orthography - Mixing up "quiet" and "quite": spelling or grammar error?


Look at this sentence:



It wasn't quiet what I wanted



And this one:



The music was too quite for me



Obviously quiet and quite are mixed up. Is this considered a spelling mistake? In both cases the words are valid, but used in the wrong place.


Is there a special name for these mistakes? Or are they simply grammatical errors?



Answer



They are not grammatical errors since the sentence structure is correct once you replace the erroneous word with the one the author obviously intended.


So I would categorise those mistakes as spelling mistakes influenced by homophone confusion.


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