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Spelling mistakes to be accepted.
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Common spelling mistakes should be accepted into everyday use, not corrected, a professor has said.
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What d'you reckon? I may or may not have invented the abbreviation "d'you."
Anyway, do you think that if the same words are constantly being spelled/spelt incorrectly, they should be accepted as alternative spellings of the word? Would it hurt anyone? Would if affect the ability to communicate at all? Or does correct spelling serve another purpose? Maybe it acts as an indicator to teachers as to someone's more general writing ability?
ETA: That should read "Spelling mistakes should be accepted."
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On a slightly different note, anyone who uses 'text-speak' on exam papers, or indeed anywhere outside mobile phone texting, should receive mandatory fail rates for 10 years in a row/ lose their job/ have their hand chopped off (delete as appropriate).
Oh don't be such a tw@.
I use it all the time in speech. Pronounced like 'jew'. But that's probably just because I'm too lazy to say 'do you'.
I think they should be accepted if they are as minor as the ones in the article. Truely instead of truly, twelth for twelth etc. By this, they shouldn't be taught or whatever, but if someone puts one of these very minor mistakes in a paper then it should be disregarded. I think the idea of standards is ridiculous anyway, at my uni if you are not a native English speaker then the marks for spelling are adjusted heavily. I objected to this because it removes consistency but being a student, I object to most things any kind of establishment tries to do.
It's just about common sense at the end of the day, should you judge someones academic merit on minor and frankly irrelevent spelling mistakes? If you are doing a course that focuses on the spelling of words then yes it should be a big concern but if you are doing anything normal? It doesn't really matter.
When you hit the workplace and everyone left right and centre butchers the language you kind of get a reality check that its the meaning of the words and not the words themselves that matter. Language is first and foremost a tool for communication and like with any other tool it does undergo modification and usage that was not specified in the manual
If 'variations' that have no reason to exist (there are those that do, but none in the article) start getting accepted for exams and academic writing then the rules on spelling may well become more lenient elsewhere, and in terms of words such as 'there' and 'their' and 'they're', spellings which most literate children should be able to use with confidence, yet a large amount of adults still cannot (and often they assume they can, so don't do anything about it), the meaning of the sentence changes as a result of an incorrect usage. This of course looks sloppy, and more importantly makes it harder for the reader to understand, makes them work where they shouldn't have to – because writing is, after all, about communication, and making your meaning clear. However 'spelling Nazi' some think it sounds, there need to be penalties in place to encourage people from childhood and onwards to learn the rules and make their writing lucid. Otherwise you're in danger of eventually getting a nation of people who don't know or care; and then the rulebreaking becomes invisible and useless because everyone does it, and new and dumber language rules will have to be established, to then be broken in turn and allow us all to have this conversation again, but probably in textspeak. At the risk of getting all dystopian about it...
I have trouble spelling that word! But I do try lol
Granted, some people are poor spellers. I count myself in that group as, being a linguist, I often get confused by similar words in other languages that effect my spelling. As a result, I work at it and I get better. Just like I work at my maths which is not as good as most people's.
Oh sorry, that's not very PC of me. We're not allowed to tell people they're wrong any more.
So even if the best CV by far for the job had a small spelling mistake like truely instead of truly you would chuck it in the bin? Really I think there are far more important criteria than spelling, and I think this is what the guy is trying to get across.
Yes, spelling matters, especially so if you are working with language - like a writer or something. BUT having said that, if you are studying astro physics and you understand better than most how some orbit works or something and are generally clever stuff, but sometimes - like the best of us - make small spelling errors, should you be penalised?
You know, if the best jobs went to people who could spell perfectly as the first priority rather than competence, what sort of society would we live in?
Its fair enough to take pride in your spelling but I think people are getting outraged over something so insignificant and unimportant... I can't believe some say its lazy
There is a standard and I think its pretty strictly adhered to and I don't think anyone is suggesting we scrap it. But the question is, when you are asking someone to write an essay on astrophysics for example, does the spelling have to completely 100% perfect, when its not going to be published in a journal or anything its just an answer to a question to prove knowledge and understanding etc.
I'm not saying don't penalise more blatant abuses of language (their, they're, there - for example) but like in some of the 'minor and common' mispellings in the article, its just focusing on what the point of the words are. The ideas conveyed.
I don't understand all the fuss about degrading to text speak or that we paving the way for the fall of society. That's probably how the Roman empire fell; first poor spelling, then Rome...
The odd one shoudl make a difference, but if it's a common mistake it should be corrected.
For instance, their there and they're are often misused when they're spellign of them is very important.
I'm shit at spelling and my speech is shit, but I read a lot, and through that I understand that even the finer details in language are very imporatant.
I dont mean penalise people for wrong spellings but just not accept a mistake as official. Its perfectly possible to correct any spelling mistakes in an essay while not letting them influence the mark.
If spelling mistakes were made official then i'd like to know what ones are acceptable and why? Most of the mistakes i make are through spelling something phonetically. Give accepting phonetic spelling mistakes 100 years and there would be a shit load of hard to understand dialects. Its bad enough listening to an Irishman imagine having to decipher everything he types as well...
But that's not really a change in spelling its a change in language, one is British and the other American, like colour and color.
When we go for job interviews and such, they expect us to have perfect English to a point, if schools allowed such mistakes to be accepted, then it would mean that it would not set a very good impression for those who wish to get a job, they may be doing what they were taught, but job interviewers will still look for good English both written and verbal. A lot of people would lose out of it was accepted and in my opinion, it would be a bad idea.
Poppi
The American word "program" actually comes from the original British spelling. "Programme" was adopted later only by the British from the French spelling, but the Oxford English Dictionary recognises "program" as being the preferable spelling. Programme may be the norm, but program is just as acceptable spelling in British English, officially at least. I suspect you would win an appeal against any examiner that attempted to mark you down for using it. So it is an example of two variants of the same word existing side-by-side. In America, "ensure" and "insure" are variants of the same word too. Enquiry and inquiry. Artefact and artifact. Judgement and judgment. All of these are accepted spelling variations.
Program is the correct spelling for computer software.
The US do not distinguish and spell them both with only 7 letters.
You presumably did not invent d'you as Oasis used it in one of their song titles 11 years ago and it probably dates back earlier still.
Ah yes, that's where I've seen it before. Someone accused me of making it up one time. I don't think it's a proper abbreviation though.
Yup. Since I do a job where meticulousness is paramount (most who work in the financial sector have to be), were I handed a C.V. that had spelling mistakes in it, yes, it would go straight in the bin. If they can't be bothered to check their own C.V. for spelling errors before submitting it, what kind of messages does that send out? Lazy? Slipshod?
Granted, were I hiring a gallery curator or a studio engineer, these things would be slightly less important but again, to me, if you don't check your C.V. for spelling mistakes, it demonstrates laziness and a lack of attention to detail; two qualities which I don't think are sought after in any job.
I myself am a bad speller. I mentioned that above. However, I don't just shrug my shoulders and resign myself to a life of semi-literacy; I work at it so I get better, just like most things that are fundamental skills that I'm not good at. Maths is another one.
It's saying things like spelling and grammar are insignificant and unimportant which are at the root of the intellectual apathy and stagnation which is sadly prevalent in this country.
It's funny, cause all this is is language change, something that happens in almost any language across the world, and happened in English hundreds of years ago (and continued to do so).
Most of you would have been up there on your soap-box when 'thou' and 'thee' started becoming just 'you', or when 'thurh' became 'through'.....
Knowing how to spell correctly has nothing to do with class or intellectual elitism. Nor does intellect have anything to do with class.
Thou and thee are relics of the case system that English used to have; the same case system that produced the word 'whom'. They are used to differentiate between the subject and object of the verb and, for a someone aspiring to study languages where this distinction still exists, can be very useful.
There is a difference between language evolving and spelling mistakes...
As for your second point, I'm not sure what you're arguing against (or really, what you're arguing full stop). I know what it's used for, but that distinction is almost completely gone in Modern Day English. As you mentioned, it was something English used to rely on, but doesn't anymore. Having spelling and grammar changes (such as youse - you) is an inherent part of any language, English included. Not only that, but you're wrong when you say that there is a difference between language evolving and spelling mistakes. The scribes who copied versions of Chaucer and earlier brought their own idiosyncratic spellings that deviated from the 'standard' (as loosely as that term can be defined), and from each other. Spelling mistakes, innovation, and improvising drive linguistic change, be it lexical, grammatical, phonological, or whatever.
All this is is linguistic superiority, and to be honest I find it very sad that in this day and age people are so quick to condemn people as 'lazy', or 'ignorant' just because they spell 'thanks' as 'fanks' (even if it is an adequate representation of how they say it).
Y'all (and you particularly Thunderstruck) need to get off your high-horse. Just because I spelt everything in this post correctly doesn't make me better that anyone else, just as if I spelt some of it incorrectly shouldn't make me a worse person....