Comments on: Does spelling matter?

By: RRR

RRR — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 08:41:48 +0000

I’ve noticed that certain words and phrases have been misspelled for so many years that they’ve almost become accepted as the correct spelling. On roadside signs and especially on the internet I see the same words misspelled consistently. Don’t they teach basic grammar in elementary school anymore? Shame on spellcheckers!

By: AMERICA-FIRST

AMERICA-FIRST — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:38:50 +0000

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?

By: Peter Cross

Peter Cross — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 19:51:05 +0000

We should not take up this opt-out suggestion, if only to preserve the correct meaning. Spelling points to origin and that points to meaning.

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 10:56:55 +0000

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.

By: Dougal

Dougal — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 00:34:58 +0000

The real problem is that the English language doesn’t belong to anyone in particular. We did not establish a Language Academy of our own to control the language as did other European Countries.

We now have the situation that an individual from OED and the British Council speaks for Britain, on all matters of the English Language, to the EU.

By: LW Collins

LW Collins — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 19:34:29 +0000

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

By: Mayer

Mayer — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 19:07:08 +0000

This is a horrible idea: There are so many possibilities with phonetic spelling, that the lack of uniformity will just slow down readers. It will force everyone to read phonetically, rather than, as should happen with experienced, adult readers, let us grasp the word as a whole. Phonetics is the [best] way to study spelling, including the exceptions and quirks, but normative spelling simplifies reading. With purely (pyurly, pyoorly, peurly, pyurlie, peayourly, …) phonetic spelling, the variants will be too numerous to allow for fast reading.

By: Hannah Dunn

Hannah Dunn — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 18:06:17 +0000

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).

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 18:05:12 +0000

One of the frequent misguided top-down directives issued in a large company I once worked for was “Don’t waste time on the spelling - just get your point across”.

My own response was to continue with my existing practice, which was that if people couldn’t be bothered to spell correctly, I couldn’t be bothered to read the rubbish they sent to me.

It was always the case that those who had something important to tell me could spell correctly.

By: John Tanner

John Tanner — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 17:54:42 +0000

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.