Writing Straight vs. Strait

I won't cite chapter and verse, but in researching publications about writer's block, I came upon a word that confuses many people, me and myself included. I didn't know the right form of strait to use to indicate financial hardship. The correct idiomatic use is: straitened circumstances. The heavy duty academic text I was reading used straightened. I knew that was incorrect, but I thought the right form of the word was "straited". That's what I've been saying, although I've never written it (that I can recall). I was so wrong! It isn't even a real word.

Actually, the transitive verb is to straiten, while strait is a noun or adjective. They have related secondary meanings having to do with stressful difficulties and limited funding. A strait, of course, has another meaning as a narrow channel of water -- still that notion of being tight.

Evan Jenkins of the Columbia Journalism Review explains it with an amusing anecdote that includes a definition of straighten, which I have omitted so you can keep these words strait straight.