I saw an expression that went something like this recently.

Problem:
The word “isle” — spelled I-S-L-E — is the wrong noun here.

Explanation:
I saw this expression in a comment attached to someone’s blog post about a technology and the impact of the two leading U.S. presidential candidates on that technology.

The comment submitter knew the expression “reaching across the aisle” by sound, where the noun “aisle” refers to the virtual or physical aisle that separates Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress, and where “reaching across” refers to coming to common agreement on a legislative bill or proposal.

However, the comment submitter apparently did not know that this “aisle” is spelled A-I-S-L-E.

The comment submitter’s misspelling paints a humorous picture: Democrats and Republicans reaching across an isle, or island, instead of reaching across an aisle, or walkway.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

• “reach across the aisle” — with A-I-S-L-E — 165,000 matches
• “reaching across the aisle” — with A-I-S-L-E — 111,000 matches
• “reach across the isle” — with I-S-L-E — 4,110 matches
• “reaching across the isle” — with I-S-L-E — 10,500 matches

The counts for the two correct spellings sum to about 276,000 matches. The counts for the two incorrect spellings sum to about 14,610 matches.

This tells me that Web authors have favored the correct spelling versus the incorrect spelling by a ratio of 18.9-to-1, which is mediocre.

Solution:
“Republicans and Democrats reach across the aisle …”