How do you (mis)spell DIABETES? Let me count the ways…
Shakespeare wrote nice sonnets, and never needed to sell diabetic test strips, but the Bard furnished us with some quotes that add interest to almost any discussion, including one about buying diabetic supplies. I twisted the famous couplet from his memorable sonnet to introduce the many misspellings of “diabetes.” Because it turns out that there are lots of spellings floating around on the Internet, and some of them are pretty entertaining.
No one is surprised to hear that Americans are not very good spellers. And the advent of spell-check, followed by the addition of the autocorrect feature on almost every device with a keyboard, has only made us lazier when it comes to spelling accuracy. But when someone is selling diabetic strips, you might assume they know how to spell “diabetic,” right? Wrong!
Bring on Shakespeare again, to address the importance, or lack thereof, of proper spelling and terminology:
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
Shakespeare’s observation, through the words of the love-struck Juliet, suggests that it doesn’t matter what you call a thing, it matters what it is. In other words, if I handed you a beautiful long-stemmed rose, but called it a socket wrench, it wouldn’t affect the beauty or aroma of the thing. It is what it is, no matter what I call it. And diabetes is diabetes, even if you spell it “dyabeets.”
So what does that mean for us at Test Strip Search?
In trying to better reach and serve our customers, we found that “What’s in a name?” has a particular meaning when applied to our client base. You see, the people who sell their diabetic test strips to us are usually the diabetics themselves, most of whom know how to spell the name of their condition. But what of others, non-diabetics, who for some reason need to find someone to buy their test strips? What do they call the condition? Is there a spelling-challenged population who would like to sell diabetic test strips, but can’t figure out how? Judging by the number of misspellings I found, I would imagine that’s the case.
You see, I uncovered no less than 13 common misspellings of “diabetes.” A casual one-hour perusal of forums and message boards on diabetes websites turned up these interesting “variations” on the disease name:
- diebetes
- diabet (aka diabets – the plural?)
- dyabete
- diebetis
- dibetis
- diabetese
- diabeteas
- diabities
- diabeties
- dibetes
- diabettes
- dibetus (our favorite, spelled just like Wilford Brimley pronounced it)
Now that I’ve typed all these misspelled versions, I am having a hard time remembering the correct one!
And, lest you think I’m making this up, there is growing concern on medical websites that misspellings and typos lead to many people getting incorrect, inaccurate and potentially dangerous information regarding their health conditions. One researcher on diabetes insipidus website found 323 sites included the incorrect term “inspidus.” (read the article here). So it is clear that the impact of misspellings and typos goes quite beyond our little business of buying diabetic test strips.
There is always the possibility that some of these misspellings are the result of a language difficulty; someone for whom English is not their native language may struggle with the often-confusing choice of “i” with an “ee” sound and “e” with a long “i” sound. Who hasn’t scratched their head at that one? It is fortunate for us that the other important words in our business (“test” and “strip”) are relatively easy to spell for most anyone.
So if someone is trying to sell diabetic test strips, but they search for “dibetes test strips,” they could encounter a problem. However, it’s likely their search engine will autocorrect their spelling error and point them to Test Strip Search, regardless.
And, let’s face it: when the phone rings, and you ask if we buy diabetic test strips, we won’t know if you can spell it or not! We will just give you a quote and pay cash for your test strips while offering polite and professional service.
