The five most annoying badly spelled, made up, abused and misused words

I know, I know. I have photographs to track down, wedding stuff to talk about, thoughts on the state of this and many other nations to make. But today I'd just like to bitch instead, about the weird spelling and made up nonsense I see on t'Internet every day.

1. Discusting

Seriously - does it even really sound like that? Can you really not hear the difference between a word like 'disgusting' and a word like 'discussion'? I am seeing this around far too much to think it's just the odd crappy speller. I have no issues whatsoever with typos (obviously, I make enough of them) nor spelling difficulties, but it does seem to me that 'discusting' only appears when the speller writes in pink / with sparkles / with extra Comic Sans. *shudder*

2. Mischevious

Yeah, it's not a word.

3. I arks

I was once told by a teacher I was training with that I couldn't correct any children who said "arks" instead of "ask" because it's "cultural". Which astonished me, because I couldn't think of a culture that had a problem with the syllable "ask". It sounded to me like a very weird form of racism whereby we were being asked to say that it's okay if you don't know what the actual word is: you can't be expected to learn it because of your culture.

Listen, say whatever you like in whatever way you like to your friends. Add new words to the dictionary, help the English language develop, it's all good. But if I'm being asked to help you communicate propah, I'm going to tell you what the word is and how to say it properly. What you do with it after that is your business.

4. Devastated

A family that loses a loved one is devastated. A community that suffers a natural disaster is devastated. These things are, indeed, devastating. But I'm now seeing this being used in such a way that it's lost all meaning. Reality TV stars area apparently devastated at being voted off a programme, people who've missed their flights are devastated (bet they wouldn't be if they were the ridiculously lucky man who got drunk and missed his Pan-Am flight on December 21st 1988). Let's put this in a little perspective, people.

5. Nutter

If you're telling us you're mad, you're undoubtedly depressingly sane.