Is Tough Really So Hard?

We all have our pet peeves (and by “we” I mean editors). Some people get excited about the serial comma; others debate whether alright is really all right. Personally, I sigh in dismay whenever I see someone write “tuff” when they mean “tough,” or “ruff” for “rough,” “nite” for “night,” and so on.

I’m not a spelling or grammar purist by any means. The alright vs. all right controversy? Frankly, I don’t care. Certainly language is always changing. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be writing a “blog” on my “laptop.” Watching new words come into use or old words take on new meanings or variant spellings is fun and fascinating for wordy people. But “tuff”? Come on.

The thing is, “tuff” doesn’t look tough. I’ve seen tuff killers, tuff gangsters; I’ve even seen tuff drug lords ruff people up. A tuff drug lord—that almost sounds cute, doesn’t it? And the fact that “tuff” is an actual word (a rock composed of volcanic detritus, according to Mr. Webster’s dictionary) doesn’t help (unless that drug lord is composed of volcanic detritus, which is unlikely but possible).

I honestly don’t understand the motivation behind taking perfectly good words and making them look silly. This phenonemon seems to be quite common with words containing the dreaded “gh” combo (which reminds me I forgot to mention “thru”). I know English has its weirdities and often doesn’t make sense, but is it really so difficult to type “g-h” or “o-u-g-h”? No, it isn’t. Just takes a little practice. Trust me, tough really isn’t so hard.