English is Weird

While doing research for my sequel to “Don’t Date the Haunted,” I discovered something humorous.

Can you figure out what these words have in common?

• I
• Saw
• Stair
• Site
• Sea
• Scene

Did you get it?
If not, try saying the list aloud (or should I say “allowed”?)

Yep. They’re homophones about seeing. For a quick definition, homophones are words that are spelled differently, but sound the same (hence the “phone”). So we have I/Eye, Saw/Saw, Stair/Stare, Site/Sight, Sea/See, and Scene/Seen.

What about Saw? The past tense of “see” is spelled the same as the handsaw, but don’t confuse the sentence “I saw the cat.”

To make things worse, I happened across this poem from one of my text books:

A Little Poem Regarding Computer Spell-Checkers

Eye halve a spelling checker
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong our write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is made
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My checker tolled me sew.

- Based on Jerrold H. Zar's "Candidate for a Pullet Suprise," I understand this poem was created by numerous anonymous internet collaborators.

Hour Cents and Census R knot plane two right.