If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Read the community guidelines before posting ✨
Options
Essential support for under 25s
Essential support for under 25s
Take a look around and enjoy reading the discussions. If you'd like to join in, it's really easy to register and then you'll be able to post. If you'd like to learn what this place is all about, head here.
Comments
If there sending an informal e-mail I won't care. However, spelling and grammar is important - it gives an impression that you're a professional and care about your work. It may not be fair, but then life isn't and it doesn't help people to not correct them on things they are doing wrong.
What he said.
http://www.englishclub.com/writing/spelling_american-english.htm
http://esl.about.com/library/weekly/aa110698.htm
Poppi
Of course, and that's a given. But there is a big gap between that and looking down on someone who spells one or two words wrong in a whole report.
In my experience its actually more likely that senior management spell things incorrectly or ignore grammar, especially in emails. I think the absolute swamp of emails many people get has led to really quite sloppy shorthand to save time.
Because it's wrong. It's either correct or it's not; it's not open to debate.
If I put 2+2=5 in a maths test, does that mean I shouldn't be marked down as it's not that bad? I mean, it's near enough the right answer. It's not like I put the answer as 2,391. I got near enough the correct answer hence I shouldn't be penalised, just as I imagine you think that wonderfull is nearer than wundarfull and the former shouldn't be marked down.
I hope you see what I mean. Spelling is important. End of.
But what I'm saying, is life isn't a spelling test. If I wrote an essay about something and made some of those kind of spelling mistakes where the meaing is still 100% clear, yes it's ok to mark it and say that's mispelt, but should the ideas in my essay be marked down because of it?
You know if English isn't your first language you don't get marked down for it anyway (at some universities) so it's just making it more consistent.
The difference with maths is it gives discrete right/wrong answers. If I'm counting pears and miscount them, thats a cock up whatever way you look at it and it could damage my hypothetical market stall. If I'm writing a letter to the council, yes it should be spelt correctly, but if one word is slightly mispelt, they shouldn't refuse an application for something on the basis of me getting my numbers wrong. It's just a word, it conveys the same meaning.
If it's a spelling test, sure. It's either right or wrong. But in day to day things it's more about the meaning behind the words. With numbers there isn't any meaning behind it, so you can't make a mistake. If you are just talking about words as objects, then sure you can't make a mistake. But I believe words are just a tool especially when used in a university essay.
Presumably if you were running a university anyone who was dyslexic or couldn't spell well wouldn't be allowed in, regardless of how competent they were? Some of the brightest people at university fall down on things like spelling, it's daft, but why should their genius be ignored because they mispell certain words?
Don't they mark some of it on ideas and a certain proportion of it on spelling/grammar anyway? So your marks for ideas wouldn't be penalised, but you still wouldn't get full marks.
The only reason people are so resistant to spelling change is because it's so codified now. But that shouldn't mean that spelling alterations shouldn't be accepted.
I also think it's important to distinguish different types of spelling mistakes. In my opinion, 'htanks' or 'thakns' is a different kind of spelling mistake from 'fanks' (where the latter reflects a widespread phonological change in the English of the British Isles). I would also include 'definately' in this category. As a linguist, these are completely acceptable spellings, particularly given that as a codified system, spelling is always behind the spoken system as being representative of the language.
And as Shyboy says, maths and language are completely different systems. I'm surprised that as a linguist you're making them out to follow the same fundamentals.
But 1.9 + 2.1 isn't necessarily exactly 4 but could be 3.99999999999 or 4.0000000000001
I disagree with your logic there. It's true that values aren't necessarily the numbers they are represented as, but we take them at face value, that's their purpose as symbols. 2.1 + 1.9 is 4.
If you say though that a real life value (say someone's age) is 4, it might not actually be 4. But writing symbols on a paper there is no discrepency on their own.
I was actually marked down because of the presentation of my work, rather than the content, as I have difficulty controlling a pen.
Maybe that is something that should be looked at more than spelling.
3.999999999999999 = 4
4.000000000001 = 4