"reax"

    When I opened up my computer today and started up my web browser (Apple's "Safari", if you must know), I began as I usually do by scanning the headlines on cnn.com, which is my home page. There were, as you might expect, a number of stories about the death of Libya's former dictator Gadhafi. But I was not expecting to discover a strange new spelling for a common word, as you can see in these screen captures.

        The first one is from the CNN home page. To find the others, I did a Google search, and it seems that this weird spelling of "reacts" might have originated with CNN. It's bizarre. 

        How did this survive the editing process and end up on the website of a major international news organization? I mean, it isn't even like it could make it through a basic computer spell check.

        (It reminds me of the early days of Marvel Comics, when Stan Lee and other writers would use "thru" instead of "through". I remember thinking that "thru" might be some acceptable variant of "through" (it's not), but later on it occurred to me that it might have been something the letterer had done to be able to fit all of the words in cramped word balloons. Who knows?)

       But… "reax"? That's just plain stupid. -- PL