# Are Poor Spellers Stupid? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [October 21, 2011, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-poor-spellers-stupid/600351 "2011-10-21T12:06:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Rickymouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/34f0e0/32.png) [@Rickymouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rickymouse)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2011, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-poor-spellers-stupid/600351/61 "2011-10-23T16:21:13Z")
Some people vulturize on others small if their way of thinking is challenged. It’s some form of protection mode or insecurity. I wouldn’t let the fact that you’re spelling is getting a little bad make you feel inferior to anyone else ‘Too Many Cats’. When we age our digestive system looses it’s ability to take up some minerals. If you adjust you’re diet a little and take specific vitamins or minerals that address this problem it may help. I cannot find any evidence of specialists in this field, maybe an allergist can help. This you can do on you’re own and the results will be somewhat adaptable to you’re blood relatives. We have five cats and I don’t think it’s too many, how many is too many. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2011, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-poor-spellers-stupid/600351/62 "2011-10-23T16:27:53Z")
> [@rat\_avatar](#): > > IMHO that is still memorization, and has little to do with “intelligence” > > E.G even the old “I before E except after C” (or when it sounds like an A as in neighbor and weigh) > > Except in caffeine, protein, atheist, being, reign, rein, vein, their, heir, leisure, zeitgeist, leisure, onomatopoeia etc… But the “ei” in “rein,” “reign,” and “vein” _does_ sound like “A as in neighbor and weigh.” So does “heir,” sort of, if you exaggerate the vowel; and so does one of the possible pronunciations of “leisure.” “Atheist” sometimes gets misspelled as “athiest,” but to me, that misspelling sticks out like a sore thumb. “Atheist” is clearly an “-ist” word, a “person who…” word. It’s closely related to “atheism” and to “theist/theism,” and it falls into the same category as “realist,” “idealist,” “empiricist,” etc. It’s not an “-est” word (athy, athier, athiest). So that one, at least, is not just a matter of storing a sequence of letters in mental memory, nor of following rules that are unrelated to the word’s meaning. “Being” is another obvious one. It’s an “-ing” word, a gerund: stem “be” plus suffix “ing.” There’s no temptation whatsoever to switch the e and the i. I think of the “I before E…” rule as a sort of last resort, to be appealed to when I can’t figure out the correct spelling otherwise. “Zeitgeist” is a German word (or, a word that comes to us from German), and I know enough German to automatically associate “ei” in German words with the “long i” sound, and “ie” with the “long e.” (So the frequently-misspelled “wiener” jumps out at me when it’s misspelled “weiner.”) I don’t dispute that there’s a lot of memorization involved. But just saying “it’s memorization” oversimplifies things. A fuller explanation would have to get into **how** the brain stores, retrieves, and checks information, and I believe this is different for different people. ---
**Author:** ![Rickymouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/34f0e0/32.png) [@Rickymouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rickymouse)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2011, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-poor-spellers-stupid/600351/63 "2011-10-23T16:36:48Z")
Atheists don’t follow the rules. I before E except after C. Why are they exempt? I should have omited small in my last post, caused a problem when editing it. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2011, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-poor-spellers-stupid/600351/64 "2011-10-23T17:14:17Z")
> [@Rickymouse](#): > > Some people vulturize on others small if their way of thinking is challenged. It’s some form of protection mode or insecurity. I wouldn’t let the fact that you’re spelling is getting a little bad make you feel inferior to anyone else ‘Too Many Cats’. When we age our digestive system looses it’s ability to take up some minerals. If you adjust you’re diet a little and take specific vitamins or minerals that address this problem it may help. I cannot find any evidence of specialists in this field, maybe an allergist can help. This you can do on you’re own and the results will be somewhat adaptable to you’re blood relatives. We have five cats and I don’t think it’s too many, how many is too many. Y’know **Ricky** , I was gonna give you some support on your position in dis tread, until you posted dis. D’ja think there might be a reason there ain’t no specializicators in dis field? ---
**Author:** ![Section\_Maker\_Jupe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/section_maker_jupe/32/1424_2.png) [@Section\_Maker\_Jupe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Section_Maker_Jupe)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2011, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-poor-spellers-stupid/600351/65 "2011-10-23T19:42:01Z")
A great fascinating book to read is Bill Bryson’s “The Mother Tongue: english and how it got that way” quite the labyrinthical small book. (I stole that from the book) …my own spelling appears to be worsening with age, what with txtngs etc… and free form rambling forum posts…I dunno. :eek: Oh, I’m a long time GD Lurker, first time poster…🆒 Jupe ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2011, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-poor-spellers-stupid/600351/66 "2011-10-23T22:07:18Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > “Atheist” sometimes gets misspelled as “athiest,” but to me, that misspelling sticks out like a sore thumb. “Atheist” is clearly an “-ist” word, a “person who…” word. It’s closely related to “atheism” and to “theist/theism,” and it falls into the same category as “realist,” “idealist,” “empiricist,” etc. It’s not an “-est” word (athy, athier, athiest). So that one, at least, is not just a matter of storing a sequence of letters in mental memory, nor of following rules that are unrelated to the word’s meaning. > > “Being” is another obvious one. It’s an “-ing” word, a gerund: stem “be” plus suffix “ing.” There’s no temptation whatsoever to switch the e and the i. I think of the “I before E…” rule as a sort of last resort, to be appealed to when I can’t figure out the correct spelling otherwise. Even more directly, in both cases, the “e” and the “i” are separate syllables. The rule was never intended for that case to begin with. ---
**Author:** ![brittekland](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/aeb1de/32.png) [@brittekland](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brittekland)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2011, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-poor-spellers-stupid/600351/67 "2011-10-23T22:12:14Z")
Often my own misspells and grammatical errors are from hasted last minute editing. When I move things around and reconstruct sentences I seem to always miss one or two things that needed to be changed like singular to plural verbs, etc. Particularly here at SDMB I always feel hurried because of the editing time limit but I do that often with my longer emails often as well. But then again I often receive mails from highly “intelligent” people with impressive degrees and in “important” positions doing the same thing. I think there is an unspoken agreement that these are overlooked that critical messages being communicated is more important than nitpicking typos and obvious errors. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2011, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-poor-spellers-stupid/600351/68 "2011-10-24T01:31:02Z")
_The Mother Tongue_ by Bill Bryson is full of errors. It’s a fun read and a reasonable place to start if you want to learn about the history of English and about how languages work in general, but don’t use it as a definitive source for anything. ---
**Author:** ![qazwart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/5fc32e/32.png) [@qazwart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/qazwart)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2011, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-poor-spellers-stupid/600351/69 "2011-10-24T03:17:08Z")
> [@gamerunknown](#): > > Or the English spelling “foetus”, which looks more correct since it has pointless letters, but was in fact used due to the transcribing error of a 14th century monk from what I can recall. A young monk was being shown around by the senior monk who was explaining what they were doing. “Here”, said the older monk, “is where we transcribe the books. We copy the old books into the new books, and put the older books away. Then, we use the new book to make another copy.” “But”, asked the young monk, “what if you made a mistake? It would be repeated over and over.” The older monk replied, “We have the older books in the archives in the basement. We can always check those.” The next day, the young monk was looking for the senior monk, but he was no where to be found. The young monk asked around and someone remembered that the older monk went to the archives to check something in one of the original books they’ve been copying for centuries. The young monk went down in the archive and saw the older monk sobbing in the basement archive over a particularly old book. “What’s wrong?”, asked the young monk. "The older monk pointed to the book in front of him and replied, “It’s says **celebrate**!” Thank you. Thank you. I’ll be doing another show at eight. See you there, and don’t forget to try the roast beef. ---
**Author:** ![lbailey626](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d6d6ee/32.png) [@lbailey626](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lbailey626)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2011, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-poor-spellers-stupid/600351/70 "2011-10-24T04:56:55Z")
I wouldn’t confuse obsessive correctness with intelligence. There have always been people in my life correcting my spelling, and many other things that I don’t do well. I just laugh and say, you do that while I contemplate my hypothesis on m-theory. In my opinion, and experience spelling has nothing to do with intelligence, and more to do with how important medial things are to ones brain. Left brained vs Right brained. Einstein forgot to put his pants on before he left the house on many occasions. Wore the same clothes every day so he didn’t need to waste e time on choices. Why, because his mind was busy working on more important things. He didn’t care if his shoes were tied, in the larger scheme of things it was a tiny unimportant detail that would not change the outcome of anything important. This is very common of left brained brilliant people. The imagination often get in the way of correctness, but generally leads to greatness. Upside Down Brilliance is great book that explain a lot about this topic. I strongly believe correctness is not a sign of analytically ability, and usually just a pointer as to which hemisphere is dominant. Spelling is generally only important to audio \*\*sequential \*\*right brain dominant people. ---
**Author:** ![Riotous84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e36b37/32.png) [@Riotous84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riotous84)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2011, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-poor-spellers-stupid/600351/71 "2011-10-24T05:47:50Z")
I’m a self-proclaimed logophile, cruciverbalist, insert-other-term-to-describe-word/language-enthusiast-here, etc. In my opinion, the issue here is not one of intelligence. While I would consider myself fairly intelligent, I would not say that I am based on my spelling ability alone. My love of words/language makes it so that I am especially attentive to the way that they’re used. I even go so far as to spell all words out entirely via text, which might seem a little excessive for some. This is not to say that if I were to misspell words someone wouldn’t understand me; various examples have been provided here and elsewhere which prove that people would likely interpret what I mean even with a few typos. I do this because I care about how my writing looks to the individual on the receiving end, more for me than for them. There are many issues involved here; education, practice, and interest are large components of spelling ability. Strong spellers are usually strong readers and writers too; the three often go hand in hand. Intelligence is variable and subject to many factors; a bad speller may be many things, but they shouldn’t be classified as stupid on those terms alone. I’m a bit of a grammar/spelling Nazi (having begun as early as age seven), but only with people who are _supposed_ to know better. People whom I expect to have a firm command of the language and of spelling in general, tend to annoy me when they make errors out of negligence. Obviously, no one is perfect. There is definitely an aura of elitism that comes with this subject matter; people tend to automatically assume that someone who doesn’t spell well doesn’t have anything important to say or is a dummy. Given that I now read so many forums online, I must often suppress my inclination to do the same. This topic could easily spill over into the realms of language. I appreciate the many vernaculars that exist in America. I view these as wonderful variations of our cultural lexicon, but “context is king”. I would not expect an individual who has been uneducated to be able to spell or speak as well as someone who’s gone to college for an advanced degree of some sort, but I wouldn’t think any less of him either. What’s more is that the people I know who haven’t been formally educated but have good grammar/spelling/diction made the choice to strengthen those areas themselves, so there’s that factor to be considered too… ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2011, 10:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-poor-spellers-stupid/600351/72 "2011-10-24T10:49:48Z")
> [@](#): > > I do this because I care about how my writing looks to the individual on the receiving end, more for me than for them. Oh, same here. I’m very slow at texting, but I always try and take the time to make sure my texts are punctuated and written in full: I figure it shows the person I’m texting that I care a lot about them. Then again, the sentiment behind a text without punctuation may be exactly the same, as would a two word text sent by someone with dyslexia. One of my friends in particular goes out of his way to make use non-standard English in texts and other communications and it used to annoy me, but I figure that it’s just his way of establishing a friendly tone when one can’t speak face to face. ---
**Author:** ![qazwart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/5fc32e/32.png) [@qazwart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/qazwart)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2011, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-poor-spellers-stupid/600351/73 "2011-10-24T16:32:54Z")
When my son was in elementary school, he would write these beautiful stories and show them to his adult relatives and other adult friends of ours. The person would look at the story and the first thing they’d say is “You misspelled…”. He has an excellent imagination, and the stories were wonderful, but he stopped writing because he couldn’t stand the constant “you’ve misspelled…” refrain when he wanted people to comment on his stories and not his spelling. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2011, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-poor-spellers-stupid/600351/74 "2011-10-24T16:53:24Z")
> [@qazwart](#): > > When my son was in elementary school, he would write these beautiful stories and show them to his adult relatives and other adult friends of ours. The person would look at the story and the first thing they’d say is “You misspelled…”. > > He has an excellent imagination, and the stories were wonderful, but he stopped writing because he couldn’t stand the constant “you’ve misspelled…” refrain when he wanted people to comment on his stories and not his spelling. On the one hand, I fully agree that this was a crappy thing for them to have done, and they should have paid attention to the stories and not the spelling. On the other hand, this is an example of why spelling is important: because there are people out there who will be so distracted by misspelled words that they’ll focus on that and never even notice what you’re trying to say. Perhaps you could have helped your son proofread his stories and “edit them for publication” before showing them around to adult friends? ---
**Author:** ![thinksnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thinksnow/32/2849_2.png) [@thinksnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thinksnow)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2011, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-poor-spellers-stupid/600351/75 "2011-10-24T17:20:53Z")
> [@brittekland](#): > > Often my own misspells and grammatical errors are from hasted last minute editing. When I move things around and reconstruct sentences I seem to always miss one or two things that needed to be changed like singular to plural verbs, etc. Particularly here at SDMB I always feel hurried because of the editing time limit but I do that often with my longer emails often as well. > > But then again I often receive mails from highly “intelligent” people with impressive degrees and in “important” positions doing the same thing. I think there is an unspoken agreement that these are overlooked that critical messages being communicated is more important than nitpicking typos and obvious errors. This. I write process improvement proposals and find myself moving bits around all the time and this happens more than I care to admit…though I suppose I’m admitting it here. I digress. My single biggest typo is “-ign” instead of “-ing” on many things, though that primarily happens when I’m IM-ing, so I’m more focused on a swift reply and the content of the message is key. The person I IM most often is just used to it now and doesn’t bat an eye. Not that it matters or that you could fact-check, but 34 ACT, 1280 SAT, 99 ASVAB…and a B- GPA. I tested well. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2011, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-poor-spellers-stupid/600351/76 "2011-10-24T17:27:02Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > But the “ei” in “rein,” “reign,” and “vein” _does_ sound like “A as in neighbor and weigh.” So does “heir,” sort of, if you exaggerate the vowel; and so does one of the possible pronunciations of “leisure.” > > “Atheist” sometimes gets misspelled as “athiest,” but to me, that misspelling sticks out like a sore thumb. “Atheist” is clearly an “-ist” word, a “person who…” word. It’s closely related to “atheism” and to “theist/theism,” and it falls into the same category as “realist,” “idealist,” “empiricist,” etc. It’s not an “-est” word (athy, athier, athiest). So that one, at least, is not just a matter of storing a sequence of letters in mental memory, nor of following rules that are unrelated to the word’s meaning. > > “Being” is another obvious one. It’s an “-ing” word, a gerund: stem “be” plus suffix “ing.” There’s no temptation whatsoever to switch the e and the i. I think of the “I before E…” rule as a sort of last resort, to be appealed to when I can’t figure out the correct spelling otherwise. > > “Zeitgeist” is a German word (or, a word that comes to us from German), and I know enough German to automatically associate “ei” in German words with the “long i” sound, and “ie” with the “long e.” (So the frequently-misspelled “wiener” jumps out at me when it’s misspelled “weiner.”) > > I don’t dispute that there’s a lot of memorization involved. But just saying “it’s memorization” oversimplifies things. A fuller explanation would have to get into **how** the brain stores, retrieves, and checks information, and I believe this is different for different people. If you need to memorize the historical source of a word to correctly spell it, is it not just memorization? ---
**Author:** ![Cartoonacy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/848f3c/32.png) [@Cartoonacy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartoonacy)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2011, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-poor-spellers-stupid/600351/77 "2011-10-24T18:29:24Z")
> [@rat\_avatar](#): > > If you need to memorize the historical source of a word to correctly spell it, is it not just memorization? It’s not only memorizing the rules, but knowing when they apply. Otherwise, you could say that algebra is just a matter of memorizing rules like commutativity and associativity. ---
**Author:** ![gazpacho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6f9a4e/32.png) [@gazpacho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gazpacho)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2011, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-poor-spellers-stupid/600351/78 "2011-10-24T19:25:38Z")
> [@Cartoonacy](#): > > It’s not only memorizing the rules, but knowing when they apply. Otherwise, you could say that algebra is just a matter of memorizing rules like commutativity and associativity. It is really difficult to come up with tasks that display intelligence that don’t have a lot of memorization associated with them. A lot of intelligence is adapting past solutions to new problems. Without a good amount of past solutions at your command it is harder to come up with new innovative solutions. ---
**Author:** ![Cartoonacy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/848f3c/32.png) [@Cartoonacy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartoonacy)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2011, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-poor-spellers-stupid/600351/79 "2011-10-24T22:06:46Z")
> [@Tengu](#): > > While I agree with you on the rule in general, both of these, in my dialect, at least, fit the rule, being homophones of rain. (I’m pretty sure some dialects make vein, fit, as well.) Just curious; in what dialects _doesn’t_ vein fit the rule? (Or even reign and rein, for that matter?) I checked [http://www.howjsay.com](http://www.howjsay.com) but it had no alternate pronunciations. ---
**Author:** ![Robert\_Estrada](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/46a35a/32.png) [@Robert\_Estrada](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robert_Estrada)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2011, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-poor-spellers-stupid/600351/80 "2011-10-25T21:40:17Z")
@ruken The not seeing individual words thing was my issue until computers and spell check. In the 6th grade I was reading above college level but never saw the words, just sentences or more. Presbyopia has put a damper on that. As to spell checkers, MS Word cannot check many of the words I use (see presbyopia). It is painfully lacking in medical and technical vocabulary. An anecdote, I do English text with engrossing as a hobby. In college after a late night of imbibing I made a poster but left nearly all the vowels out. Every one could still read it. Regards, Robert [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-poor-spellers-stupid/600351.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-poor-spellers-stupid/600351.md?page=5)