I agree with Dave's post on the Two Gentlemen thread (Post #19) that the words bussiness and posession were not misspelled accidently. They were misspelled intentionally - but for what purpose?

So, what do we have here? We have the note writer "adding" an 'S' to the word business and "subtracting" an 'S' from the word posession. Are we to add and subtract in order to "solve" the note puzzle?

>the words bussiness and posession were not misspelled accidently.
>They were misspelled intentionally -

>Are we to add and subtract in order to "solve" the note puzzle?

No, the note was 'for the moment'. It entertained him to write it and it entertained him to think of its consequences and it left a 'false trail'. He had his fun. Our solving all the endless permutations and combinations involved will avail us naught.

LAST EDITED ON Aug-08-03 AT 05:32 PM (EST)
 
I doubt the misspellings and other grammatical errors were intended to give some special message or code.

I was reading recently about the Zodiac killer who left many notes to law enforcement during his killing spree. Although his writings were in cryptogram code and deciphered by authorities, they also contained many misspellings. Here's an example:

"...Last Christmass In that epasode the police were wondering how I could shoot + hit my victims in the dark. They did not openly state this, but implied this by saying it was a well lit night + I could see silowets on the horizon..."

http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/notorious/zodiac/vallejo_2.html?sect=1

What I glean from these misspellings is simply a person who has not done well in school. A dropout, likely. I also believe that the note was composed by someone other than the person who wrote it.
------------------------------
Here's a site which lists common misspelled words. Among them is "possesses", (similar to possession)
http://www3.wcu.edu/~mkiser/misspell.html

------------------------------
As for bussiness, it is commonly spelled that way by foreigners:
WIEM: International Bussiness Machines
International Bussiness Machines, IBM, amerykańska firma produkująca sprzęt komputerowy, oprogramowanie, systemy komunikacyjne. Zalążkiem... ...
wiem.onet.pl/wiem/00cf10.html cached
:: Boucinhas & Campos + Soteconti ::
Cadastre-se Agora. Cadastre-se e receba gratuitamente por e-mail o Boletim Clima Empresarial. Busca por: ...
www.boucinhas.com.br/empresas/?pg=ib cached | more results from this site
Bussiness Unwise
... UNWISE. An online magazine reporting unwising stories around you. BUSSINESS UNWISE, UNWISE ON LINE MAGAZINE, ...
www.unwise.com/bussiness/ cached | more results from this site
Bussiness Card
Your bussiness card. Filling out and sending this form is the way in what we can put you in touch with the manufacturers you are interested in. ...
www.feria.com/epages/etarvisi.htm cached
trenmang.com add your business
Search Business: Go! (all cities). US zip code: (eg 95127 ) Go! ...

Why do you think that it was intentional?

I am usually a very good speller, but every once in awhile misspell something (of course sometimes they are just typos).

Could it be that the person just doesn't usually use those words? Although it would seem that "business" would be fairly common.

Frequency of use doesn't really mean a lot when you're talking about spelling. I have a friend who consistently spells 'their' as 'thier' even though she is educated and reads quite a bit. Once a person gets into a habit of misspelling certain words, it can be difficult to correct.

Rainsong

"As for bussiness, it is commonly spelled that way by foreigners:
WIEM: International Bussiness Machines
International Bussiness Machines, IBM, amerykańska firma produkująca sprzęt komputerowy, oprogramowanie, systemy komunikacyjne. Zalążkiem... ...
wiem.onet.pl/wiem/00cf10.html cached
:: Boucinhas & Campos + Soteconti ::
Cadastre-se Agora. Cadastre-se e receba gratuitamente por e-mail o Boletim Clima Empresarial. Busca por: ...
www.boucinhas.com.br/empresas/?pg=ib cached | more results from this site
Bussiness Unwise
... UNWISE. An online magazine reporting unwising stories around you. BUSSINESS UNWISE, UNWISE ON LINE MAGAZINE, ...
www.unwise.com/bussiness/ cached | more results from this site
Bussiness Card
Your bussiness card. Filling out and sending this form is the way in what we can put you in touch with the manufacturers you are interested in. ...
www.feria.com/epages/etarvisi.htm cached
trenmang.com add your business
Search Business: Go! (all cities). US zip code: (eg 95127 ) Go! ..."

Makes sense to me...the writer wanted us to think he was with a foreign faction.

A deliberate thing, IMO.

misspell double consonant words too, in his jailhouse grievance?

ie: aproximately (approximately)
Sherriff (Sheriff)
harrassment (harassment)

He also used "a" instead of "an" in "a asst D.A. He used periods after acronyms such as D.A. Not to mention used "as well as" (similar to note) twice.

In other cases, he got it right. Misspelling double consonants is a very common error. I don't think we should assume anything as far as the spellings in the note.

LAST EDITED ON Aug-09-03 AT 01:03 PM (EST)
 
Notice that misspelling of double consonants is indeed very common --- in the first paragraph of the ransom note and NOWHERE else in the note. Also notice that the word "possession" is actually superfluous.

Maikai advised not to assume anything as far as misspellings in the note are concerned because misspellings of double-consonant words is so common. However, Maikai is also suggesting that the author is one of those people. In order not to assume anything regarding misspellings in the note, it is necessary also to ignore the fact that misspellings of double-consonant words is so common. In other words, don't cross someone off the list just because they don't misspell double-consonant words. Yet this is exactly what I am saying when I posted that this person merely interchanged the 's's in business and possession. Don't assume that the perpetrator routinely misspells double-consonant words.

the 48 hours interview with Michael, and Oliva himself. Then......you have historical writings where there are some similar errors in spelling; similar pharase(s); similar printing of some letters; and similar ways of writing abbreviations, using periods.

If the writer of the note was trying to show a familiarity with JR and his "bussiness"....why would he purposely misspell the subject of his motive? (ie: getting money from a fatcat with a successful business?)

"denied" in the note looked like it started out "dinied" but was caught by the writer. The writer made such a point in correcting some errors (also: delivery crossed off, and pickup inserted). I think he corrected what he knew was wrong, and had a problem with double consonant words.

on "smoking gun."

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/ransom1.html

I never thought they were intentional either. Words with multiple S's and C's are always the ones I get wrong too.

The writer surely seems to have intentionally misspelled those two words involving the letter 's'. For no reason in a note of this caliber, should we assume the writer is a poor speller. Nor should we assume the misspelling of these two 's' words is merely a coincidence. There have been many unlikely 'coincidences' involving two suspects high on the list of suspects. Let's take a look at why he might have misspelled these two words. What message was he trying to relay? What should we be looking for?

At first glance, the numbers in the note that look important seem to be the numbers 0, 1, and 8, or 18 or 118. This also holds true in the phrase, "I will call you between 8 and 10." If we take a close look at the two misspelled words, we find that the word 'business', when spelled correctly, has 8 letters, and the word 'possession', when spelled correctly, has 10 letters. So, we again find these same numbers, 0, 1, and 8. However, the writer changed the 8-letter word 'business' to a 9-letter word 'bussiness' and he changed the 10-letter word 'possession' to a 9-letter word 'posession'.

Also, in the phrase "I will call you between 8 and 10", we know that the number 9 IS 'between' the numbers 8 and 10.

So, in the words of The Good Reverend Bayes, "if it's not where you're looking" then maybe we should be looking somewhere else.

Maybe we need to concentrate on the number 9, which also appears in 99%.

Thoughts?

I know what you mean. Up until recently, I always said "even" instead of either. It drove my sister nuts so she finally had to say something. :) Even you stop that or I'll kill you. ha.

Also, I know a very smart person who insists on using "then" where "than" is appropriate. "I'd rather be wrong then right." Now THAT drives ME nuts.

A very good friend of mine who has a Ph.D. mixes things up on purpose, as a joke. For example, he uses irreverent in place of irrelevant, because like me he IS irreverent. Sometimes he'll misspell things in emails because it's funnier that way, and he is indeed a lot funnier than the perpetrator. Once we were corresponding about astronomy and geography in conjunction with each other, and he used the word "astrologonomy." Being irreverent, we usually refer to astronomy as astrology or, subtly changing the 'n,' astrolomy between the two of us as though we don't know the difference. He also refers to anything having to do with wine, women, or song as "important business." Business is often "bidness."

I still think that it's important not to dismiss someone who doesn't misspell things easily. Note that both 's' words have two positions of 's's. You could spell business as: business, bussiness, busines, bussines; and possession as: possession, posesion, possesion, or posession. He chose the first position for both. Making the particular mistake of spelling business (from Middle English) as "bussiness" is inconsistent with making the mistake of spelling possession (from Middle English from Middle French from Latin) as "posession." I would expect that ONE of "busi" and "posse" would have an error OR both would be spelled correctly. The fact that they are BOTH spelled inconsistent with each other and WRONG (instead of "inconsistent and correct" or "consistent and wrong") is very suspicious.

I agree with Evening2 that the rest of the note gives absolutely no indication that we should expect these misspellings.

Some people have had the theory that there is more than one author of this note. If that's the case, it could be that the person writing the first part of the note doesn't spell as well.

"You could spell business as: business, bussiness, busines, bussines; and possession as: possession, posesion, possesion, or posession."

If one spells the word business in any of those forms it is a direct reference to a kiss because the first syllable is buss and buss means to kiss. Clearly the writer is sending JonBenet a kiss of death.

And if you look at possession, and spell its first syllable as posse, clearly this means we should form a posse and head straight for the killer!

(Hats off to Dr.Hodges and his mind-boggling analysis of the ransom note.)

Rainsong

Are you kidding? Or are you seriouis about buss? Who the heck would come up with that?

Poll. How many people knew that buss means kiss?

Has there ever been a murder solved years later where, when explained by the perp, have been so conviluded and indirect?

Just asking. My motto is "keep it simple" but I guess if someone is a genuine weirdo, they may come up with something crazy.

Lilac, let me be the first to say that theory does not make any sense at all. The first part of the note is completely acurate, except for those two intentionally misspelled words.

But we all see books with thousands of words and only 1 or 2 misspelled. At work, very intelligent folks sometimes make a mistake or 2. I mean we are talking about someone who murders (at least 1) little girls -- not Mr. Mirriam-Webster.

The only reason I would think someone would misspell business is that maybe they wanted the readers to think that they are not associated with the business world -- like someone John worked with.

But I draw a blank on possession (see, I don't even know if I spelled it right).

Thoughts?

From Hodges book: "Shift to the word "bussines" and ask yourself what it reminds you of. A quick word association leads to "buss"..."bustle"..."bust."

"A "buss" is a kiss. The writer has changed John Ramsey's beloved successful business and career into "kissiness," which changes him from an aggressive male to a soft feminine character. This is consistent with the earlier slip-up in the same sentence that in essence said, "We don't respect your business."

"The same idea continues with "bustle." The dictionary defines bustle as "a pad or frame formerly worn to swell out the fullness at the back of a woman's skirt." Women don't wear bustle anymore, but clearly it's a feminine image...."

I kid you not. This is on page 8 of his book, A Mother Gone Bad.

Rainsong

"bussines" is derivative of the word "*ssinines" or "*ssinine" (singular) which, based on his sexual word fetish, shows he is.

Thank you very much.

LAST EDITED ON Aug-10-03 AT 00:14 AM (EST)
 
While working on my previous post, although I didn't mention it, it occurred to me that "posession" contains the word "pose" while "possession" has "posse." I know some of you such as Braveheart know what I'm getting at.

Strike a pose and avoid the posse.

---------------------

Buss is also "a rugged square-sailed boat formerly used esp. in herring fishery." (Webster's New Third International, 1971.) So it's sailor talk as well as "kiss."

We respect you as a sailor, but not as a businessman.

---------------------

There are all kinds of ridiculous connections that could be made. Are there any we can believe in?

Edited to add: Thanks to Rainsong for providing inspiration. We've gotten nowhere, but at least we can't be accused of getting there by going in the wrong direction!

LAST EDITED ON Aug-10-03 AT 00:43 AM (EST)
 
I did a search online and found 144 websites that contain the word "bussiness" within them somewhere.

Here is just one example -- a story by the Associated Press, no less.

http://www.news-miner.com/Stories/0,1413,113~26794~1538623,00.html

Here's how it starts:

Northwest doing brisk bussiness in Anchorage
By Associated Press

Edited to add: I'd like to get ahold of some of CW's writings. I wonder if he had any words that he always misspelled.

Well, it may be misspelled from time to time (which certainly is not the majority of time) but it also certainly was NOT misspelled unintentionally by the note writer.

OK, call me slow, but I still don't see how you are coming to that conclusion. Yes, it's a possibility, but why are you so certain? Just because that guy says so? Or is there something else?

I'm not arguing, just don't see the "clearness" of it.

Bussiness: 154,000 hits on Google
Business: 162,000,000 hits on Google

Less than 1 in 1,000 misspelled. I myself call that NOT a lot. It's less than one-tenth of one percent.

Posession: 54,000 hits on Google
Possession: 4,390,000 hits on Google

More than 1 in 100 misspelled. A little bit more than one percent. Still not a lot, but ten times the number of misspellings of business.

A priori chance of misspelling both by accident (no correlation):

(154,000/162,000,000) * (54,000/4,390,000) = 0.000012 or about one-thousandth of one percent.

Some people will say that these may be correlated. Yes, they may be, but I would argue that they are more likely to be anti-correlated (spelling both with one 's' or both with two 's's --- misspelling one causes the other one to be more likely to be correct) for the reasons I discussed earlier. From this, we can conclude that it is very likely that the misspellings were done on purpose.

this--if the perp is a lousy speller, he's a lousy speller. And what are the odds that someone like Oliva that was profiled on 48 hours, has the same spelling disability?

Oh really? The validity or invalidity of applying statistics to an application is established either theoretically by mathematical proof or experimentally by making predictions confirmed or contradicted by subsequent observation, not by making declarations of validity or invalidity.

I just went to Google and checked to see how many hits I could get with BOTH "posession" and "bussiness." Anyone care to guess?

37 that didn't have anything to do with the ransom note (about 50 with it).

1,340,000 hits where both spellings are together and are correct, so I am expecting very approximately:

1,340,000 * 0.000012 = 16 for no correlation.

This is VERY close to 37 given the approximations used and compared to what Maikai is suggesting. If they were correlated as Maikai suggests, we should expect something like between 1,340 and 13,400. We aren't even remotely close to that. Due to approximations, anti-correlation is still possible (that would be less than 16 expected), but we're down in the noise with this low incidence, so we cannot tell.

Once again: Misspelling both accidentally is demonstrated to be very unlikely.

The fact that Oliva has a spelling problem doesn't have anything to do with this case. Furthermore, the results from a particular individual cannot be used to extrapolate to a population, unless the population is one, of course. So Oliva's spelling problem sheds no light whatsoever on the misspellings of the ransom note in terms of making any kinds of predictions of likelihood or unlikelihood. Results from a single individual can only be used for deciding possibility or impossibility. That's not what is being discussed here.

The notion that people who misspell are going to specifically misspell possession and business as they are misspelled in the ransom note is contradicted by data. In my opinion, it's also contradicted by the observation that people tend to put either two 's's where only one should be OR put one 's' where two should be, not making both mistakes with the same letter in the same paragraph of a document, especially with one of the words being one that is NOT commonly misspelled in this manner.

consider he's one of the very few people talked about that supposedly called a friend sobbing uncontrollably saying he hurt a child---a few days after the murder of JBR....and there are double consonant misspellings in his writings, "as well as" similar phrases, and similar printed alphabet characters.

In order to make any kind of statistical analysis you have to plug in more variables such as education level and age to name a few....and analyze more samples of double consonant words. Who was sampled in the examples given? Making a general statement comparing two words, IMO, is useless in coming to a conclusion about what was meant in the ransom note. Not unlike someone making a statement Patsy did it, based on statistics, without plugging in other characteristics of mothers that murder their children.

Vivian Cook: Teaching Spelling

unpublished circa 1999

Abstract

This paper suggests that spelling has been unduly neglected in the teaching of English. It analyses a corpus of students’ spelling mistakes in terms of problems common to many students, such as the spelling of idiosyncratic single words and pronunciation-based problems, and problems with sound/ letter correspondences for vowels, consonants, consonant doubling, <i>/<y> alternation, sound-based mistakes and transposition of letters. It sketches typical problems of students with eleven first languages. It argues that the teaching of spelling should rely partly on checking a set of frequent mistakes as one-off items, partly on explanations of spelling rules for sound/letter relationships and for letter combinations and position, partly on drilling of particular aspects such as doubling.

Note some phonetic symbols will appear odd unless you have Ecological Linguistics IPA font.

Spelling has been almost completely ignored in teaching methodology, in course-books and in research into second language learning. In so far as anybody thinks about it at all, spelling is dismissed as one of those inevitable problems about English, like the weather: oh dear, English spelling is terrible and we need to grit our teeth and bear it. Yet, beyond a certain stage, perhaps the majority of student’s mistakes in written English are to do with spelling. Spelling mistakes are often felt to be a sign of lack of education; while accent and grammar can be excused, spelling mistakes can be unforgivable. Leaving the teaching of spelling to haphazard correction cannot be in the students’ best interests.

This paper looks at 1498 mistakes from L2 students of English, collected from ten-line samples of the writing of 375 students with diverse first languages doing an entry test for an English university, described in Cook (1997), and amplified from the Longman Corpus of Learner English to get at least 100 errors from eleven groups with different L1s, typically taken from 30 or so additional pieces of student work, namely: Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish and Urdu.

Problems for many learners

Some problems afflict many students virtually regardless of their first language.

(iii) Consonant doubling

One common mistake is the doubling of consonants, amounting to 14.4% of all mistakes and 43.3% of mistakes with consonant addition or omission. In English writing, unlike languages such as Spanish, single and double consonants do not correspond to different sounds but follow complex orthographic rules: doubling occurs after primary-stressed short vowels full unless they are more than two syllables from the end celery, before <le> little, in some Latinate words with a prefix command, and in several other ways (Carney, 1994). Mistakes consist equally of adding an unnecessary double consonant (48.3%) and omitting a necessary second consonant (51.7%). Some may be due to pronunciation problems when students do not know whether a vowel is short or long.

<l> Problems include: omission or addition of one <l> as in excelent and allarm; <ly> endings where <l> either gets left out generaly or an extra <l> gets added largelly; unnecessary doubling in endings in <ful> beautifull, also found in other words ending in single <l> with short stressed vowels such as tel and wil.

<r> Unnecessary doubling of <r> occurs mostly between vowels as in verry, tirred; lack of doubling is found on stressed verb-stem endings in <er>/<ur> occured, transfering and the ubiquitous refered.

< m> The most common mistake is the loss of <m> in accomodation; some words in <comm> lose an <m> comercial and some in <com> gain an <m> comming.

<t> Medial <t> is often wrongly doubled universitty or left single atention, hoter.

<s> Final <ss> often becomes <s> adres, medial <s> becomes <s> dissapoint.

Adding or omitting a second consonant is one of the most common mistakes in spelling errors. The spelling errors in the ransom note (denied also misspelled and then corrected) could indicate someone that does not have a lot of formal education.

LAST EDITED ON Aug-10-03 AT 09:15 AM (EST)
 
Misspelling is a common problem of the typical American, just as is obesity. I suspect that there is no special significance to the missing or added s's.

However.

There is only one way to break through a blinding fog and that is to forge ahead. Standing still gets you nowhere. What I am saying is that repeating ourselves over and over with the same statements and analysis and conclusions about the evidence of the case will never get us that "one step beyond" where we resolve things. Only when we "forge ahead," into the fog, will we actually get anywhere. We need to apply creativity freely and abundantly and it should be acknowledged and appreciated.

I see this attempt to see some deep significance in misspellings of the note as that type of mental exercise which gets our mind out of first gear and into second. Looking at things in new ways is one form of creativity, which is the basis for new things, the start of breakthroughs like wheels and electricity. This applies not only to the note and it's details but to virtually evry detail of every clue.

Here's my creative thinking about those s's. How many letters are there between the s that shouldn't have been and the s that should have been? Answer: 69. Interestingly, there are 34 letters and a period after the s that should not be and the arrow pointing down to the h in daughter, and 35 letters between that arrow and the s that should be. The arrow happens to be at the midpoint between those two s's! (Do I hear twilite zone music in the background?).

The arrow then, because of this symmetry, takes on ultrasignificance. The arrow points to daughter. It is a way for the writer to emphasize his point...which is, the key point in the entire case, that the daughter is the key element of the note and what should be thought of most clearly. It's like underlining or highlighting. But not only did he use an arrow, he used a metaphor, i.e., the s (daughter) who should not have been, will become the s (daughter) who should have been.

Does that make you go hmmmm?

Mikie, you astound me sometimes. It makes me go more like huh? You have a point, though, somewhere, I think. The target and motive perhaps being JBR, which falls into Lou Smit's thinking, that the motive was that of a sadistic pedophile all along. A previously convicted sex offender might try to throw the police off, with a kidnapping motive---he might even want to convince himself that he's not a sick, perverted creep.

You're right in that the spelling errors being intentional or unintentional won't get solved here.

>You're right in that the spelling errors being intentional
>or unintentional won't get solved here.

>No, the note was 'for the moment'. It entertained him to write it
>and it entertained him to think of its consequences and it left
>a 'false trail'. He had his fun. Our solving all the endless
>permutations and combinations involved will avail us naught.

Okay: we have considered the two misspellings to be independent of each other, we have also considered them to be intentional, etc.

Those who see an accent mark in attache are more likely than not to see all misspellings to be pure whimsical exercises. We could limit our inquiry to ransom notes rather than google hits but that decreases our 'n' substantially, particularly since most ransom notes are short and to the point.

What we do know:
He didn't have to leave any note at all.
He did so solely because he enjoyed it.
He didn't have to leave a long-winded, rambling James Bondish note.
He did so solely because he enjoyed it.
He didn't have to say anything about phone calls or ransom deliveries.
He did so solely because he enjoyed it.

Now we come to the misspellings:
Don't you think its simply his way of toying with the investigators?

My point is um er uh....this.

The s's might be a symbol for JonBenet, since the first s is in the wrong place (like "she" is in the wrong place) and the s in "posession" is what she became, a "missing-she". Could this be an intentional metaphor? I didn't say it but you inferred it, that we on this forum probably won't know, we can only guess.

But that is essentially the point of the McR's, was it not? She was in a situation where she was displaying what they thought of as inappropriate poses for her age, adult movements, and sexual allusions. "She deserved to die" and she brought about her own death, as Janet's thinking went. Also there was an accusation of incest by Bill. She was like the s in bussiness, just not in the right place. And what is the result of the crime? She became missing and "gone" just like the missing s in posession. So the metaphor is there, but was it intentional? Dunno.

saw any of the pageant videos....and all they knew was she was in some pageants, and saw photos. Boulder being of a feminist bent, I would think, would not generally look favorably on pageant partcipation---particularly where the natural look is embraced.

Janet's statements aren't exactly profound or new. Truman Capote's book, "In Cold Blood" was the first that really changed this concept of victims and perps....at least that's been touted.

One good point---we don't know what was going on in the Perp's brain---ie: a paranoid schizophrenic sees things and connections that others don't. A number----a date---an object can have great significance. Not to say you're in that category, Mikie---just the concept that something was going on in the perp's brain that most of would never understand.

The problem here as I see it is we have no other double consonants in the letter to gage whether the writer misspells double consonants out of habit or with a motive.

The only motive to misspell is to hide who he is, and yet he does not misspell any other words....why not misspell a few more, while he is at it?

such as "denied"...that started out being "dinied?" Look at "scrutiny"---the "cru" is squished together---almost looks like "scurtiny."

Good catch Maikai...why bother to correct words?

Also he crossed out delivery and replaced it with pick-up...it seems to me he is writing a RN from the top of his head and he thought he had spelled the two double consonant words correctly...

For all we know, the ransom note was actually recorded in a small recorder. We know Oliva liked to tape record (sick)fantasy stories. The perp may not have had access to pad and paper......or access to a place where he could sit down and compose the note. The subject matter of the note could have been something recorded aheaded of time--at least the general jist of it......maybe he would play it into the telephone----or the thought occurred to him when he actually gained access to the house...had hours alone....and decided he could really pull off his plan, to write it out. If the Ramseys woke up early, and discovered JBR gone, they would call the police before he had time to call. Even a person living on the streets would find it easy to use a recorder vs pen and paper.

Well, folks, right or wrong...I'm not saying, because who knows...but right or wrong, I still stand by the idea that too much intellectual credit is given to the perp. I think a lot of what he/they got away with was dumb luck -- not planning. Sure they planned the note and wrote it out, but to insert symbolisms? They would have really had to give that some thought before hand AND they would have to question or wonder if ANYONE would ever figure it out.

Just out of curiosity -- not to step on toes or make anyone mad, but has anyone ever heard of or read about someone purposely misspelling a word or 2 to get a hidden message across?

I think it's far-fetched, but if anyone wants to prove me wrong, be my guest -- I'll admit when I'm wrong. (After reading my first line, I guess I am saying right or wrong. oops) :)

LAST EDITED ON Aug-10-03 AT 02:46 PM (EST)
 
Maikai posted:

"In order to make any kind of statistical analysis you have to plug in more variables such as education level and age to name a few."

Note "...any kind...."

This is absurd. The reason why we have statistical analyses in the first place is to handle problems where we don't have information.
It would be nice to know all the values of all variables in all problems, but if we knew that, we wouldn't need to do any analysis.

The data clearly show that the simultaneous misspelling of "bussiness" and "posession" were intentional. Arguments to the contrary are without foundation. Note that these arguments are just declarations, expressions of opinion, etc. --- no data, no analysis.

We're not looking for someone who has very little formal education. In my opinion, based on the analysis I've done, we're looking for someone who, as Don said, was toying with the investigators that he knew would read the note. This is not an irrelevant point. Crimes that are spontaneous are committed without contemplating investigators coming along later and examining everything. At the time this note was written, the perpetrator was already contemplating investigators reading the note (Edited to add: Not just the parents!). Yet, if Lou Smit is correct, he hadn't even seized JonBenét yet, let alone killed her. (Edited to add: So he planned to kill her, not just "kidnap" her, as he was starting the note.)

Edited to add: Now, let's all see if we can imagine Patsy and/or John kidding around with the investigators as they write a note to cover their tracks.

LAST EDITED ON Aug-10-03 AT 03:04 PM (EST)
 
is they sound good...but they can lie--that's the first thing I was taught. Try doing an analysis on people that have never used a computer.....and comparing adult illiterates to a 4th grade class. The abstact I cited was research actually done by an educator, that compared people without English as a first language to those where English is a first language. Double consonant problems had the highest error rates...in the 50% range.

No one can say what the true intent of the note was, so speculate all you want. Taking the note(partially) at face value, and the crime, it was a kidnapping gone bad, by someone that was snoring through English class....probably educated in a public school in the USA, that had a penchant for little girls, and had a history of sexual assault and violence.

For nonstatisticians, here is a very pedestrian way of looking at the misspelling issue in the ransom note. The same results are obtained. (By the way, statistics don't lie, people do --- lying requires intent.)

Presented here are some of the spelling hazards in the ransom note which the author miraculously avoided despite his serious problems with "bussiness" and "posession."

Double-consonant words:

2. carefully
3. small
6. follow
7. letter
8. will account will
9. bills bills
10. attache
11. will will call
12. tomorrow
13. will
14. getting call
15. arrange
17. will immediate
18. will
22. will
25. scanned will
28. killing Follow
29. getting
30. well
32. killing will
33. common

NO ERRORS other than "posession."

Some potentially "difficult" words not already listed:

2. Listen individuals represent (silent 't', 'ua' combo, all 'e's)
3. foreign faction ('eign', 'c' not 'k', not 'ck' or other)
6. instructions ('uct' and 'tions' not 'toins')
10. adequate attache ('e' not 'u', 'a', etc., Oliva can spell attaché?)
12. instruct delivery (ending in 't', 'very' not 'vry', not 'vrey')
13. delivery exhausting advise ('h' in exhaust, 's' not 'z' nor 'advice')
14. monitor ('or' not 'er', not 'ir')
15. earlier delivery hence earlier ('c' not 's' in hence, 'ie' not 'ei')
16. delivery daughter ('aught' not 'uaght' not 'auhgt')
17. deviation instructions
18. execution daughter denied remains (not 'denide', not 'denid')
19. burial gentlemen watching daughter ('u' in burial, 'tle', 'tch' not 'ch')
20. particularly advise provoke ('ticul' not 'ticlu' not 'tick', not confused with advice)
22. etc. daughter beheaded (complete with period)
23. stray alert authorities (not 'strey', not 'alurt', not 'alirt', not 'uhlert')
24. tampered
25. scanned electronic devices (not 'scaned', not 'skanned', not 'devises')
26. deceive familiar ('ei' not 'ie')
27. enforcement countermeasures tactics
28. daughter out smart (probably an error, one of very few)
29. instructions
30. constant scrutiny (Oliva can spell scrutiny?)
31. authorities
33. underestimate southern common
35. Victory (not 'Victry', not 'Victery', not 'Victrey', not 'Vicktory')

No errors other than "out smart" which is arguably OK.

Doubling-up possibilities including vowels that were avoided:

2. individduals inndividuals inddividuals indivviduals individualls
reppresent repressent
3. forreign resspect resppect
4. counntry
5. unhharmed unharrmed unharmmed
6. 19977! instructtions insstructions
8. withhdraw withddraw
9. remainning remmaining
10. addequate adeqquate adequatte adeequate (in the South)
11. monney moneey papper paaper
12. beetween tommorow toomorrow dellivery delivvery
13. deliverry exhaussting advisse (also avoided confusion with advice)
14. monnitor monittor monitoor moneey
15. earrlier monney earllier
16. deliverry picckup piccup (confused with hiccup)
17. Anny deeviation devviation deviattion deviationn ressult (confusing name "Anny" with "any")
18. execcution allso alsso remmains
19. propper burrial
20. particularlly particcularly particullarly addvise provvoke provokke
21. Speakking annyone abbout sittuation
22. ressult daughtter beeing beheadded beeheaded
23. talkking takking allert authorrities (confusing 'l' and 'k' in takking)
24. monney anny markked tamperred tamppered
25. ellectronic electronnic electronicc eelectronic
26. deeceive warnned fammiliar familliar
27. ennforcement countermeassures
28. outssmart outtsmart
29. instructtions (not to mention 'instrukshunns')
30. fammily scrootiny
32. arround
33. underrestimate underestimmate southhern southernn
35. Victorry!

Not one single error other than "bussiness." Amazing, isn't it? It is especially so when we consider that there are quite a number of words that are about as long as "business" in which it would be difficult to see an error and many words with multiple opportunities for error.

Sometimes it's what is NOT there that is more telling than that which is. If the author was a terrible speller, there should have been many more errors. Therefore, the misspellings, in very close proximity to one another and exactly complimentary with one of them being very uncommon, were very likely to be intentional.

It is extremely unlikely that "business" and "possession" were accidentally misspelled and that all these other errors were accidentally avoided.

It is not speculation to say that the misspelling of business as "bussiness" is rare compared to misspelling possession as "posession" nor that the rate of misspelling both together can be computed by multiplying the incidences together and assuming no correlation. It's backed up by something called "DATA." This is what is sorely lacking in some of the other posts on this thread.

Also, it isn't necessary to compare those who have never used a computer to those who have. The text for web pages isn't necessarily produced by those who have used computers, and people hired to do this don't necessarily examine the text for spelling errors, nor are they necessarily good spellers (see below).

More importantly, for determining the relative misspelling of business and possession as well as determining the relative misspellings of both together (much rarer in comparison), one only needs the relative incidences of misspelling. Is this clear? Probably not. Relative incidences of misspellings are probably nearly constant across those who have used computers and those who have not. There is no reason to think otherwise. The reason people misspell certain words more than others probably has little to do with education, even though education can decrease the raw incidences for all words taken together. For example, the likelihood of misspelling both "business" and "possession" together can probably still be calculated by multiplying the individual probabilities together, regardless of education level. Although the raw incidences may be higher for lower education levels, the property of no correlation almost certainly still holds. There is absolutely no reason to expect education level to "decorrelate" this characteristic.

What is really humorous about assuming that people who have used computers are better spellers than those who haven't is that it's probably not true! Those of us who have received text messages from sysadmins, programmers, etc. can verify what I'm saying. Programmers often misspell things horribly because they are used to abbreviating words in programming so often that they have completely forgotten how to spell almost everything. I would have expected these misspellings to decrease since the switch to languages and O/S's which allow longer variables, but it seems to be a constant problem.

Now let's consider the recent posts with regards to the ransom note.

As we start with a low education level and then increase it, would we really expect that "business" and "possession" are the LAST two words that are misspelled as the education level is increased? Anyone who claims that this is the case after looking at the extensive list of possibilities I posted needs to explain why this is the case.

As we start with a high education level and decrease it, would we expect "business" and "possession" to be the FIRST two words to be misspelled? Here again, look at the list and explain why this is the case. It's going to be hard because the incidence of misspelling of business as "bussiness" is low compared to "posession" and many other words.

For example, tomorrow is misspelled about 3% of the time, much higher than either business (0.1%) or possession (1%). Even alert is misspelled as "allert" more often (0.2%) than business is misspelled as "bussiness" (0.1%). Around is misspelled as "arround" at a rate of about 0.1%. Attaché is misspelled as "ataché" four times as often as business is mispelled as "bussiness." And so on.

So for the n'th time, we see that the misspellings in the ransom note are almost certainly not accidental. The likelihood that business and possession were accidentally mispelled and --- more importantly --- that all the other hazards, including those with comparatively higher incidences, were accidentally avoided is very low.

And finally, saying that "The likelihood ... is low" is not speculation. It is a mistake to say that it is. Likelihood addresses probability, and we can estimate it, even if only qualitatively. That the likelihood is low is backed up by all the data shown in this thread. It is a demonstrated fact that LIKELIHOOD of accidental misspellings is low.

>Good catch Maikai...why bother to correct words?

>Also he crossed out delivery and replaced it with
>pick-up...it seems to me he is writing a RN from the top of
>his head and he thought he had spelled the two double
>consonant words correctly...

That's pretty much how I see it. It seems thoughtfully written in order to get it as close to what the writer wanted to convey as possible. I keep trying, but I just don't see this guy as being much of a "word warrior." It reminds me of when I am trying to write something that is important, and I want to get it right. I can almost see the guy sticking the pen in his mouth thinking about how to put the next line....ya think they tested the pen for DNA? Note writer seems to be intoxicated to a degree, as well. His spatial sense is off kilter. By my perception, there are too many emotional changes and conflicts in his "voice" to take the note seriously as a piece of literature meant to convey anything other than what satisfied the fantasies of the writer. Personally, I don't think he was able to get the note or the crime to completely satisfy him. He seems too conflicted about it.

Addition: the autopsy photos showing a very deeply embedded ligature.
Subtraction: the merely declaratory posts re: erroneous misspellings.

Surely the new 'sum' that is reached is one that focuses on the great pleasure this guy took in his work. He crafted a garotte, he crafted a note. There were no mistakes.

It was all intentional.

Dave does your data include foreigners trying to spell bussiness?

"As for bussiness, it is commonly spelled that way by foreigners:"

Can we suppose that for foreign spellers the relative percentages would stay the same or might there be a greater difficulty spelling some words more than others, attributable to culture, language related thinking patterns, or other?

Dave, thanks for those posts. They say it all. And when you referred to "raw" incidences in your post, it reminded me of the time Bill McReynolds said the kidnapping of their daughter and her friend 22 years to the exact date of JonBenet's death was just a "raw" co-incidence.

Interesting.

I remember reading about McReynolds writing something entitled "How to Fake It".

I am at work but I am sure someone is familiar with this.

Hi, AvidReader, and yes, you are correct. In one of his "obits", it says he wrote something about "How to Fake it as a Critic or Movie Critic" (not sure of the exact title).

AvidReader,,,Here ya go:

"He was the author of numerous papers, articles and book reviews, including "How to `Fake It' as a Reviewer" (1974), "The Way of the Tactless Texan" (1983) and "Theater Coverage: An Interpretation" (1982). He taught history of journalism, critical writing for the journalist, opinion writing and mass communication and culture at the journalism school."

For some reason I thought it may have been journalissm.

THREAD CLOSED AS OVERLY LONG

SEE CONTINUATION THREAD

THREAD CLOSED

THREAD CLOSED

the two words with double ss's were wrong. The perp has a problem with double ss's......and if we had more of his historical handwriting, we would see he routinely gets it wrong on other words with double consonants.