I am annoyed with many words that people misspell and mispronounce (e.g. ekcetra for et cetera and exspresso for espresso). It is almost as if an evolution of language is afoot. After all, there are words that are considered archaic or obsolete, but were a large part of the vernacular of their times. Perhaps, someday, espresso will be pronounced exspresso in Italy – naaaahhhhh. It seems that a lot of people just emulate the misspellings and mispronunciations of others; and it promulgates from there. This happens much with people from one language who mispronounce the words of another language. They do not try to find out the correct way to say it. Another example is the name of the northwestern-most county in California – Del Norte County. People mispronounce it as Del Nort. That is most annoying.

That being said, the spelling “ax” has now become so common and usual that it has made it’s way into the standard American dictionary.