Each and every one of us has those one or two words that we commonly misspell. The words we misspell are most likely words that millions of other people also misspell. For some reason, I can never spell separate correctly. I always spell it sepErate.
A professor at a university in England has suggested that we begin to accept the incorrect spellings of commonly misspelled words. If a word is spelled phonetically correct, then it should become an accepted form of the word. Under this professor's suggestion, my commonly misspelled version of separate would become acceptable.
The professor suggested accepting the misspelled versions of the following words as a starter:
- Ignore (ignor)
- Occurred (occured)
- Their (thier)
- Truly (truely)
- Speech (speach)
- Twelfth (twelth)
- Argument (arguement)
- Opportunity (opertunity)
The editor-in-chief of the Oxford dictionary suggests that this is not a good idea at all, arguing that things are spelled certain ways for a reason. Correct spelling makes it easier to communicate overall.
The advent of text messaging has created spelling "neanderthals." Texting has gotten younger and older people alike used to spelling in abbreviations.
So fellow Gatherers - now it is time for you to tell us your thoughts on the matter! Do you think that the professor is right? Why or why not? What words do you always misspell despite the constant correction?
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Comments: 16
And yes, text messaging/IMing uses abbreviations and misspells, which is fine - in those instances.
I continually have problems with PRIVILEGE (privelege, priviledge) and DEVELOP (develope), but I have learned to use a dictionary when I am uncertain.
Great topic!
People can jolly well learn how to spell. There really are reasons behind the spellings of all our words. Admittedly, some are now a bit arcane, but the reasons *are* there! Shall I bore you with a treatise?
We can blame text messaging for our problems, but I seem to recall that the original “QWERTY” typewriter wasn’t designed for speed either. In fact it was designed so that the writer could not go faster than the mechanical hammers of the typewriter. So even though it is true that on a cell phone all the most common neighborly letters are indeed on the same key, one cannot use that as an excuse for sloppy writing.
You can get a spell checker for your internet browser. You can write your posts in a word editor and see the misspelled words underlined in red. This won’t help with word confusion, “strait” and “straight” but then that should be the function of knowledge and thoroughness. If we don’t aim high we will always fall short.
1) It would make us slow down and concentrate on the writing before us.
2) Audio and video books would become more popular, as reading itself would be difficult.
This is weird, but interesting!
fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too
Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.
i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit
and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!
if you can raed tihs forwrad it
Debra - I'm one of the 55 out of 100 people who could read your comment :-)
Didn't they change "inflammable" to just "flammable" because people confused it with "unflammable" that was changed to "nonflammable" or something along those lines?
I think industry uses "aline" fairly often because people get confused with "align"...?
Seplling ins't as mcuh of an isuse as poelpe tihnk. As yuo can see the chnaces are you can udnretsand waht I've wirtten jsut fine.
I think most of the snips and snipes are from nurds who just want to make everyone else wrong. Since pronunciations change over time why shouldn't spelling? Do you think KNIGHT was pronounced nite? It was pronounced K-Nich-te.
English is full of vulgarisms and reversed meanings that are now accepted. If we allow crap such as 'My bad' instead of 'I made a mistake' then making spelling easier is a 'no brainer'.
Changing a few confusing words with better/easier spellings hurts nothing except the nit pickers.
Just take a read through the Oxford English Dictionary to see language changes.