Not all poor spellers are stupid. There are those who are uneducated, cognitively impaired, dyslexic, dealing with English as a second language (how does ANY non-English-speaking adult learn this convoluted language?), and some are just sloppy. There are, however, some people who are very bright and also have difficulty spelling. While most intelligent people I know are good spellers, I have known at least six highly intelligent people (e.g., members of Mensa, IQ 125 to 150, etc.) who just don’t get it. They are not dyslexic. Spelling correctly just doesn’t seem to make sense. njh
I tested at 165 and I could never spell worth a damn. I have no interest in learning to spell all the words since I can also talk. I have been doing a lot of studying on the net lately and am learning a lot of new words but haven’t heard them so I frequently mispronounce them also. I also have a problem accepting writing as a viable text also… everything you have to do nowadays says please print or type.
A distinction perhaps should be made between bad *spelling *and bad typing. I am a good speller, but there are times when you couldn’t tell it due to simple typographical errors. (Thus Cecil’s admonition at the end of his column.)
I worked in the construction field for many years and my coordination of my fingers is poor. They are tough but big and clumbsy now. I was going college to be a surgeon but I’de pity anyone under my knife now. I have a hard time cleaning a fish.
Are people who can’t be bothered to use a spell-checker stupid? I’d say yes. The title is an example of another mistake a highly, intelligent (Triple-9), dyslexic autistic might make. Note that the e and p are switched. The e is typed with the left hand, the p with the right. Often my left hand knows what the right is doing, but doesn’t wait its turn. The title is also an example of really stinky word-play, something many intelligent people enjoy.
I don’t think they’re stupid, I think there must be something not wired quite right in the language parts of their brain.
I mean, if you read frequently, you SEE the words spelled right on the page; how many times of that before you just know how to spell things? Yet some people just flat-out don’t retain that kind of information.
If I see someone’s post doesn’t make sense I study it and try to think like the poster to try to understand the content. Most people aren’t good communicators even though they have extremely high IQs. If a person is intelligent enough they should be able to interpret things and only a fool would discredit someone for their lack of ability to communicate well. They may be trying to communicate something pertinant to a situation but lack the skills to communicate in the new, what I percieve as, unintelligable language system. It is getting so complex that it is starting to exclude common sense.
To David 42. Spell checkers are a hastle when trying to portray information of scientific spelling. Sometimes the word that the spell checker gives you is completely different than what you intended. a person knowledgeable in the field that you are portraying should be able to pick out the meaning of the word that is mispelled. There are words with similar spelling to others pronounciation and putting that word in is worse than spelling the word wrong. I try to simplify these words into things I know so I may portray the information to those of my kind, the common people here in America. Sometimes I err in the translation and have to look things up again to understand what the old generation has tried to correct me on. It takes a lot of research to then understand their thought train and it’s usually simpler and more efficient. There is a lot of knowledge in the older people, 70+, and this information has been discredited or misinterpreted. They are dying off and this information is being lost. Communication with them is hard also because their language is simpler and the knowledge is based on knowing certain things that were passed on by “hands on” but are neglected by teachers at school. We are being conditioned to think a certain way but the way has severe flaws. Now I’m rambling too much but everything is really connected and it’s hard to seperate things without omiting important parts.
Can you expound on this line of reasoning? I’m honestly not sure what you’re getting at here.
This is a common argument, but in my opinion it’s a cop-out. You’re basically saying that the reader carries more responsibility to understand what you wrote than you do to write in a way that’s understandable.
The reader always interprets what someone writes to fit into their knowledge and it can easily be interpreted wrongly or constrewed as not pertinant to the situation. Have a conversation with someone with an open mind and you will notice this happens all the time. It sometimes ends up as an argument or debate with no possible comprimise. It is part of what is called human nature.
I don’t like the word “stupid” I prefer saying someone sees things differently or has a perception that doesn’t include what we think is necessary. Others may be mentally challenged. Many people just don’t think it’s necessary to learn things that aren’t needed in their life. That doesn’t make them stupid. With all the advanced math I learned in school, I rarely used any of it other than using angles and adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. I’m sure it has influenced a lot in my life without me consciously knowing it, but I can’t percieve it being used in daily life.
I learned English at the age of 17. Took me about half a year to be able to communicate in it, about a year to become fluent and maybe two years to be able to write as well as native speakers do. Spelling was never a problem since I learned English mostly by reading, and my visual memory is pretty good. In fact, in college I moonlighted by being a copy editor for the local newspaper.
English is not convoluted. It is actually one of the simplest languages around. The lack of any complex declinations is a great advantage. It is very easy to learn to communicate in English - even if grammar/spelling is lacking. It takes a bit more effort to learn proper English, but not that much. I always wonder how in the world non-native-speakers manage to learn Russian with its six cases and 20+ declinations. Now THAT’s a convoluted language.
Are you claiming that you were evaluated as having an I.Q. of 165 according to some test? What test? First of all, in general it’s impossible to get a score above 160 on any reliable I.Q. test. An I.Q. of 160 is, by definition, something that only one person is about 31,000 has. (To be exact, it means that you scored four standard deviations above the mean on the test.) To create a reliable I.Q. test, you have to norm the scores. If you gave the test to 100,000 people, only about three or four of them should score at 160 or above. Creating a reliable I.Q. test is quite difficult. Giving the test to enough people to be able to reliably say that someone has an I.Q. of 165 or 170 or 175 or 180 or whatever is thus nearly impossible. Tell us about this test on which you scored 165.
> . . . I worked in the construction field for many years and my coordination of my
> fingers is poor. They are tough but big and clumbsy now. I was going college to
> be a surgeon but I’de pity anyone under my knife now . . .
What are you claiming here? I can imagine someone doing an undergraduate degree in something relevant to medicine (say, biology or chemistry) and not getting good enough grades to get into medical school. Such person might then become a nurse or a medical technician or a high school biology teacher or whatever. You claim to have wanted to become a doctor but ended up as a construction worker. What does this actually mean? Did you flunk out of college and decide to become a construction worker?
Incidentally, the problem with your posts is not that your spelling is terrible. It’s not great, but it’s not the worst that we’ve ever seen on the SDMB. The grammar is not great either, but again it’s not the worst we’ve ever seen. The problem is that your posts are disorganized and hard to understand.
