. This is especially effective if the misspelling is done by replacing part of the word with another that has identical phonetic qualities. Examples:

• The term "Windoze", which emerged on Usenet in the early 1990s and was subsequently added to the Jargon File, is used in reference to Microsoft Windows. Doze is a paraphrase of DOS, the operating system that Windows used until Windows 95, which was considered negative compared to other "real" multitasking operating systems. "Winblows" and "Winbloze" are also similar to "Windoze" in reference to Microsoft Windows as well. A similar one for Linux is "Linsux".
• Another way is to transpose letters (pronunciation is less important). For example, "Untied.com" has been set up for critics of United Airlines.
• There are also various misspellings like this for specific Windows versions as well. For example, "XPee" for Windows XP, "Vi$ta" or "$hista" for Windows Vista, and "$leven" or "$levin" for Windows 7 are all widely used on various Web forums and other sites (such as LinuxQuestions.org). Additionally, people having bloatware and incompatibility problems with Windows Vista refer to it as Windows Hasta La Vista, satirizing the problems it introduced.
• The British daily newspaper The Guardian is sometimes referred to by its anagram, "The Grauniad" (as originated with the satiric journal Private Eye), satirizing the newspaper's poor proofreading and frequent typographical errors.
• The FIA is referred to as FIArrari, mostly when they favor Scuderia Ferrari.
• It is quite common for users of rival social networks to refer to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as "Suckerberg" to make fun of Facebook's strong network effect and vaguely Microsoft-like business practices.

Some place names are also spelled differently in order to emphasize some political view. For instance, Brasil (the Portuguese spelling of "Brazil"), is sometimes misconstrued as a typo for Brazil in English texts. Alternatively, the English spelling Brazil is used in Portuguese pieces of text as a way to denote Anti-Americanism or Anti-globalization sentiment.

Journalists may make a politicized editorial decision by choosing to differentially retain (or even create) misspellings, mispronunciations, ungrammaticities, dialect variants, or interjections.

Intentional misspellings, or spellings used to emphasize dialect, are often used to suggest illiteracy or ignorance. Witness such permutations as "pubblik skoolz", or "public screwels", the latter initially associated with talk radio. A similar phenomenon would be T-shirts saying "I is a kollege stoodent," "Hookt on Foniks Wurks Fur Mee!" or some such, suggesting that college students are ignorant.

Misspellings may also be used to indicate a speaker's accent, when the writer finds that accent worthy of ridicule. A well-known example is nucular, perceived as a regional or uneducated pronunciation of nuclear; Hahvahd is meant to reflect the local pronunciation of Harvard University.