cacography

plural cacographies · alternative kakography

1. countableuncountableBad spelling or punctuation, especially unintuitive spellings considered as a feature of a whole language or dialect.First known use 16th c.

   A phrase exhibits proofs of cacography, when the accents are misplaced, forgotten, or used erroneously.

   1846, Gabriel Surenne, A Practical Grammar of French Rhetoric, IV.4.1

   1 more example

   In 1997, two American entrepreneurs, Robert Hoffer and Timothy Kay, formed a company called Typo.net to try to profit from Web surfers' cacography.

   1999 February 25, Jack Schofield, The Guardian

   Antonyms: orthography

2. countableuncountableDeliberate comic misspelling; malapropism.

   The soul of dialect is cacography, the deliberate misspelling of words for comic effect, which is the written equivalent of the malapropism.

   2003, Onwuchekwa Jemie, editor, Yo' Mama!, page 10

3. countableuncountablePoor or illegible handwriting.First known use 17th c.

   Many illegible letters is the sign of disorder, and the illegibility of Greeley's cacography has furnished numberless anecdotes.

   1904, John Rexford, What Handwriting Indicates, pages 90–91

   2 more examples

   Germans write a "1" so it's easy to confuse it with a "7": mathematics and cacography can leave Margret and I not speaking to each other for a week.

   2002 June 29, Mil Millington, The Guardian

   I don't even recognize the handwriting – kind of a scrawled, almost illegible cacography with the letters slanting haphazardly in all directions.

   2010, Martin L. Buxbaum, Negotiations with the Sniper: Book One, page 63

   Antonyms: calligraphy