I find it annoying when Americans confuse T and D in spellings, like “congradulations” or “utter” (udder). Oh, and “could care less” and “that’s so cliche” seem to be particularly American.
Not trying to pick on Americans by the way.
I find poor spelling annoying, but it’s the stuff that anyone can do something about that bothers me. Yes, there’s spell check, but also, if you’re spelling something wrong surely you must be aware that you’re not sure how to spell it, and therefore look it up? It’s the “it doesn’t matter” attitude - even when it’s on a sign or an essay - that irritates me. Poor spelling should be something to be ashamed of, just like any personal failing. But it also irritates me that I can’t really come up with a good reason for why it matters except that it looks bad to people whose opinions matter. But then why should it look bad to those people?
The original letter to Cecil is actually a prime example. To me, writing a letter about spelling and not even checking your spelling in it is not necessarily a sign of poor intelligence or even lack of education, it’s just having very low standards.
I learned English way back when mostly from reading/writing. That is the reason why I may make a typo or two, but I do not misspell when I write. Most people learn the language from hearing it/talking, and the spelling is secondary. So even though it grates on me when I see people misspell fairly elementary words in personal communication, I am willing to give it a pass.
But there is absolutely no place for misspellings or grammatical errors in professional/business writing. If I see misspelled words in someone writing me on business matters, my opinion of their professionalism or expertise immediately drops.
Well to devil’s advocate, spelling is said to preserve etymological data. You could in theory tell where a word comes from, in part by the conventions used in its spelling.
That said, phonetics would be more useful I think. Learning Spanish one of the cool things is words are spelled the way they sound. Makes things a lot easier. Plus who wants some fresh ghoti?
In theory. But go find 10 people and ask them if the spelling of debt suggests any sort of etymological history to them. I’d be very surprised if more than a few of them go to debitum
A message board isn’t a very good place to evaluate anyones writing. Most of my messages are written hastily during coffee breaks at work. Also, I purposely try to use a conversational tone. “I figure the chicken has baked long enough.” “I used up the eggs yesterday.” I try to write on message boards like I talk. Not like I compose technical writings at work. I’m well aware that “The chicken has baked long enough.” is correct, but that’s not how I talk. It also doesn’t connotate that I’m “guessing” at how long the chicken needs to bake.
Some of history’s greatest minds hated our ridiculous, convoluted spelling and grammar rules. I’m a computer analyst and live by algorithms and procedural code. Grammar and spelling rules have always bedeviled me preciously because they aren’t consistent or logical.
I always admired ee cummings for his hatred of capital letters. He always signed his name in lower case and IIRC he didn’t use periods for his initials. Funny how these nitwits at wikipedia capitalize it and use periods anyway.
Nah, just a noob. That one will always misspell a word while complaining about someone else’s spelling is so common here, even among members with high standards, that it has its own name, Gaudere’s Law.
That’s my point. It was artificially added to augment the origin in the minds of english speakers. But the end result is that no one still remembers and the language is slightly harder to spell for no benefit.