The over-worn phrase came into play today as I read an article on Reuters UK about English spelling. The general consensus inside the insular world of one Professor Ken Smith, a criminology lecturer at Bucks New University (where?), is that we should just accept commonly misspelt words and get over it. It almost sounds reasonable until you look closely at the insinuation. Smith is saying that the fact that people spell things incorrectly is ‘unchangeable’ and that rather than helping students—and people in general—to properly conform to the agreed-upon spellings of words so as to effect intelligible written communication, we should modify the agreements and accept it as a consequence of life, the universe and everything. I disagree…
“Instead of complaining about the state of the education system as we correct the same mistakes year after year, I’ve got a better idea,” Ken Smith, a criminology lecturer at Bucks New University, wrote in the Times Higher Education Supplement.
“University teachers should simply accept as variant spelling those words our students most commonly misspell.”
To kickstart his proposal, Smith suggested 10 common misspellings that should immediately be accepted into the pantheon of variants, including “ignor”, “occured”, “thier”, “truely”, “speach” and “twelth” (it should be “twelfth”).
Codswallop. Responses were invited on the Reuters blog, and I was beckoned…
@Steve, 1:05pm, who supports Professor Smith: You spelt “grammar” wrong. Of all the possible words…
Alright look-a-here: to subscribe to the notion that spelling mistakes are ‘a consequence of life’ or ’something we have to accept’ is to equally submit to the idea that ‘man can’t change’ and ‘intelligence can never rise.’ These are the ideas propounded by modern psychology and it does not surprise me that this call for *more* dumbing down of education comes from a “criminology” lecturer. Criminology, the study of crime as an individual and social phenomenon, is deeply rooted in psychology. Modern psychology however, has led to ‘pleas of insanity’ and ‘mental incapacity’ in place of “Yes, your honour, I killed the man – I plead guilty.”
Before I rant too much, know that there is a way to overcome this and it’s called teaching. 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. Teaching is the process of effecting LEARNING, which is something you can’t do if your mistakes, including spelling mistakes, are not corrected. And the correction should be done with care and patience, or you’ll rub your students up the wrong way and they’ll *refuse* to learn.
Recap: This is a bunch of crap; it is possible to change things; teaching requires learning be effected.
(By the way, this sparked a bit of a discussion about usage of the word spelt. For your information, this is a chiefly British past participle of the verb spell.)
Now, I want to expand on that. That’s why I have my own website you see, because I can’t say everything I want to in those little comment boxes. The question raised in the title of the blog entry was “Does spelling matter?” I say yes; emphatically so.
Communication is a key part of life. You don’t have to be a Scientologist to know that, but I must admit that I’ve learned more about communication from reading L. Ron Hubbard’s books than anywhere else. Communication is ordinarily based on agreements such as language and grammar, as well as social agreements like the distinction most people make between talking to a close friend and talking to their employer. Spelling is one of these agreements, and it can exist within the context of a language or even a dialect.
Spelling reform has occurred throughout Europe at various times in history, and I’ll leave that one to the linguists contributing to Wikipedia, or your local language professor. I don’t claim to be an expert on such matters, but I do know of recent changes to the German language from studying it at school and college. They changed the agreed-upon spellings of certain words, thereby changing what was considered ‘real’ German by its speakers. This reform therefore changed the agreed-upon reality. So you see that reality is essentially composed of agreements of some kind.
In Britain, English spellings have been standardised for many years. According to the Wikipedia article on British English, “modern British spelling was [largely] standardised in Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language (1755).” This may have been arbitrary but it became the agreed-upon reality. Lexicographers compiling the ever-growing Oxford English dictionaries do not control usage and spelling per se, but they of course have a hand in propagating what they record by including it in such an authoritative text as the OED or its derivatives.
Grammar is another one but this is largely misunderstood, misinterpreted or ill-defined. L. Ron Hubbard wrote about this, so I thought I’d give you what he said. It makes perfect sense to me…
Grammar is the way words are organized into speech and writings so as to convey exact thoughts, ideas and meanings amongst people. It is essentially a system of agreements as to the relationship of words to bring about meaningful communication.
That is all that grammar is. If it is defined otherwise, students will think they are being taught classroom rules rather than how to talk and read.
Like spelling, grammar has evolved out of common usage; agreed-upon or logical ways of writing and speaking that have been adopted by others. The English language has grown out of Germanic and has influences from many different languages, particularly Latin and French. It is a very well-developed language with its own simplicity and odball complexities. An effort to create a universal language was made by Russian-Polish opthalmologistL. L. Zamenhof. The result was Esperanto, a constructed language which did not take off to perhaps the intended degree. But this was based on one man’s arbitraries rather than cultural development and accepted usage.
Sometimes, a break from the norm of agreed-upon reality can be used in a literary context to create an effect. I regard the most famous example of this to be Lewis Carroll’s poem, The Jabberwocky (1872). Carroll uses made-up words and portmanteaux to weave a world of mystery and nonsense, and he does very well at it. This, Edward Lear’s The Jumblies, and John Agard’s Half-Caste are among my all-time favourite poems.
But when I talk to people, or otherwise communicate, I don’t see that using unfathomable words or unintelligible spellings is going to achieve the intention of my communication. It might create an effect, but what effect am I trying to create? So in written communication, spelling helps us to achieve an agreement as to what we are trying to say. Sometimes words have different meanings but often the context is enough to point out which definition is being applied. Then again, it is always possible to misunderstand words, so knowing how to use a dictionary helps tremendously.
Now, I have always been good with English. I was able to read before going to school and I did very well in spelling tests and English classes. I came out with the top grade in GCSE English Language, and I’m proud of that. I know people who have not had such a good time, and in some cases it’s because they have trouble with their spelling. Here’s where you meet the challenge of correcting a person’s spelling in such a way that they don’t feel that they are being attacked or made to feel wrong. Yes, in some ways they may be wrong because they’ve departed from the agreed-upon reality of what constitutes standard spelling. But at the same time, the task must be done tactfully.
This is something that really needs to be done—and done well—at primary schools and by parents at home. Noticing an incorrectly-spelled word and letting it slip could make a world of difference to that person. If no-one says otherwise, he or she will think they are right, and will continue to make the same mistake because they don’t perceive it as a mistake. That’s what learning is for! So the person makes a mistake—alright, pick them up, tell them where they went wrong, and encourage them to carry on. The way not to do it would be by blasting the person, especially a child, and telling them how horribly wrong they are and how the world is going to fall apart because of their little spelling error. I do not advocate this tyrannical approach to teaching or to generally dealing with people.
In the end, your knowledge carries a responsibility. If you see something and you know it isn’t right, then correct it! Too often in society I see things go by ‘unnoticed.’ They aren’t unnoticed; they’re ignored. I too have done this and I always feel bad for it afterwards. It’s almost a corollary to the old adage, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Well, if it is broke, do fix it! And in doing so you’ll have helped somebody, as long as you don’t ‘fix it’ by making them wrong in the process.
So, in short, spelling matters, communication is important, and teaching is useful only where somebody learns something. I could write more on the different aspects I’ve touched on here, and perhaps I will. Until then, adiós.
If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em
The over-worn phrase came into play today as I read an article on Reuters UK about English spelling. The general consensus inside the insular world of one Professor Ken Smith, a criminology lecturer at Bucks New University (where?), is that we should just accept commonly misspelt words and get over it. It almost sounds reasonable until you look closely at the insinuation. Smith is saying that the fact that people spell things incorrectly is ‘unchangeable’ and that rather than helping students—and people in general—to properly conform to the agreed-upon spellings of words so as to effect intelligible written communication, we should modify the agreements and accept it as a consequence of life, the universe and everything. I disagree…
Codswallop. Responses were invited on the Reuters blog, and I was beckoned…
(By the way, this sparked a bit of a discussion about usage of the word spelt. For your information, this is a chiefly British past participle of the verb spell.)
Now, I want to expand on that. That’s why I have my own website you see, because I can’t say everything I want to in those little comment boxes. The question raised in the title of the blog entry was “Does spelling matter?” I say yes; emphatically so.
Communication is a key part of life. You don’t have to be a Scientologist to know that, but I must admit that I’ve learned more about communication from reading L. Ron Hubbard’s books than anywhere else. Communication is ordinarily based on agreements such as language and grammar, as well as social agreements like the distinction most people make between talking to a close friend and talking to their employer. Spelling is one of these agreements, and it can exist within the context of a language or even a dialect.
Spelling reform has occurred throughout Europe at various times in history, and I’ll leave that one to the linguists contributing to Wikipedia, or your local language professor. I don’t claim to be an expert on such matters, but I do know of recent changes to the German language from studying it at school and college. They changed the agreed-upon spellings of certain words, thereby changing what was considered ‘real’ German by its speakers. This reform therefore changed the agreed-upon reality. So you see that reality is essentially composed of agreements of some kind.
In Britain, English spellings have been standardised for many years. According to the Wikipedia article on British English, “modern British spelling was [largely] standardised in Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language (1755).” This may have been arbitrary but it became the agreed-upon reality. Lexicographers compiling the ever-growing Oxford English dictionaries do not control usage and spelling per se, but they of course have a hand in propagating what they record by including it in such an authoritative text as the OED or its derivatives.
Grammar is another one but this is largely misunderstood, misinterpreted or ill-defined. L. Ron Hubbard wrote about this, so I thought I’d give you what he said. It makes perfect sense to me…
Like spelling, grammar has evolved out of common usage; agreed-upon or logical ways of writing and speaking that have been adopted by others. The English language has grown out of Germanic and has influences from many different languages, particularly Latin and French. It is a very well-developed language with its own simplicity and odball complexities. An effort to create a universal language was made by Russian-Polish opthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof. The result was Esperanto, a constructed language which did not take off to perhaps the intended degree. But this was based on one man’s arbitraries rather than cultural development and accepted usage.
Sometimes, a break from the norm of agreed-upon reality can be used in a literary context to create an effect. I regard the most famous example of this to be Lewis Carroll’s poem, The Jabberwocky (1872). Carroll uses made-up words and portmanteaux to weave a world of mystery and nonsense, and he does very well at it. This, Edward Lear’s The Jumblies, and John Agard’s Half-Caste are among my all-time favourite poems.
But when I talk to people, or otherwise communicate, I don’t see that using unfathomable words or unintelligible spellings is going to achieve the intention of my communication. It might create an effect, but what effect am I trying to create? So in written communication, spelling helps us to achieve an agreement as to what we are trying to say. Sometimes words have different meanings but often the context is enough to point out which definition is being applied. Then again, it is always possible to misunderstand words, so knowing how to use a dictionary helps tremendously.
Now, I have always been good with English. I was able to read before going to school and I did very well in spelling tests and English classes. I came out with the top grade in GCSE English Language, and I’m proud of that. I know people who have not had such a good time, and in some cases it’s because they have trouble with their spelling. Here’s where you meet the challenge of correcting a person’s spelling in such a way that they don’t feel that they are being attacked or made to feel wrong. Yes, in some ways they may be wrong because they’ve departed from the agreed-upon reality of what constitutes standard spelling. But at the same time, the task must be done tactfully.
This is something that really needs to be done—and done well—at primary schools and by parents at home. Noticing an incorrectly-spelled word and letting it slip could make a world of difference to that person. If no-one says otherwise, he or she will think they are right, and will continue to make the same mistake because they don’t perceive it as a mistake. That’s what learning is for! So the person makes a mistake—alright, pick them up, tell them where they went wrong, and encourage them to carry on. The way not to do it would be by blasting the person, especially a child, and telling them how horribly wrong they are and how the world is going to fall apart because of their little spelling error. I do not advocate this tyrannical approach to teaching or to generally dealing with people.
In the end, your knowledge carries a responsibility. If you see something and you know it isn’t right, then correct it! Too often in society I see things go by ‘unnoticed.’ They aren’t unnoticed; they’re ignored. I too have done this and I always feel bad for it afterwards. It’s almost a corollary to the old adage, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Well, if it is broke, do fix it! And in doing so you’ll have helped somebody, as long as you don’t ‘fix it’ by making them wrong in the process.
So, in short, spelling matters, communication is important, and teaching is useful only where somebody learns something. I could write more on the different aspects I’ve touched on here, and perhaps I will. Until then, adiós.