Who knew that all my favorite words have too many letters?

Headline writing has been very interesting to me, in large part because it dramatically limits my word choice. When writing I've always done my best to take into account the connotations, definition and even the rhythm or origin of words, but not really the length when physically printed on a page. It's quite confining and at times frustrating, but at the same time it's a stimulating challenge.

The rules, such as the lack of articles and odd ways things are punctuated—commas instead of “and,” present tense as past, etc.--also held that same balance of intrigue mixed with frustration, though the former won out due to a sense of personal bravado I experience when asked to write in an unfamiliar form.

This week's mistake is, ironically enough, taken from an article describing social media monitoring tools intended for businesses and organizations. I was researching the topic for another class and barely noticed this one: gauge, as in measure, is misspelled as gage, which probably should have shown up on the page author's spell-check but didn't, possibly because it's a name and is technically a word. That said, a page publishing professional-grade advice should have been more thorough.