“Here, here” or “hear, hear?”

Which is correct? There were cries of ___________ when the CEO praised employees for the successful launch of the new voice service. a. “hear, hear” b. “here, here”

Answer: a.

Explanation: The difficulty with this one, funnily enough, is that people hear it (rather than seeing it in print) and make an assumption about the spelling. Same thing happens with whirlwind (seen as worldwind) and lots of other words. But I digress.

“Hear, hear” is a shortened version of “hear ye, hear ye,” which goes back to British Parliament in the 1600s, if not earlier. The expression was — and is — used to draw attention to what someone is saying. It implies agreement with the speaker or, in modern times, the writer.

More info:
Wikipedia has an entry for hear, hear.

This NY Times article cites a SpellWeb.com statistic:
On the Web, “here here” outpolls the correct “hear hear” 153,000 to 42,000.