OK, word nerds, time to step aside.

I HATE when words are misspelled on purpose, which is why you will never see me spending my hard-earned money at businesses that try to be cute while perpetuating illiteracy (i.e. Kwik Trip, Hom Furniture).

I can't even misspell in text messages -- which drives my daughter batty and I get a couple messages a week reminding me: "Mom, u dnt have to spell evrythg out!"

Ouch, that hurt just to repeat it.

A friend of mine who is a brainiac and earned his Ph.D. by the time we had our 10-year high school reunion is afraid to send me e-mails because his spelling is not so stellar and he doesn't want me to take my red pen to his correspondence.

And if I have to pick a favorite type of word, I'd have to go with action verbs. And my favorite punctuation is the dash -- when used properly. I'm not so fond of exclamation points as they tend to be overkill.