Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Why can't people spell?

People can't spell at all nowadays. I know high schoolers who can't spell "cinnamon." I know middle schoolers who cannot spell the word "accusative" when it is on the sheet in front of them.

I know we have spell checkers now. But they can't catch everything and they are not an excuse for mental atrophy. At some point, everyone is going to have to go outside that format, and if he can't spell worth a damn, he is screwed.

People like to tell you that spelling is a talent and not a skill, and therefore one shouldn't be censured for being a poor speller. This is garbage. Spelling can be improved by hard work and practice, and it ought to be. You are doing no one any favors by allowing him to spell badly. He will come off in later life as illiterate and uneducated and, guess what? He is.

7 comments:

J said...

thank you.

JerseySjov said...

yes.
i might add "why can't people read aloud" since i spend much of my time in high-level classes cringing while my classmates stumble over big words like "connection" and "harder"

Didite said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

i hate you.

Crispy Banana said...

I hate poor grammar and spelling!

I hate computer chat now.

c u l8r.

someone punch them please!!!

Crispy Banana said...

boy, oh boy.. I hope I haven't misspelled in any of my comments. p.s. blogger doesn't even let you do that because the comments have this cool feature where if you misspell something it gets the red underline and if you right click on it, there are corrections right there!! failure free! people are stupid. bad spelling and grammar drive me insane.

alicethewaif said...

agreed.

unless you have dyslexia or something similar, there's really no excuse.