August 7, 2008

Withhold 'Judgement' on Students When a Word is 'Misspelt'

Ken Smith is fed up with correcting his students’ atrocious spelling and makes this modest proposal in an essay in the Times Higher Education Supplement: “University teachers should simply accept as variant spelling those words our students most commonly misspell.”

A senior lecturer in criminology at Bucks New University, in England, Mr. Smith lists 10 common misspellings that he would accept. Among them: “arguement” for “argument”; “Febuary” for “February”; “occured” for “occurred”; “opertunity” for “opportunity”; and “thier” for “their.”

“Either we go on beating ourselves and our students up over this problem or we simply give everyone a break and accept these variant spellings as such,” writes Mr. Smith.

The widespread attention his essay got after the Times supplement came out this morning took the lecturer by surprise. He later told a local newspaper, the Bucks Free Press, that he thought many readers had misunderstood his point. “I am not proposing spelling reform, I am not saying that people who can spell should unlearn what they learn at school or learn to spell these words differently,” he explained. “I am just saying we should allow a few more variants.”

So, just for the sake of arguement, are you willing to ignor it when a misspelling has occured? —Don Troop

Comments

1. Depends on the word. But I myself spell “February” as ‘Febuary’. That’s how I and most Americans pronounce it and there is no alternative form like ‘editor [‘edit@r] but [edi ‘tOri@l ] that would warrent positing the first orthographic “r” in the underlying linguistic form.

   Joseph F Foster Ph D, Linguistics

   — Joseph F Foster    Aug 7, 02:00 PM    #

2. ``judgement’‘ is a variant of ``judgment’‘

   — jon    Aug 7, 02:01 PM    #

3. Dis is jus 1derful. Koreckting misteaks is 2 much wurk. +, we dont want to hurt r stewdance celf-asteam. I cey we also axkept dese:

   2+2=5.
   De sowth 1 de sivel wore.
   De urth is de senter of de univerce.
   Donutz r a newtriseaus end holesum fud.

   — Robert D. Winsor    Aug 7, 02:36 PM    #

4. That’s ‘warrant’, Dr. Foster. Quis custodiet, etc.

   The reason for the first ‘r’ in February is its origin in the Latin word ‘Februarius’. The reason the first ‘r’ is usually silent is laziness. And what ARE they teaching linguistics Ph.D.s these days?

   — Gerard Harbison, UNL    Aug 7, 03:28 PM    #

5. I’m assuming this is a joke. If it is not, I am surprised by this suggestion, especially coming from a professor. I think misspellings are often a sign of sloppiness and lack of attention to detail. Moreover, to excuse them does a student no favors. As competitive as the job market is, a young person could actually lose out on a good employment opportunity if he or she leaves school believing a habit like this is acceptable. In my career, I have rarely seen a resume which contained spelling errors advance very far in the hiring/selection process.

   — Leslie    Aug 7, 03:29 PM    #

6. In a word: nope. I find his attitude only slightly less appalling than his students’ tendencies. He is also not doing them any favors since at least some in the real world care about spelling, grammar, etc. Perhaps it is less a revolution in orthography and more a chronic case of lazy professor.

   — Cary    Aug 7, 03:31 PM    #

7. Actually, I’ve never heard anyone mispronounce it as Feb-uary. I find this idea to wince and give a pass to poor spellers to be just about the saddest proposal I’ve heard in years. What’s next?
   (Sarcasm to follow):
   Oh, everyone does it, so let’s just give bad grammar a pass.

   Oh, everyone does it, so let’s let that plagiarism thing go.

   Oh, everyone does it, so let’s just let everyone drive 20 mph over the speed limit.

   Such a slippery slope.

   — kim    Aug 7, 03:34 PM    #

8. I’ve often struggled to read through various writings submitted to me by studnets – and say ABSOLUTELY NOT. There is nothing wrong with proofreading or ASKING someone else to proofread for you! Unfortunately – some of the usual suspects are not caught by spell check. Understanding that at times there may be a student challenged by a learning difference – but even then, they should be comfortable asking for assistance.

   — DBell    Aug 7, 03:35 PM    #

9. And for ther is so gret diversite

   In Englissh and in writyng of oure tonge

   - Chaucer

   — Shawn    Aug 7, 03:35 PM    #

10. I use spell checker because words can be typed wrong too. I wish there was a spell checker for posting comments.

    — G Lovett    Aug 7, 03:42 PM    #

11. Accepting work that is incomplete or incorrect sends the worst possible message to students. Given the hit written communication has taken in light of IM and text messaging, it is even more imperative that schools teach and enforce the proper use of language.

    — Kelly    Aug 7, 03:44 PM    #

12. Mark Twain said, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

    And for those of you who rely on Spell Check…

    I halve a spelling checker, It came with my pea see. It plainly marks four my revue Mistakes I dew knot sea.
    Eye strike a key and type a word And weight four it two say Weather eye am wrong oar write It shows me strait aweigh.

    As soon as a mist ache is maid It nose bee fore two long And eye can put the era rite Its rarely ever wrong.

    I’ve scent this massage threw it, And I’m shore your pleased too no Its letter prefect in every weigh; My checker tolled me sew.

    — Mike    Aug 7, 03:44 PM    #

13. studnets?

    — T.    Aug 7, 03:44 PM    #

14. Proposals like this make me want to rethink my rejection of Ayn Rand

    — luigi    Aug 7, 03:47 PM    #

15. Sorry, I can’t help it. It is how I was socialized. When I see a spelling or grammar error, I automatically look for clues to whether it was a lack of thoroughness, a typo, or a basic misuse of the language. If it is the latter, I do, indeed, think differently of the person. Because I believe I’m not alone, it is a disservice to students to not push them to correct their mistakes.

    — HIED doc    Aug 7, 03:52 PM    #

16. Eats, shoots and leaves….

    — Peter    Aug 7, 03:59 PM    #

17. The ability to discriminate between homonyms is the single most efficient means of identifying the academically competent from all the rest.

    — Cassidy    Aug 7, 04:22 PM    #

18. I don’t believe we should simply accept these errors as “standard.” As a current graduate student and one who has submitted literally hundreds of papers, as a student it is my responsibility to turn it quality work that meets the standard for higher education. If I chose to rely on spell/grammar check instead of reviewing my own paper carefully, then I also accept the consequences when i make careless errors. PLEASE do not weaken the standards for higher education by accepting these mistakes. As students we depend on you to require we turn in quality work.
    Thank you!

    — Tony Prestby    Aug 7, 04:25 PM    #

19. Applying #18 to #16, we get “Once more unto the breach!” which is what WS wrote. Not flattering, but we are in the land where Muphry’s [sic] Law holds sway.

    — Bob Rosenberg    Aug 7, 04:36 PM    #

20. I say potato, you say potatoe; nuclear, nuecular; let’s call the whole thing off.

    The time for reading and writing has clearly passed…

    — Tomas de Cali    Aug 7, 04:38 PM    #

21. I remember my first class as a fulltime undergraduate. My favorite professor was explaining the content for an upcoming writing assignment. It seems that the only other person in the room, besides me, to be appalled at this question from a fellow student, “Does spelling count?”—was the professor. And I am equally appalled that an instructor in higher ed. would propose the continued dumbing down of our education system.

    I’m with Arnold. We cannot give in to this laziness on the part of students or faculty members. What next? As Kim pointed out, should we now also start to overlook just a little plagiarism? Today, bad spelling and plagiarism are the two biggest culprits in all students’ written work.

    — LT    Aug 7, 04:40 PM    #

22. “un-lean what they learn” ???????

    — Lynda    Aug 7, 04:43 PM    #

23. Psst..Tony, check your posts before submitting them to avoid committing the very errors that you rail against.

    — LT    Aug 7, 04:44 PM    #

24. Y’all need to relax. And #24, I couldn’t agree more.

    — Bruce    Aug 7, 04:45 PM    #

25. To # 3,

    The South did indeed win the Civil War. It just took them another 100+ years. The evidence is currently the occupant of the Oval Office.

    — JR    Aug 7, 04:49 PM    #

26. As a mother of a dyslexic child, I just want to point out misspelling a word does not always equate to being stupid or even lazy. Some of the smartest people in the world are dyslexic and can’t spell to save their life; at the same time, I know several great spellers who can’t think their way out of a paper bag. Be wary of judging a person without knowing all the facts in any situation.

    — Teresa    Aug 7, 04:51 PM    #

27. To #26. Texas was not a state during the Civil War, and most of us from the true south still do not claim it.

    — Baldy    Aug 7, 05:07 PM    #

28. Baldy: Texas became a state in 1845, which was pre-Civil War.

    JR: Don’t blame that Yankee on those of us in the South! I would remind you he was born in Connecticut.

    I find this whole discussion interesting, considering that hard-and-fast spelling rules did not become the norm until sometime after the 18th Century. If you doubt that, go back and read the original text of the Declaration of Independence. Were they wrong then, not to have such rules, or are we wrong now to be so inflexible in applying them?

    — Pablo    Aug 7, 05:29 PM    #

29. The notion of human rights really didn’t happen until the 18th century either. Nonetheless, I happen to think they’re a good idea.

    — Gerard Harbison, UNL    Aug 7, 06:24 PM    #

30. I find that my most judgmental colleagues in this regard also make the most embarrassing errors (compliment vs. complement, incites vs. insights, etc.) relying on their spell checker which the students do not have on their in class exams.

    — Chuck Higgins    Aug 7, 08:09 PM    #

31. Indeed, Mr. Harbison (#4), there is an orthographic “a” and not “e” as I mistyped in the second syllable of “warrant” But it is not mistypings but consistent alternative spelling that is involved with “Febuary”.

    One thing we are teaching in linguistics is what we have always taught — not to foolishly fall afoul of the “etymological fallacy”. Nor to be caught up by “spelling pronunciations” out of insecurity of one’s social status. The first “r” in FebRuary is going and for many has gone the way of the “n” in ‘hymn’. But there is a morphological alternation “hymNal” in which the “n” is pronounced. So there is a reason in the systematic pattern of the language to retain the spelling “hymn” with the last “n” there even in the underived form It is part of the underlying root.

    There is no such alternation that supports the retention of the first “r” in the spelling of “February”, hence the spelling “Febuary” for the many of us who do not pronounce the “r”. The fact that it was there in the Latin source is quite irrelevant and beside the point.

    Would you contend that you are “lazy” because you do not pronounce an “mn” cluster in the word “hymn”?

    — Joseph F Foster    Aug 7, 09:13 PM    #

32. Re no.10: “I wish there was a spell checker for posting comments.”

    I wish there were a grammar checker to check for the correct use of the subjunctive…

    — Edward A. Cowan    Aug 8, 07:07 AM    #

33. Kassidy (#18), you commented that being able to distinguish between homonyms is the great intelligence divide. I’m with you and not with you. I am an attack dog when it comes to misspelling. However, my daughter has a learning disability that precludes her from spelling correctly – who would have thought there was such a thing, but it does exist. Her IQ scores are high, high, high, but spelling? Not a chance. That said, she uses both spellcheck (with grammar check turned on) and an editor for important projects. (What type of editor? a human set of eyes!)

    — Rena    Aug 8, 08:56 AM    #

34. My husband, a college president, is a terrible speller and two of our three children have inherited what I am convinced is the “bad speller gene.” I have always been able to spell easily and (for the most part) accurately, so this was a big surprise to me. In my own university teaching, I ignored spelling on in-class work, preferring to elicit spontaneous responses. However, for essays and research papers done out of class, I made it very clear that it was hard for me to get past poor spelling and grammar to what the student was trying to convey, so proofing and editing was critical. Besides, poor grammar and spelling made me extremely irritated and cranky — not the attitude you want to provoke while I’m grading your paper. It seemed to work pretty well. . . .

    — js    Aug 8, 01:30 PM    #

35. As an editor, i.e. one who makes a living from others’ imperfections in re spelling, capitalization, punctuation, syntax, and grammar (not to mention clarity, accuracy, correctness, and coherence), I am in sympathy with the hardliners on this one. Spelling, punctuation, capitalization, etc. are essentially conventions. So is driving on the right in this country. Defy it if you dare.

    As a would-be realistic and very fallible human being, I have to remember William Safire’s observation that language is a unique phenomenon: “When enough of us are wrong, we’re right.”

    I for one consider alright, miniscule, restauranteur, and so forth abominations, and I fix them when I find them, regardless of the fact that descriptive dictionaries condone them. Fair enough: MWCD10 can condone it, but I don’t have to. Sloppiness in thought and sloppiness in writing set up a vicious circle, in that each makes the other worse.

    That doesn’t mean I’m kidding myself that I’m holding off the tide of barbarism. But once in a while I may save someone from minor embarrassment.

    — Dan    Aug 8, 02:59 PM    #

36. #36, I agree with you and I also agree with the person you quoted about majority usage shaping language. Any linguistic change I suppose starts out as “wrong”.

    One that really scratches my ears is “anyways”. Yet I’m hearing an ever-increasing number of people use it. And I’m pretty sure that hundreds of years ago, “alway” was the word used instead of our modern “always”. So I predict (ugh) that in about a century, “anyways” will be considered correct. But such is evolution.

    — Rich    Aug 8, 04:25 PM    #

37. I agree with those who have injected the possibility of dyslexia as perhaps being the cause of some students not being able to spell words. However, it is difficult for me to believe that in any given class of mine, at least 50% of my students are afflicted with it.
    I have found misspellings in books, magazines, newspapers, on billboards. These authors give dyslexics a bad name.

    — LT    Aug 8, 06:02 PM    #

38. I confess that on first reading I thought this was along the lines of “A Modest Proposal” for the William Buckley set. I was mistaken.

    It’s funny. We allow people to go through life freely admitting (with pride no less) that they are “bad at math” or “not a math person” but when the issue turns to spelling everyone’s knickers get knotted.

    Curious world…

    — William C    Aug 8, 07:58 PM    #

39. give me a break.
    i will rip my students’ (or students’s for the strunk & white crowd) papers for poor spelling, mistakes in mechanics and errors in grammar, and i expect my professors to be that tough on my work. but i think we’re confusing formal and informal writing situations. i refuse to capitalize, to not split infinitives, or use the oxford comma consistently in my casual correspondence and various online comments/rants. i am, on the other hand, sometimes personally offended when my students—dyslexic or not—commit egregious errors. dyslexic does not mean they can’t work a spell-checker and use a dictionary.
    and #16, if you think you and your red pens are guarding the walls against the barbarians, you’re too late. all ur base r belong 2 us (trans: we’ve already infiltrated your ranks). we’ll make sure that “they” becomes an accepted singular neuter pronoun in 10 years. you lose.

    — prehensel    Aug 9, 05:58 PM    #

40. No. 12: Mike – may I copy and distribute your brilliant verse?

    — jc    Aug 11, 09:50 AM    #

41. jc – a Google search on “spell check joke” will reveal lots and lots of examples – some short, others much longer. Here are a just a few:

    http://www.randyshomestead.com/jokebook/spell_check_poem.htm

    http://www.ahajokes.com/com095.html

    http://www.michaelclark.name/jokes/computer/spell_checker.shtml

    — Mike    Aug 11, 10:37 AM    #

42. Some people are just unable to spell, and that’s not a devastating handicap, as long as they realize it and take steps to get their (formal) writing proofread when necessary. I see no need to penalize spelling or grammar errors in non-language related classes, as long as the meaning is not obscured by the errors. But corrections should always be given to the students, for their own sake. (Unless, of course, the teacher is a bad speller, too.)

    — swishnets    Aug 12, 11:28 AM    #

43. Currently, I am serving on one search committee and chairing a second. What this professor suggests must already be the norm if the cover letters from college graduates is an indicator of the applicant’s ability to spell or structure a sentence/paragraph.

    In this area of higher education, written and oral communication skills are important. So much so, that mistakes in spelling and grammar will result in the committee passing over an applicant.

    The ‘I’m just bad at spelling’ carries the same weight as the ‘I just don’t test good’ excuse. Spelling is a skill that requires the excersizing of the mind through reading and writing.

    — casey    Aug 12, 01:47 PM    #

44. What is poor spelling and what is poor typing? These posts are full of typos, but I don’t automatically assume the writer actually spells that way. See #8 and his or her “studnets”.

    Tell them to check their work, spelling AND typos do count, and that at the third such error in any paper you will stop reading and mark it “F.”

    I have, more than once, sent a job application cover letter back to the sender with corrections. It’s amazingly effective.

    — Victoria Ayers    Aug 12, 04:07 PM    #

45. One of the wonderful things about the English language is that it adapts over time, servings its speakers’ needs as they evolve. Thus, the editors of the OED spend great energy “harvesting” words from the wild. Spelling changes over time, and new words emerge. I think the good professor is suggesting that the language may have evolved, and dictionaries need to catch up. If common usage is that “their” is widely spelled “thier”, then maybe we should update the dictionary with the derivative spelling rather than penalizing those who use that variant.

    However, in the workplace we measure correct spelling by the dictionary rather than by common usage. Students (and professors) need to be able to conform to the generally accepted rules of English spelling and grammar in order to be competitive in the workplace. When I read a resume with significant misspellings my first instinct is to put it down and look at the next one. I can forgive one or two errors, but beyond that it shows that the applicant both did not take the process seriously enough to run a simple spellchecker and that s/he has significant problems with business communication. I want people who take care in how they present themselves because their work will represent my group.

    — Debbie C    Aug 13, 08:48 AM    #

46. The most fun is when poor spelling creates what I call missonyms: misspelled words that have a (nearly) appropriate (and unintended meaning) in their context. For example, a student in a psychology paper wrote about the importance of self of steam in child development. Think about it — isn’t self esteem about the energy and motivation that’s implied by the concept of having a self of steam?

    Or a reviewer on Amazon.com who disagreed with an author’s perspective by noting that he shuttered to think positively about it. What could be more closed minded than someone shuttering their mind?

    These are related to what are sometimes called eggcorns (from a misspelled acorn).

    I just love the poetical images that sometimes unintentionally come across in student writing because they “misspelled” something.

    Ok, it helps me cope with grading…

    — Ray    Aug 13, 03:33 PM    #

47. This is ridiculous! Professors are the last line of defense between sloppy written work and a world in which neatness and accuracy usually result in business, social and economic advantages. I am not ready for yet another “Ebonics do be fun” approach to grammar.

    — judith    Aug 13, 04:34 PM    #

48. Good spelling should never be noticed. Bad spelling is the same thing as getting dressed in the dark.

    — The Big Raisin    Aug 13, 04:51 PM    #

49. Do you have ants or aunts?

    — Walt    Aug 14, 10:15 AM    #

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