|
My employer occasionally does work at a local condominium complex known as Anglesea. "Angle" and "sea" are two very easy to spell, first grade words. Yet put them together, and some people turn into drooling idiots. On an invoice for materials we purchased for recent work at Anglesea, the vendor spelled it "Anglse".
Here's another example. The Hooters restaurant right around the corner from where I work recently started serving Dos Equis beer. They announced this on their sign outside, spelling it "Dolsecis". Now, it's one thing if you don't know Spanish spelling. But there's just no excuse for not referring to the bottle if you don't know how to spell it! And just below the sign, there's a banner advertising Hooter Girl "calanders".
People like me who get annoyed with bad spelling are often met with hostility. We are called names such as "spelling nazi", and hear arguments like, "Who cares? You knew what I meant!" Well, I'll tell you why I care. I'm bitter.
When I was in school, I was required to learn to spell thirty words every week. If I didn't learn to spell those words, I would fail the spelling test. If I continually failed those tests, my grades would suffer. And so, because I cared about my grades, and much preferred honor roll field trips to being grounded, I learned those thirty words every week. When I had trouble with a word, I at least tried to make it look like I knew how to spell it, by referring to dictionaries, spell check, etc. (not during a spelling test, of course, but at those other times in school when you have to write stuff... i.e. all the time). If I didn't, it would make me look stupid.
And then I grew up, and I found out there were all kinds of people out there who were apparently not made to go through what I did. These people got to relax and not bother to learn how to spell anything, and the threats of grounding, revoked allowance, and just plain looking stupid, were not there for them. And they are smug and arrogant about it... spoiled little brats.
In this day of rapid written communication, i.e. text messaging and internet chatting, replacing spoken conversation, I'll concede that spelling may not be as important in these media, as long as your point gets across. But in e-mail, blogging, and other long-format written communications, there is no excuse for not taking the time to ensure that your spelling is correct.
Sure, there are people who just have a hard time learning things like spelling. I work with a couple of people who are lousy spellers, but the difference between them and the spoiled brats I describe above, is that they still care. These people recognize that spelling things incorrectly will make them look stupid, and so they make use of the tools at their disposal to compensate. They use spell check, and when they get really stumped they ask me. (Okay, so my boss argues with his spell check, but that's another story for another day.) I applaud these people for making every effort to use our written language effectively and correctly even though it is difficult for them.
But for those who refuse to make the effort, who make excuses or think it's just not important, I have no respect. It does make you look stupid. I call it elective stupidity, because it is a conscious choice you make to be too lazy to even try to look intelligent. Every good e-mail client, word processor, and web browser these days has a spell check built in. Use it. If yours doesn't, it's time to switch. And for God's sake, if you can't figure out how to spell something and spell check isn't any help, don't make up some stupid-looking phonetic spelling. Either find the word written somewhere, or ask!
<< prev • home • next >>
|
|
comment: from Dana
I'm in TOTAL agreement sista! I get called the Grammar Police because I am usually correcting speech...Stan & Sean will frequently use words that aren't really words or are not the right word for the context of the conversation. I REALLY try to bite my tongue but sometimes I can't. Irregardless. Yeah...NOT a word!! The word is regardless people!!! I suppose we were lucky to have a mom who when we asked how to spell something always told us to "Look it up in the dictionary." We didn't have spell check!! It's kind of like kids who can't do basic math because they have been always been allowed to use a calculator. Now anytime I am handed a paper to read for my opinion my first question is "Do you want me to correct your spelling, grammar, & punctuation or just read the content?"
Fri 03/07/2008 7:24 PM
comment: from Dana
Crap. I knew if it was a subject about typing something perfect I would f*** something up! Sure enough..."because they have been always been" has one too many beens in it. Now I have looked at been so many times it doesn't even look like a word anymore!
Fri 03/07/2008 7:28 PM
comment: from Ghotit
My name is Ofer Chermesh I'm a 42 years old dyslexic from Israel.
I establish a company named Ghotit (www.Ghotit.com) that develops different internet services that helps dyslexics (5-17% of the population) to perform better in their day to day activities.
For many reasons regular spellchecker don't work effectively with people how suffers from dyslexia Ghotit first solution is an online context sensitive spell checker that is capable to coupe with severe spelling mistakes and misused word for example Ghotit will offer a user that spells "I will be happy to meat you at 8 o'clock" to change the word meat to meet.
Ghotit received a good review at: http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2008/02/ghotit.html
In order to improve Ghotit performance we need to receive inputs from people how know the problem.
I will be happy if you will be willing to ask people you know to take Ghotit for a test drive and send me there inputs to ofer.chermesh@gmail.com
Hope to hear from you soon.
Sun 03/09/2008 3:13 AM
comment: from HelloKit
Ofer -
First of all I hope you know I wasn't referring to dyslexics in my rant, but to those who truly don't care about their spelling. I think your product sounds like something that could be really useful to people if it really works as advertised. What I'm curious about, is whether you were using the product when you posted your comment here. Because I counted at least four cases of misused words in your post (not counting your example of "meat" vs. "meet"): "how" is used where "who" should be in two different places, "coupe" in place of "cope", and "there" instead of "their". If you were not using your product, then I can understand these mistakes as they are difficult words to keep straight, especially for those with reading/learning disabilities. But if you were using the product and it missed all of these, I'm afraid it is not a very good testimonial for the product.
Mon 03/10/2008 2:09 PM
comment: from Ofer
HelloKit
Thanks for your comment, the reason why I have 3 misused words in my comment is due to the fact that Ghotit supports today only 300 characters therefor I wrote my comment in word copy it to Ghotit than copy once again to word and only then I copy to the comment area therfor I had a copy past error if you use Ghotit correctly you were left only with one problem (yes we need to improve our algorithm and any inputs you can send will help us)
Thu 03/13/2008 4:02 AM
|
![[photo of me]](/mypic.jpg)
![[album thumbnail]](/photos/seaworlddc2007/thumbnails/albumthumb.jpg)
