I, for one, am a terrible speller. Anyone that knows me will be the first to back me up on that. For me it started in 2nd grade. I wasn’t getting the spelling and reading thing down (I went to a private catholic school until the end of the 3rd grade) and the more the Nun tried to teach me, the more I was keeping the class back. It all, for me, boils down to phonics.
After many parent-teacher conferences, the Nun basically told my parents that they had to move on with the class curriculum. They told my parents that I’d “pick it up at some point”. i never did. My parents switched me to public schools at the start of the 4th grade and each day I had to go to the “Learning disability” room for extra help on my school work as well as more teaching on spelling and grammar.
Unfortunately, here I am 30 and I am no better now then I was back then. I still can’t spell for shit and I am highly embarrassed by it when I am meeting someone new for the first time (Ex, online dating) or in a professional setting. It is at it’s worse when I am extremely upset. Though there are a few people that I will just write too and try to be aware of my spelling, but where they are close friends… I tend to let it go.
Thank Og for Firefox and their dictionary add-on. I don’t know what I’d do without it.
Though an example of how bad it is for me? It was probably 3 years ago, I learned how to spell “Kitchen” and retain it. And this reply? Took me 25 minutes…
Oh and ETA - I still don’t understand how I can read and understand a word, but when it comes time to spell it in some other forum, I have no idea how.
I will never get a few words right. One has bothered me since I lost an elementary school spelling be with it: health. [sub][sup]::hangs head in shame::[/sub][/sup]
Funny enough, I picked up how to spell that correctly in a Beverly Cleary book…one of her Ramona and Beezus books. Ramona has to go get her older sister out of class, and she sees the teacher telling the kids how to spell separate…that there’s A RAT in the middle of it.
I think the more you read, the better speller you are. I seem to have an innate sense of how to spell a word. Granted, I’m no spelling bee winner, but I can hold my own.* And I’ve seen some horribly misspelled and constructed sentences from senior VPs…I’m assuming because they’re typing with their thumbs on a Blackberry.
*Although, for the longest time, I thought refrigerator had a “d” in the middle of it…“fridge” and all. It took Stephen King’s The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet to cure me of that one.
God help me, I’m about to quote Marilyn vos Savant. From what I can remember from a column she did on this ages ago, she said that a good speller was someone who knows when they’re unsure about a word.
I’m a pretty decent speller, and get words right most of the time. But I almost never spell anything wrong, simply because I almost always know when to look something up.
I have no idea why some people are poor spellers, though I do know why I am generally a good speller. I have a strong visual memory for words. If I know a word, I have a concrete image in my head of what it looks like. My husband, who is a decent speller who occasionally has trouble, tells me that he has no innate visual concept or memory for words.
I used to be a voracious reader, which is how I learned what words look like in the first place, but I really don’t fall into that category anymore. My spelling hasn’t suffered, but my writing has.
Is the problem that the average person’s spelling ability has declined, or is it just easier to notice the average person’s spelling ability in the modern world where written communication is so ubiquitous*? 20 years ago, most people would only have the regular opportunity read professional, edited writing(newspapers, books, etc), letters from friends and family and reports and whatnot from co-workers. One just didn’t have the opportunity to evaluate a lot of people’s writing skills, and when they did get the opportunity the writing was usually in a formal setting.
Today, the internet and email allow for a lot more informal written communication with a lot more people, so one gets the chance to see the writing skills of a larger cross-section of the population.
I can’t believe that Gaudere didn’t trip me up on that one.
This is a good point. I don’t think it is quite correct though. A good speller can spell many words without needing a reference. A poor speller with an understanding of their limitations can be indistinguishable from a good speller provided they care enough to use dictionaries and spell-checkers, and provided they know enough to distinguish various homophones. A few posters have commented on all of the other posters who supposedly can’t spell, writing flawlessly in this thread. There is no contradiction here, these are just people who know their limitations and care enough to use the tools available to proof-read their posts. The culture of the SDMB encourages this.
I definitely fall into the moderately poor speller who cares enough to try and get it right category.
I find it odd that people who say they are voracious readers (of properly published and edited books, that is) still have trouble spelling. For me, once I’ve encountered a word a few times, it “sticks”, so I’ll know how to spell it from then on. When I come across that word spelt incorrectly, it just leaps off the page/screen.
It helps, too, if you have some awareness of the origins of words (Latin, Greek etc). You can then make an educated guess at how to spell a lot of words even if you haven’t come across them before - and conversely, what an unfamiliar word that you read actually means.
As others have said it seems that some people don’t really process individual words and their spellings while reading. I find that I can tell that a word is spelt wrong, but I have to use trial and error to find something that looks right. Once I’ve had a few trials though, nothing looks right, a bit like if you say a word too many times and it starts sounding like a collection of syllables rather than a word with meaning.
When one mentions parents an grand parents. My POB (Perfectly Opinioned Brain) Begins to send the needle into red. My parents an grand parents learned by phonics.
Where I was subject to rout ( I think that is how you spell it. Where we learned to memorize every word in the dictionary. With a lot of exceptions to the rule. E before eye except in thigh or something like that. It was not until I had retrain my brain. Because of the damaged caused from excessive drinking. That my spelling improved. I believe the key here was phonics. I had for so long been on auto pilot. That I had for got how to do a simple thing like reading. So I began to read. Sounding out the words phonically. One of the side effects was my spelling improved. But not to spelling bee status. But I still can not spell Schedule unless I use the British pronunciation. Having experience first hand with both means of learning. What means of learning have the members been subjected. Do you see your age group as spellers. Spell checkers good or bad
Thanks for any an all input
Major reader until my eyes started to fail.
Never able to teach myself touch typing.
Spelling getting worse with age.
All my life I seem to see what I want to see concerning the written word.
I too do not read actual words unless it is important. ( Nontechnical )
If I know how to spell it but fumble finger the typing, without spell check, I would be doomed. I see what I expect to see so the misspelling does not trigger an alarm. Even on simple words. ( like ‘words’ )
It is getting worse and with other things happening along with that, I might need more testing.
I think so much faster than I can type, leaving out words or whole phrases seems to be my trademark. I do this even when speaking and many that are close to me ( wife ) will not let me get away with it for several reasons.
If I record myself when talking about something but am in a hurry, I skip, assume, try to give too much information that it scares even me. :smack:
I just typed ‘is’ instead of ‘it’ just above and did not see it, almost, because it is spelled correctly.
The poorest spellers I know are (all five) lawyers. They aren’t lazy or stupid, they are all well read, and they all write on a fairly regular basis. Not just e-mails or posts to something like this but actual letters and notes. One, a litigator of some renown, is so bad that you would think his “thinking of you” note was written by a six year old.
My guess is that a more a person relies on secretaries for most of what they do, the worse their personal spelling is going to become.
