Sensational spelling


Sensational spelling is the deliberate spelling of a word in a non-standard way for special effect.

Branding

Sensational spellings are common in advertising and product placement. In particular, brand names such as Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Weetabix, Blu-ray, Kellogg's "Froot Loops" or Hasbro's Playskool may use unexpected spellings to draw attention to or trademark an otherwise common word. In video games, a well-known example of sensational spelling is "Mortal Kombat".

In popular music

Sensational spelling may take on a cult value in popular culture, such as the heavy metal umlaut.
During the 1960s, bands often included in their names misspelled words and/or homophones that played on double meanings of the names as spoken. Examples include the Beatles, an intentional misspelling of "beetles", the Byrds, and Led Zeppelin, in which "led" was deliberately misspelled to make clear it is pronounced rather than the other pronunciation of "lead",. Whereas The Beatles were named largely as a pun for their beat-driven style, many of the bands who adopted the motif following their success in the mid-1960s did so in an effort to capitalize on a fad. The Turtles successfully resisted an effort by their label, White Whale Records, to name them "The Tyrtles."
In contemporary music, the misspelling of words in album or song titles rose to popularity in early 1970s rock, such as:
In the 1980s it became common with funk artists such as Prince, and came to be epitomized in the rap and hip hop genres, with both song titles and artists' names using the form. Sensational spelling was common amongst nu metal bands of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The term "nu metal" itself is a sensational spelling of "new metal", and sometimes even stylized as "nü-metal", with an additional metal umlaut.
An influential hard-rock magazine of the 1970s–80s was Creem.

On the Internet

Many popular websites have grown from intentionally misspelling their name such as flickr, reddit, Tumblr, imgur, Digg, Google and Scribd. In many such cases, the unorthodox spelling is done for trademark purposes, search engine optimization and/or to make it easier to secure a domain name.

Other

In esoteric circles, rather than "magic", the archaic spelling "magick" is often used to differentiate it from stage magic.
Terry Pratchett's fifth Discworld novel, published in 1988, is titled Sourcery, a sensational spelling of the word "sorcery". A sourcerer is, according to Pratchett, "a wizard squared; while the eighth son of a non-wizard is a wizard, the eighth son of a wizard is a sourcerer. A source of magic."