# Why can't people spell? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 18, 2008, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-people-spell/445925 "2008-04-18T18:32:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2015, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-people-spell/445925/81 "2015-03-02T01:16:20Z")
> [@Isamu](#): > > You’re wrong. I agrea. ---
**Author:** ![Count\_Blucher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Count\_Blucher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Count_Blucher)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2015, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-people-spell/445925/82 "2015-03-02T01:42:50Z")
Sometimes, its all in the educational aids which we once received as children. For example… [Morgan Freeman] “Zom…” [/Morgan Freeman] [Rita Moreno] “Bee…!” [/Rita Moreno] [Together] “Zombie!” [/Together] [Morgan Freeman] “Re…” [/Morgan Freeman] [Rita Moreno] “…run!” [/Rita Moreno] [Together] “Re-run!” [/Together] [Morgan Freeman] “Bore…” [/Morgan Freeman] [Rita Moreno] “…ing!” [/Rita Moreno] [Together] “Boring!” [/Together] [Morgan Freeman] “Type a…” [/Morgan Freeman] [Rita Moreno] “New Thread!” [/Rita Moreno] [Together] “Type A New Thread!” [/Together] ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2015, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-people-spell/445925/83 "2015-03-02T01:51:20Z")
People can’t spell because they don’t read enough. Hard to know how to spell words when you only hear them out loud. Specially in english. ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2015, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-people-spell/445925/84 "2015-03-02T02:07:46Z")
I vote Spell Check. Frankly, I can’t be bothered to put a whole lot of energy into being a better speller when I have a tool that will always be better at it than I am no matter how hard I try. I don’t know if it’s true or not but I’ve heard people used to be a lot better at doing math in their head (instead of writing it down.) before calculators became so ubiquitous. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2015, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-people-spell/445925/85 "2015-03-02T13:39:45Z")
> [@Anne\_Neville](#): > > 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”. Actually, I think it’s the way spelling it taught. We memorize lists of words that have nothing in common, and take spelling tests in class in the elementary and intermediate schools, and come away thinking memorization is the only way to learn to spell, and there are no rules, because we had “filet,” and “relay” on the same test. If kids learned about word groups and derivations, and that there are actually rules that govern not how individual letters, but groups of letters, are used, spelling would be much more intuitive. And people would stop naming their kids “Gennyphurre,” and expect everyone just to know it’s pronounced “Jennifer.” My mother is a linguist, and I read some of her books on word etymologies and derivations, and it improved my spelling immensely. Incidentally, this is how super-spellers-- the kids who make it to Nationals in the Scripps-Howard spelling Bee, do it, and why one thing they are allowed to ask for is the language of origin of a word. > [@](#): > > “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. “Love” used to be pronounced “loove,” otherwise Christopher Marlowe would not have written “Come live with me, and be my love, / And we shall all the pleasures prove.” I don’t know if “stove” was ever “stoove,” but I’ll bet in some dialect somewhere it is or has been. > [@Beware\_of\_Doug](#): > > I’m going to risk an asskicking here and suggest that 3 reasons a lot of us can’t spell are a) masculinity, b) patriotism, and c) authoritarian beliefs. I say this because I never saw as high a percentage of bad spellers anywhere as I did on a discussion forum about hazing in military training. Those in support of it - by far the majority - were almost all male military veterans who could barely spell, or in some cases, even write. > > I do not wish to imply that all or even most of our current or former servicemen have trouble with written English - merely those most likely to express authoritarian sentiments. It wouldn’t surprise me. My manuals in the military were atrociously written. Not just the spelling, either, but the grammar-- full of amusing dangling participles, and subjects and verbs that didn’t match in number. > [@elfkin477](#): > > The grammar checker is useless. It wants me to change “and we never” to “and us never”! Yeah. I think they were written by fifth grade teachers. Mine always flags sentences that start with “Because.” I even typed in “Because I could not stop for death-- / He kindly stopped for me–” once, and it got flagged. And not because of the dashes. The grammar checker suggested that it was “bad form” to start sentences with “because.” Yeah, right. That’s a classroom rule 5th grade teachers make, so that students don’t write incomplete sentences that start with “because,” which fifth graders do. One would hope that adults have learned better. ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2015, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-people-spell/445925/86 "2015-03-02T14:35:00Z")
I was never a great speller but I was fair. I noticed around age 55 I started struggling with words that used to be automatic. 66 now and my spelling continues to go downhill. I read a lot as a child and young adult but mainly just a lot of articles and how to books in my later years. I dropped out of school young but did have a good background from private school so really no excuse. I just don’t think I am wired as a speller or language person. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-people-spell/445925.md?page=4)