My all-time favorite, besides the all-too common “support angels”, is “fur bearing wall”.
Break metal
Trash Shoots
Too many over the years to recall them all, but I found these to be some of the more amusing ones:
Laundry shoot.
Firestop puddy.
Steel angle lentils.
Break metal is one of the most common.
Can’t strip
“The Bidding Documents shall become the Contract Documents upon execution of the Contractor.”
These may be more regional dialect than actual misspelling:
Footer
Masonary
Chimbley
I caught that the room tag for “Public Cafe” was missing the “L” once.
I also pointed out “Shool” on the drawing cover page for a new K-12 School … embarrassing.
I once saw a note for a “flog pole” on drawings for a middle school.
I remember a “repelling wall” on a fire department training building.
When I was a freshman in high school I recall that there was a “repelling wall” around the senior girls.
On the cover of shops, big letters at top of page - “CFLOORAND, OH”. At least they got the state right.
Amusing word choice in a set of overseas curtain wall shop drawings: “Pyrotechnics Hole”.
Intended to mean “access hole”.
I was reviewing the scope of Site Furnishings with the Landscape Architect for a University Student Housing project via email and they provided a list of items:
Benches, Chairs, Tables, Basketball Hoops, Shade Structures, Corn Holes.
Hmmm, what is a Corn hole? I looked over my shoulder before I googled Corn Hole, afraid of what might pop up on my screen. No worries, merely the target for a bean bag toss game.
I recall searching for the term “Metal Studs” back in the 1990’s, in the “Ask Jeeves” ages, well before Google. The first thing I opened was an image of some young men wearing giant Mohawk hair, fancy cowboy boats, big electric guitars, and nothing else. This was in the simple time years before SSMA thought they needed a website.
Altho not a spelling error on the drawings, in a project meeting with the assistant librarian for the expansion of the ODU library, we were discussing flashing when the librarian started to blush with a strange look on her face. I had to take her aside and explain what construction flashing really is.
I find that many participants in forums like this one (I know it should be “fora” - but so few have studied Latin) are “homonym-challenged” and “Break Metal” is phonetically correct, but is used by drafters that have been told “Brake Metal” but never saw a bending brake.
I could go on, but homonyms seem to be a problem for those who learned by “Hooked on Phonics” instead of a rigorous spelling and vocabulary curriculum.
The spell-check feature is something that I tend to rely on, but it doesn’t recognize “closer” and suggests “closure” and so forth.
I guess that’s why I’m a specifier and not a production architect.
While I never studied Latin, I’ve picked up some in my years of reading just about everything I could get my hands on, so “fora” would have only confused me for a second or two. But yeah, homonyms can “getcha” if you’re not careful. (Like you’re, your, there, their, they’re…and other similar words).
The first time I came across the word “arris”, I thought it was a spelling error. Good thing I thought to look it up BEFORE I sent the documents out with my correction to “arise”!
According to Strunk & White, “forums” and “fora” are both acceptable in English.
I did residential plan check for a couple years, and at least 80% of the drawings had a room labeled “dinning.”
A room in which you can make all the noise you can! So many houses allow noise in all the rooms - what a boon to parents!
I reviewed electrical drawings some time ago that noted what the “mountain height” was for some wall sconces.