Let me spell it out for you: We're trying to get it write

When you write words, you have to get them rite -- I mean, right.

We have to think before we ink.

And that's not always as easy as it seems.

There's a Lake County high school fond of shouting, "Whose house? Our house!"

The school had a sign professionally made and had it hung in its gymnasium. The first part of the sign reads, "Who's house."

You don't have to be smarter than a fifth-grader to know "who's" means only one thing: "who is."

But who are we as sports writers to make fun? We mess up words (particularly names) all the time.

While most every writer has at least one homophone (words pronounced the same but with different meanings) that causes him or her to think twice, names can be particularly nerve-racking.

For instance, the starting five for Zion-Benton's boys basketball teams includes Ronald Steward and Antonio Stewart. When I write either last name, I have to make sure I don't confuse Steward and Stewart with Jim Seward, who coaches golf at Libertyville, where the girls basketball team features Maka Stewart.

Even though we've been writing the name of Warren's Stanford-bound Sarah Boothe for four varsity basketball seasons, her name can still stymie a careless writer. We always have to think to ourselves before typing, "Sarah with an 'h.' " We once had a headline that read "Booth." "Boo" to us.

Carmel's girls basketball team starts Tiffany Hendrickson and Caitlin Hendricks. Which is confusing when we type their names back-to-back in box scores, or when Clay and Grant Henricksen of Grayslake North also played that night.

Speaking of box scores, it's imperative that we occasionally use the first initial of a player. We might write "C. Morrissey 5 2-2 14" for Stevenson's girls basketball team. If we didn't, we wouldn't know if Caitlin Morrissey scored 14 points with two 3-pointers, or if it was Anna Morrissey.

We can't afford to mess up one capital letter, and yet we occasionally will. It happens with the Morrissey sisters and Henricksen brothers, and with others, too.

After all, there's K. LaTour and J. LaTour (Lakes), A. Bauer and L. Bauer (Lake Zurich), Han. Walton and Hal. Walton (Libertyville), M. Feece and J. Feece (Vernon Hills), K. LePage and J. LePage (Wauconda), B. Jones and J. Jones (Antioch), A. Wehde and K. Wehde (Grant), Jer. Simmons and Jam. Simmons (Libertyville), Jo. Martinez, Jav. Martinez and L. Martinez (Round Lake), G. Johnson and N. Johnson (Stevenson), B. Smith and D. Smith (Vernon Hills) and Brad Wisniewski and Bri. Wisniewski (Wauconda).

O.K.?

Unless the rosters are wrong, it's Katelyn Putkonen (Grayslake Central), Kaitlyn Heffernan (Warren), Caitlin Gahart (Libertyville), Katie Budd (Antioch), Kate Martino (Wauconda) and Katheryn Dickson (Grayslake Central).

Funny, we never botch the last name of Warren girls basketball coach John Stanczykiewicz.