If drug names on prescriptions are routinely spelled incorrectly, is that okay too then? As that’s where we’re headed…

Is the book red or read? Which wich is witch? yes, dear or deer? I think words are spelt the way they are makes it easier to understand the sentences’ meaning. On second thoughts )or is that thorts) y dnt we jst rsrt 2 txt spk or even shorthand- cut out vowels altogether! Punctuation, grammar - who needs them, really?

NO, WE SHOULD NOT SUBMIT TO STUPIDITY AND LAZINESS POLLUTING OUR WRITTEN LANGUAGE.

Have you tried reading blogs written by teenagers lately they are all written in “txt spk” I have even seen a CV written like this, I can see within the next generation this will be the norm so how much lower do you want standards to go before enough is enough?..schools need to concentrate on the basics.

i think speling rite is essenshial to life and bisness
and we got to lern to talk proper too

Professor Ken Smith is patently browbeaten. He should retire gracefully rather than admit defeat and suggest even more ‘dumbing down’. We should be raising the bar, not lowering it. I reject his philosophy.

3 out of my 4 children are dyslexic. to be truthful the way the spell (phonetically) makes a lot more sense than our everyday english language.

When I was very young, my family would jokingly say “chish and fips” or “kate and sydney pie” - I realised these mis-pronunciations were a simple turn of phrase and took them in the jovial light they were intended. I learned that wordplay can be not only fun but educational, spelling itself made easier to comprehend by separating the syllables and having fun with the words. Maybe the prevalence of text messaging and e-mail has a large part to play, but to simply admit defeat on an issue as simple as being able to efficiently and accurately communicate your own native tongue is defeatist and plainly lazy on all parts.

I’m fairly certain that evolution is going backwards at the moment.

Let’s not intentionally rape our own language.

I have never heard anything as ridiculous in my life!!! Of course spelling matters, and if the education system in this country was set to teach in the correct manner, a system that has served the British people for decades, producing some of the finest minds in the world,then this ridiculous comment, and comments like it wouldn’t even make the pages of a childrens yearly comic book annual!!!
Once again the general public, who, by and large are like myself only secondry school educated with no “O” levels, are expected to stand by and watch as we pander to the minority who basically can’t be bothered to try and spell correctly, either because they are to lazy or just simply expect the rest of the world to drop to their standards.
So what next??? Maths!!! As long as the answer to the sum is in the “right field” lets say with in ten digits either way, we’ll pat these people on the back and assure them that they will have a bright future ahead of them in their chosen field, as long as is doesn’t mean read, “riting” & rithmatic’s.

Ian McCambridge

I have never heard anything as ridiculous in my life!!! Of course spelling matters, and if the education system in this country was set to teach in the correct manner, a system that has served the British people for decades, producing some of the finest minds in the world,then this ridiculous comment, and comments like it wouldn’t even make the pages of a childrens yearly comic book annual!!!
Once again the general public, who, by and large are like myself only secondry school educated with no “O” levels, are expected to stand by and watch as we pander to the minority who basically can’t be bothered to try and spell correctly, either because they are to lazy or just simply expect the rest of the world to drop to their standards.
So what next??? Maths!!! As long as the answer to the sum is in the “right field” lets say with in ten digits either way, we’ll pat these people on the back and assure them that they will have a bright future ahead of them in their chosen field, as long as is doesn’t mean reading, “riting” & rithmatic’s

Why not go the whole hog and not bother teaching people to read and write at all?
It really isn’t that hard to spell and punctuate properly, our society is becoming lazier by the minute. Illiteracy and innumeracy is not “kewl” or “wkd” it just makes you sound thick even if you are not.
A return to proper English please!

I think Professor Smith should find a new career. Isn’t that his job to teach people when something’s right and when it’s wrong? Where does it end? With us all writing and speaking our own bastardised version of the English language and no one actually being able to understand each other because we’ve all got our own dialect, spelling things however we feel? It’s bad enough that text speak and slang is becoming so prolific in everyday use.

Sure language evolves but letting students get away with blatant spelling mistakes just because they make the same ones frequently is a complete and utter cop out. And it’s certainly not helping the students!

Worse still - can you imagine games of Scrabble? It’d be a blood bath!

This isn’t such a problem, and it’s a debate that’s been out there for a while. Whilst I am a stickler for correct spelling, I’d like to point out that ’standard’ spelling has only been in existence for about 150 years - since state schooling came in. I spent just under a year going through Elizabethan shipping documents, and found that even on an A4-sized sheet of paper, a letter could contain multiple spellings of the same word. The main problem that stands in the way of this idea is that there’s not a formal precedent for ‘free’ spelling - we’ve a preconceived notion of how spelling should work.

Standardized spelling is a fairly new idea in historical terms, and some of the ridiculous rules that go along with it appeared at about the same time.
The argument that without these arcane spellings no-one would understand each other is patently rubbish, as I have not found anyone who cannot read and understand American English.
I was always taught that the only reason for language was to enable us to communicate effectively, while variant spellings may annoy people they do not stop effective communication.
As time goes on our children have to learn more and more, as knowledge expands. The average junior school leaver probably has learned more than a grammer school student 100 years ago. In the future things will only get worse. We need to make some important decisions about what is really important. The age of polymaths is long gone and everyone needs to specialise in specific areas of knowledge.

The variant spelling of “Professor” is: Prat.

Smith is obviously an inadequate teacher and should resign immediately.

Of course spelling does matter, this is part of what made us British “Great”. It’s time that parents, teachers, goverment and all academics in general got their acts together to produce offspring that can read and write the proper way using Queens English.

“As much as anything else it undermines their work if it is not spelt right.” SPAG
“@Steve, 1:05pm, who supports Professor Smith: You spelt “grammar” wrong. Of all the possible words…” Sam Butler

Both of these posts have spelled “spelled” as “Spelt.”
Which, incidentally, is wrong.

I believe there has to be a correct way and an incorrect way of spelling words. The ability of an author to use correct spelling or otherwise tells you something about that person; it maybe that that he(she) is all wrapped up in their subject and wants to get things down on paper as quickly as possible - but it can also indicate simply a lack of care or not being bothered, in which case why should anyone bother to spend time reading that person’s work?

Perhaps the Professor could produce a list of common spelling mistakes for his students; if they still repeat them (and assuming no special circumstances which might apply) then he could make a downward adjustment in his assessment score - without having to do anything more than, say, underline (some of) the spelling errors.

Of course the English language is going to evolve but some things, such as spelling, should not be open to such abuse just because some lazy people cannot be bothered to learn the rules!

To Sam Butler.
It would be interesting to know when this entered the dictionary, as I’m pretty sure my (UK) primary school teacher (80s) always marked this one as wrong, Maybe they were wrong themselves?

Plus it always Looked wrong somehow.
I always thought spelt was a type of grain.

Oh no, then answer is a big NO. Its about time the schools and parents clamped down on bad spelling. After all, if we were to let this one slip, then what else are we going to lower our standards on. Driving, maths, history and so on. I would have done grat at school with my maths, if this type of overlooking was in place. Instead of scoring around 70% year in year out, I would probably have gained more marks under the Nutty Professors reasoning.

I suppose it would have been a great way to cut down on taxes. No schools, as kids as they are learning, will always be correct and brainy….. 2+2 = 5. Penzance is in Yorkshire. Ho2 is iron. See, I would have done very good.

This is just teachers getting lazy and not bothering to correct spelling mistakes. No doubt this is because teachers don’t want to make children feel useless because they can’t spell. We are de-volving the English language, and i feel like i wasted time at school doing well and learning to spell, because it seems nobody cares any more. This is hardly the way to combat people’s lack of knowledge of the English language. Soon there will be 500 ways to spell every word and a dictionary will be the size of a house.

Is this man a PROFESSOR???? Who “gave” him his degree? - I suggest they take it back!!!
The problem is in the teaching - not the kids inability to learn!
How many kids of today know their ‘times tables’? If there is no computer or calculator available, THEY CANNOT WORK!!!

That’s right, too lazy to make the grade? Lower the bar.

I felt the need to add another part to my small rant after reading the rest of the posts in detail. I know my grammar is not of the best standard, but it really annoys me when people think that when a word ends in ’s’ it needs an apostrophe. Or that every fast food takeaway needs a name that ends in ‘z’

would Prof Smith recognise his name if someone were to mis spell it as Smiff because this is where all this will lead?

I’m sorry but this is silly - even some of the examples provided by this lecturer were confusing. Spelling words correctly removes any doubt as to the meaning of what you are trying to communicate.

This report also underlined (to me at least) that we have too many universities and too many so-called accademics. Let’s raise standards not go down to the lowest common denominator.

I once saw a “you too can go to university” leaflet in the style of a comic book. If we carry on down this path of accepting poor educational standards and ‘victim mentality’ as an excuse then several generations down the line…the human race’s brain will consist of little more than aggressive mush. Teachers need to take responsibility for their teaching and pupils need to take responsibility for their own grades.

Not many people seem able to speak english properly anymore, with split infinitives and “at the end of the day”, and “basically” becoming part of everyday language so it’s no surprise that spelling has gone the same way. Personally, I hate seeing incorrect spelling or grammar. It says so much about a person when they can communicate correctly.
It’s a wonderful language filled with quirky spellings and that’s what makes it so lovely. Let’s hold onto that.

Mr. Smith’s proposal has so many red flags, it’s not even funny! Aside from all of the points raised above, there has to be the question of national heritage, and pride in that heritage (whether it be American, British, or any other flavour/flavor of English). Also, as a programmer in several different programming languages, I have learned (or is that learnt?) that not only is there almost zero-tolerance for incorrect spelling, but that there are also subtle differences in syntax from language to language. To plant the seed that it’s ok to make changes to spelling because of ignorance or laziness is surely inviting disaster in the highly structuralised world of technology? I try to keep politics out of posts, but in this case, it smacks of the liberal fringe not wanting to spotlight individuals who for whatever reason are unwilling or unable to conform to the languages rules. Next we will be trying to ban sports where there are distinct winners (and by definition, losers)… oh, wait… they have?

Sam Butler @ 1.46PM…’Teaching does not mean however, that you throw words and numbers at children or get them to chant things and hope they remember enough to regurgitate it onto an exam paper for which they have prepared the night before.’
This was exactly what the vast majority of my classes were like in school from 1986-1995, also, half the subjects in the exams we took had not even been studied during class. Instead I read Roald Dahl, an author who, although we never met, has influenced me far more. Thank you for reassuring me that my schooling wasn’t ‘unique’…

I think the root cause is that school teachers think correcting mistakes is belittling children, but it is the only way to learn. When I was in school 60 years ago we were given a notebook to record words that we came across in books we read, and the teacher would look at it.

Surely the purpose of a written text is to convey a message that is readily understandable and free of ambiguity. Is it too difficult to learn the correct usage of [so,sow and sew ] [to,too and two] [cue and queue] [complement and compliment] [its and it's] [their and there] [hear and here] [ware and wear] [or,ore, oar and awe] [stationery and stationary].

Unfortunately a spell check on the computer will accept all these words without comment.

My name is Hannah and I’m in my third year of an English degree… I haven’t sweated through all those essays, labouring away to make sure everything is perfect, just for them to be slapped back into my face with this new proposal of phonetic spelling as acceptable… no. It’s something basic that everyone needs to learn to do properply, not dodge past (like everything else).

The attitude “Ihave more important things to do than to check my student’s spelling” is not only more correctly called laziness but is also indicative of the teacher’s own spelling ability.
All my teachers could spell and ensured that I could do so by the simple expedient of deducting marks from my home work, coursework and exam papers for spelling mistakes.
Bill

Someone on another website drew an interesting parallel between this subject and the teaching of sport in schools. It seems that it is no longer acceptable to have “winners” and “losers” in this society, and that we should never tell a person that they don’t make the grade for fear of being accused of harbouring an “elitist” mentality. Universities are, by their very nature elitist, that is supposedly the point of them, to gather the most able minds and educate them to the best available level. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to work that way, it seems to matter more how rich mummy and daddy are than how talented you might be, they would rather take a rich oaf who can’t spell than a talented working class person with little money. If you can’t spell to a reasonable standard then you shouldn’t be in university in the first place.

VERY MUCH SO!

CHILDREN SHOULD LEARN TO READ, WRITE AND DO BASIC MATH IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. ENGLISH GRAMMAR IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT.

THEY SHOULD NOT BE PROMOTED UNTIL THEY CAN PASS THE TESTS FOR THAT GRADE.

WE ARE PROMOTING IDIOTS THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL AND COLLEGE. DO YOU WANT AND IDIOT DOCTOR PERFORMING SURGERY ON YOU?