Is spelling important?

[Eric]

I was just browsing the internet and reading news items. Within a minute I found a woman with a hare in her bra (a big tabloid story, this week) evidently saying (not her fault, but the journo quoted her):

The hare was so beautiful, I just couldn't bare to throw her away.

In a reader's comment about terrorism:

We are reeping what Governments have sown.

Does spelling matter? The English language is notoriously illogical when it comes to spelling, for various historical reasons. No one appears to have any inclination to reform, or further standardise, English spelling, so it is likely to remain as it is.

Is correct spelling a sign of education, or merely a way of playing the snobbery & one-upmanship game, like being able to pronounce surnames such as Cholmondeley, Beauchamp and Pakenham correctly?

Any views?

[Stewart]

I'd like to think it was a sign of education. I can't help wanting to correct every spelling and misplaced apostrophe that I see. Sadly - and forgive the choice of news node - it seems there are others in academic positions who would see us slip into a babel of text speak.

The comments are fun:

Correct spelling and grammer [sic] define the English language and clarify written communication thus avoiding confusion.

- Thomas, Dubai

This man is no expert, he is a fool! If you lower standards, you lower ability, you dumb down the language, thus taking away it's [sic] power to describe anything....Literacy is a measure of understanding, punctuation is vital to the English language and guide to intelligence, something this man seems to lack...

- Nigel, Somerset

Another accademic [sic] trying to get his name in the papers.Is this what they teach at univercity [sic] or just the meandering hallucinations of idiots. They [sic] was nothing wrong with the schooling of kids in the UK until they started looking for change.What did they [sic] get more illitarcy [sic] anongst [sic] school leavers.

- Jamie Cafe, Norfolk UK

What would the professor suggest we do with the time saved at school,study some PC mantra on slavery or the evil British Empire.Brains don'tt [sic] develope [sic]unless they are set tasks.Since the introduction of things like calculators children no longer instinctively know numbers.Spelling is there for a reason,and not just to waste time.I suppose he would have us all learn textspeak,and, having just reread the article,I see that he would.It really annoys me that idiots like his [sic] man are on the public payroll.what is actually needed is MORE concentration on CORRECT spelling and exam failings where students can't spell correctly.Try putting something in alphabetical order when you don't know how to spell it.Text messaging has its place-on the mobile phone only,and likewise we can legitimately take shortcuts in emails,although I don't myself because I wish to be understood without any conflict of meaning.Both have no place in exams or in the written word generally.

- ken, london

[spooooool]

Yes it is, but my grammar, punctuation etc etc a re always going to be shoddy online, since i have a disability and lack the patience to proof my posts. Spelling is second nature, so too running with a thought, if it gets in the way of that then yes i suppose so, but i've known brilliant individuals whose spellling, syntax were atrocious, so i'm not sure what is meant by education in such circumstances. I think very fast and i type slowly and shoddily If people are that interested in what i have to say they'll make an effort, by the same token i'll always try for patience in respect of other people and their spelling

[Eric]

About the woman and the hare, I was thinking that she'd be bearing her tits for the rest of her life, while maybe only baring them when alone in the bathroom. She can't bear people to see them bare, because she then looks like a bare bear. She was weaning the leveret while thinking of the overweening hubris of mankind, chopping up and cooking hares, after removing all the hairs. And so on.

I think that less (if any) attention is paid nowadays to spelling at school, and because of the abbreviated spelling of text messages, some young people never learn to spell. Typos are one thing, but simply not knowing is another.

But I do have sympathy with those who have had relatively little education themselves, and who get accosted by the pub bore (usually from the very low end of the middle class), who will automatically and pedantically correct spoken things such as "pronounciation", merely to look superior to his "ignorant" mate. There are spelling equivalents of this, too, such as my Chumley-Beecham-Packenam examples. [I only learnt the third of these a couple of weeks ago myself.]

As you suggest, Stewart, apostrophes have a function: to compensate for intonation, which makes things intelligible in speech. The "it's versus its" one is actually just plain illogical, because you say "John's" but "its". "His" is also just a conventional form of "he's", i.e. "of him". Also no apostrophe. But convention counts for a lot in English spelling.

I don't [with an apostrophe] think that everyone that claims to be is in fact what I term "dylsexic"; I think a lot of people are just too idle to learn, and do not have the medical condition - which is, nevertheless, genuine in certain cases.

Spooooool [six "o"s], if you work with words, like a journalist, proof-reader, translator, publisher's editor, manager, speech-writer, author, teacher, lecturer, you simply cannot afford to take the attitude: "what I say is so important that I've got to get it out, whatever the spelling". There are many jobs you would not be able to hold down if you are too impatient to learn the rudiments. And spelling is one of the rudiments of writing. Respect cuts both ways: respect for the writer - but also respect for the reader.

English spelling is by no means "second nature", unless you've written the word hundreds of times and get it right (not "write"!) automatically. If your spelling or grammar is too weird, you will distract your reader from what you are writing ( = wot U R riting).

[spooooool]

.

Spooooool [six "o"s], if you work with words, like a journalist, proof-reader, translator, publisher's editor, manager, speech-writer, author, teacher, lecturer, you simply cannot afford to take the attitude: "what I say is so important that I've got to get it out, whatever the spelling". There are many jobs you would not be able to hold down if you are too impatient to learn the rudiments. And spelling is one of the rudiments of writing. Respect cuts both ways: respect for the writer - but also respect for the reader.

i took that as a given, Eric, and as for second nature i was talking about my own and for the most part

[Sybarite]

Yes, it's important – as is grammar. Not least because it helps in understanding.

Language evolves, but that cannot be used as an excuse to misuse it out of laziness.

[metin]

This was e-mailed to me a couple of years ago:

Vorsprung durch Euro / English

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English
will be the official language of the European Union rather than German,
which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's
government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and
has accepted a 5-year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will
make sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k".

This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the
troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like
fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to
reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments
will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a
deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the
silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with
"z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining
"ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl. Zer vil
be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech
oza.

Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru. If zis mad you smil, pleas
pas on to oza pepl.

Zen ve vil rul ze world!!!

[Eric]

I agree with what Sybarite says in #6. I think we both work with words every day. Maybe Spooooool doesn't. Spooooool could also learn how to turn things into quotes, so that they are instantly recognisable as such. Above this pale lilac screen, as I write, is a little squarish pale yellow icon with lines and a point at the bottom. That will wrap round your quote.

I've seen Metin's Eurospoof before. It demonstrates the difference between the organic development of spelling, i.e. by tradition, and what happens when well-meaning bureaucrats start trying to standardise ( = standardize). But having said that, if you compare Dutch and Afrikaans spelling, the latter is much more logical, though not entirely phonetic. The Afrikaners retreated on one or two changes. But you don't have to think about "c"s or "k"s. That's been nicely standardized (= standardised).

[Eric]

Typos are typos. Ignorance is ignorance. I'm still not convinced that we can have a level debating field, if we totally ignore the conventions of spelling. With too many small-case letters in the wrong places, and "illetterate" spelling, you distract from your argument. Standardised spelling is one route to equality of argument, i.e. we all spell the same way, so no one is psyched by aberrant spelling, or other inverted conventionalism.

[esnc]

I think that it is hard to take anyone serious when they caant spell past a fifth grade level. Im no spelling bee champion, but I attempt to use proper grammer. Also, something that bugs me more than anything is people who spell a lot as one word...two words, a and lot!!!

[Eric]

How do you spell it: "Portuguese" or "Portugese"? Or is it optional?

[Galatea92]

Originally Posted by Eric

...surnames such as Cholmondeley, Beauchamp and Pakenham...

And place names such as Belvoir, Woolfardisworthy and Featherstonhaugh (pronounced Beaver, Woolz'ry and Fanshaw).

[Galatea92]

Originally Posted by Eric

Is correct spelling a sign of education, or merely a way of playing the snobbery & one-upmanship game, like being able to pronounce surnames such as Cholmondeley, Beauchamp and Pakenham correctly?

Any views?

My view is that, because of the illogicality of English spelling, it's very easy to make mistakes, even for intelligent, educated people. In the first example you give:

The hare was so beautiful, I just couldn't bare to throw her away.

you can understand how the journalist made the associative slip ('hare' in the first part of the sentence led him/her to misspell 'bear' as 'bare' in the second). The fault really lies in the lack of proof-reading. If the news article was heading for a newspaper, the misspelling would have been caught, but because turnaround time for articles on the net is so short, a lot more of these mistakes get through.

Does it matter? I don't know. Personally I'm very careful about my spelling, regardless of the medium I'm using (which doesn't mean to say that I don't sometimes make typos or even, heaven forbid, real honest-to-goodness spelling mistakes ). But I'm more forgiving of errors in other people, especially in less formal means of communication. I'll tolerate more typos/mistakes in an email than in an internet news article, for example, and more in an internet news article than in a published book.

I don't think poor spelling necessarily equates to lack of education or lack of education. Some very intelligent, very well-educated people seem to really struggle with English spelling. I think it has to do with the fact that, in English, there is no way no work out how to spell many words; there's just no rule you can apply to get the right answer. To be good at spelling you have to memorise the spellings, and some people just struggle with that.

[SilverSeason]

I think we can relate some of the problems in English spelling to the large number of sounds that can be spelled two or more different ways:

bear
bare

lie
lye

site
sight

and hundreds more. When children learn phonics they can read most text, but to write it correctly they need to have memorized, consciously or not, which of the alternate spellings apply to the sound they wish to record on paper.

For me it is a matter of visual memory based on years of reading correctly-spelled text. At one time I was teaching 9th grade English and encountered so much misspelling in student writing that after a while I could not sort out the no-know-now confusion.

[Heteronym]

Originally Posted by Eric

How do you spell it: "Portuguese" or "Portugese"? Or is it optional?

I've always seen it written Portuguese; I wouldn't write it any other way either.

That Euro-English spoof is brilliant!

[jwhatley88]

In my own humble opinion, spelling does matter. Especially if in one whole article you see a lot of misspelled words. If you see one misspelled word and try to check the keyboard if the letters are adjacent to each other then thats forgivable.. but if it's supposed to use a key in the first row but a key in the 3rd row was used then perhaps you will have to start doubting.

[Galatea92]

Originally Posted by Eric

How do you spell it: "Portuguese" or "Portugese"? Or is it optional?

I'd spell it 'Portugese'. (I hate pointless letters in English spelling). Usage on the web seems to be split half-and-half, with US sites tending to favour the 'u'-less version, as you might expect.

What the spelling is in portugese is irrelevant. We write spanish, not español; french, not français; german, not deutsch.

[miercuri]

Originally Posted by Galatea92

I'd spell it 'Portugese'. (I hate pointless letters in English spelling). Usage on the web seems to be split half-and-half, with US sites tending to favour the 'u'-less version, as you might expect.

I see your point, however I believe one should take into account the etymology of the word as well. Being able to trace the origin of certain words can help a lot with one's spelling. (In this case it is português.)

I am not a native speaker of English myself, yet in spite of the fact that my native language spells most words phonetically (we write as we speak, with very few exceptions) I rarely have doubts regarding the spelling of certain English words. I do tend to frown upon natives who can't for the life of them make the difference between know/no/now or your/you're, he's/his and it makes me wonder if basic English morphology is at any point taught in middle-school. It wouldn't do those kids any harm being able to tell the difference between certain parts of speech.

[SilverSeason]

Originally Posted by miercuri

I do tend to frown upon natives who can't for the life of them make the difference between know/no/now or your/you're, he's/his and it makes me wonder if basic English morphology is at any point taught in middle-school. It wouldn't do those kids any harm being able to tell the difference between certain parts of speech.

As a native speaker and sometime teacher of English, I assure you that it is taught in most if not all elementary, middle and high schools. Unfortunately, many students brush it off and don't think that disciminating between similar forms is important. That's why correct spelling can be one of several markers used to judge a person's education and "seriousness".

[Galatea92]

Originally Posted by miercuri

I see your point, however I believe one should take into account the etymology of the word as well. Being able to trace the origin of certain words can help a lot with one's spelling. (In this case it is português.)

Etymology is the bane of English spelling (and the pleasure too, of course ). The spelling is so illogical because letters from older pronunciations are retained in the current spelling, e.g. colour, night. I really don't understand what the problem is with changing the spelling of these words so that they actually reflect the current pronunciation (i.e. color and nite). (Those Americans reading this, of course, will be saying to themselves, Hold on, those are the correct spellings of those words ).

Originally Posted by miercuri

I am not a native speaker of English myself, yet in spite of the fact that my native language spells most words phonetically (we write as we speak, with very few exceptions) I rarely have doubts regarding the spelling of certain English words. I do tend to frown upon natives who can't for the life of them make the difference between know/no/now or your/you're, he's/his and it makes me wonder if basic English morphology is at any point taught in middle-school. It wouldn't do those kids any harm being able to tell the difference between certain parts of speech.

It's a sad fact, but most people don't write very much once they leave school. So they lose the little bit of knowledge they did have. In a phonetic language such as yours, if you can remember the rules you can manage to muddle through the spelling, but, in English, spelling correctly requires a great deal of memorisation of exceptions, which is just the kind of knowledge that you tend to lose if you don't use it.

By the way, how are you enjoying Cat's Cradle? That's one of my favourite novels.