Is there a reason so many people are bad spellers? They don’t know how to spell words correctly? They don’t care if they spell words incorrectly?
Sure, everyone will make a typo every now and then. I’m talking about basic words spelled incorrectly or misused.
Since this is in the opinion forum, I’ll offer one.
Both my parents were excellent spellers. So were my grandparents on both sides. Most of my aunts and uncles were, too, as best I can recall. However, some of my cousins and my brother (especially) are terrible at it.
So I can rule out the genetic aspect, but I lean in the direction of being influenced by family as long as family makes a good example. I can’t explain my brother.
My kids spell well enough and their mother was a good speller as were her parents.
It was important to me and my kids’ mother in their early years for them to spell correctly. I think that’s the main issue in my case.
It will be interesting to see how many good spellers have (or had) parents who didn’t care all that much about spelling.
Also, somebody who is closer in time to their schooling might wish to refute my conviction that spelling (along with arithmetic) has lost its importance in early education.
Of course, trying to spell properly in English is like trying to draw with a brick tied around your pencil: you’re handicapped from the beginning. We really need to fix the spelling system. So what if it accelerates the divergence of English into different dialects? It’s not like that kind of thing hasn’t happened before.
People don’t read as much as they once did. Constructing sentences with proper punctuation, grammar, and spelling is a lot easier if you’re used to reading the correct words in the first place.
And the basic attitude seems to be “well, you knew what I meant.”
When I entered the workforce 23 years ago I was deftly careful not to make glaring errors in my “Vax mail” messages to peers. Nowadays I see run-on sentences and complete lack of attention to detail from the younger generation.
Kids today…
I think that bad spellers are usually people who don’t read. I think I have good spelling because I read voraciously when I was younger. Seeing so many words that are spelled correctly (assuming the editor did their job), makes the correct spelling seem just second nature. I do make the occasional typo, but generally a misspelled word looks glaringly wrong to me.
I no longer read as many books per year, I still make time to read fiction, non-fiction, even magazines. Personally, I’m puzzled when I walk into someone’s house and they don’t have any reading material around.
Cite?
Seriously, my intuition exactly the opposite, that people read much much more than they used to. Maybe not as many novels, but they’re reading much more stuff of various sorts, especially on the InterWeb.
Not perhaps the optimum authority on correct spelling.
It jes tain’t impurtent 2 peepul no more, cuz they dont ryt much stuf.
Seriously, the worst spellers I’ve known are the people who do a lot of talking about nothing in particular, but don’t have much need to write anything.
Then there’s the whole basic “26 characters in an alphabet that don’t necessarily translate to the written page in an intuitive manner combined with a language that’s such a mish-mash of other languages.” A phonetic alphabet where one character only represented one possible sound would be much more useful.
While laziness, lack of education, and reading may play a part, there may some basic brain function stuff going on. Some people just aren’t word-oriented, just like some aren’t numbers-oriented. Maybe bad spellers are just more right-brained.
Not in my case. I am a voracious reader. I averaged one to two novels a week back when I was a student. My house if full of books.
My mother was an English teacher for a period of time. That was like living with a Webster’s unabridged*.
I am dyslexic and am a lousy speller. I have found that as of late, my spelling is getting much better due to the on the fly spell checker in Firefox. I actually have entire posts get written with no errors. Not all the time mind you, but sometimes. 
go me.
My daughter has her grandmother’s spelling ability. No dyslexic there.
*Favorite mom story. My eighth grade English teacher sent a note home about my performance in class. My mother read it, got out her red pen and corrected the spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. She added a note at the bottom, and sent it back.
Funny that teacher never sent another note home to me.
I think this is a cause of it. I know I tend to spell certain words wrong consistently because the way I’m used to hearing it doesn’t jibe with the way it’s actually spelt. For the most part I’m pretty good at it, but if it weren’t for spell check I’d wind up spelling ‘available’ wrong every damn time.
I am an awful speller. I read a lot growing up and it is still one of my favorite pastimes and I have always read above my grade level. But I always tested in the bottom 5-10% in spelling and grammar growing up. My mom is an elementary teacher and she did everything she could think of to get me to learn how to spell words but it just doesn’t stick. On the other hand i can look at a word and tell that it’s not right but I couldn’t tell you what right is.
Along with that is I’m a natural speed reader, if such a thing exists. I don’t necessarily read what is written on the page as much as what should be there. Which is one reason that I can’t edit with out exceptional work I just automatically insert correct spellings, commas and periods. There are times when reading that I will come across a statement that doesn’t make sense with what I was reading earlier and I will go back and find out that I substituted a sentence that I wanted which horribly conflicted with the later action. the good thing about this is that I’m great a figuring out new words in context because I just insert what word should be there and then can figure out the new words meaning. I’m not sure if this answers any questions for you
In my experience, bad spellers don’t notice how a word is spelled, and don’t do follow-up on words they don’t know. They don’t notice that application has two Ps or that another words has silent letters. They don’t really think about how a word is spelled until they have to spell it, which could be months or years later. When they see a word they don’t know, they worry more about the definition of it than the spelling of it. So when the time comes to spell the word, they can only fumble around with phonemes until they come up with their best guess, which is usually wrong.
I don’t think it’s laziness. I think good spellers and bad spellers just don’t look at text on a page the same way.
I have two sisters (I’m female) older than I am. My oldest sister and myself are excellent spellers. The other sister always struggled with spelling and may have had a learning disability like dyslexia (my oldest daughter is dyslexic), but seemed to have an easier time in math classes than myself or oldest sister, so the brain/hardwiring theory makes sense from my POV.
I’m a pretty decent speller, but those are exactly the sorts of things that trip me up. Double consonants and vowels that are pronounced as schwas or are followed by Rs. Tommorrow, grammer, imitate, sentance.
And that’s no egzajurashun.
I wonder if part of it isn’t a difference in learning styles.
I’m a fairly good speller (watch this post be ridden with typos…). I process information best if I read it. I ask people not to call me on the phone or stop by and talk to me to tell me something or ask me to do something, because it’s very likely that I will forget something if I just hear it and don’t read it. I tell them to send me an email instead, because if I read something I have a much easier time absorbing and remembering it. I wonder if some of the bad spellers might be people who absorb and retain written information as poorly as I do stuff I hear, and who need to hear something for it to really sink in.
And don’t forget- English spelling is complicated:
We’ve borrowed words from all over the world, and we often borrow their spellings with them. Spellings that might not make much sense in English. I think I was 12 and taking a French class when I learned that “hors d’oeuvre” was the same thing as the word I had always heard said “orderve” but never seen written. I’d seen “hors d’oeuvre” before that, but the spelling was just too alien to sound out until I had taken some French, and the context didn’t make it clear that it was the same thing as “orderve”.
We don’t have a consistent way for spelling sounds, and one spelling might match multiple sounds. “Through” and “you” rhyme, but “love” and “stove” don’t, though the former are spelled like they shouldn’t rhyme and the latter are spelled like they should. And then we’ve got things like the schwa sound, which is one sound spelled with many different vowels in different words.
My unscientific and untested theory is that how well you spell depends on how much you read. If you read a lot, misspelt words jump out because you don’t recognise them. They immediately “feel” wrong (like “misspelt” and “recognise” perhaps do to American readers).
I invite voracious readers who just can’t spell to now prove me wrong.
My younger daughter will, Usram.
I, too, used to think that spelling was easier for one who reads a lot. But, my youngest reads many books and yet is a terrible speller. I think that part of it is like Oredigger says: she reads very rapidly. Each time a Potter book came out, she read it in one sitting (often overnight).
My younger son OTOH rarely reads books (if ever) and yet has great spelling ability.
I vote for AudreyK’s reason.
Well I guess it depends on how you define voracious but I’ve read about 15 books this year so a little less then one a week but I’ve been busy with a new job or it would probably be more. I agree that words can feel wrong but that doesn’t mean that I know how they should be.
Well, a lot of people are stupid and/or ignorant, you know. I tried to help a lady with her resume a few days ago. She looked at me like I had two heads when I gently suggested she might want to put some capital letters in. Like at the start of her name.
She was applying for a job as a secretary.