Letters to the Editor
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It's not just spellers; it's the readers too
I kid you not. This just happened as I was reading this article. The phone rings. Caller ID says it's an out of area call. Expecting it to be a phone solicitor, I take the call, as well-armed as Caller ID can make me.
A young woman's voice asks me, "May I please speak with Rebecca Louise xxxxxxx?"
Since my wife's middle name is Leigh, I answer honestly. "Never heard of her."
My phone solicitor, I'm sure by now is used to people lying to her, trying to corner me, spells my wife's name. She spells it correctly, but then repeats her initial mistake, "So, may I please speak with Rebecca Louise xxxxxxx?"
"I'm sorry," I repeat. "I've never heard of Rebecca Louise xxxxxxx." Not to be trapped in a battle of wits with an unarmed person, I hang up.
It's the same as this essay.
Only different.
And more annoying.
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Accurate spellers are neither born nor taught.
They evolve out of their own saturation in theprinted text of their beloved language. I contend these are voracious readers who read at two levels: the substance of the text and its codified structure of puntuation,spelling, grammar, syntax. For some reason they have known - perhaps from their pre-literate years - that there is always more information than what appears at the surface. They read at the first level for information and/or pure pleasure, but at another level they are unlocking what makes it succeed for the reader as a comprehensive, influential message.
Admittedly, my assertions are anecdotal, being based on my observations as a teacher of secondary and college students, of discussions with colleaues and friends, and - in particular - my grandfather's jounals. He was born in 1878, educated as far as the eighth grade in a rural one-room school, and was working in the western mines by the turn of the century. I have been reading those journals recently, some four hundred pages covering twenty years. I have yet to encounter a misspelled word, a confusion between plural and possessive, a run-on sentence, a lack of subject and verb agreement, or lack of clarity.
He got to that place on paper because he read for all his life with a hunger to further his education, but he also must have been exploiting those authors as models of style and standard usage for what exemplified literacy - a desired end when mast of his contemporaries weren't literate, or wrote at the barest level of literacy.
He was not unusual. There were many like him then who, despite limited formal education, understood that written language had the potential for powerful and limitless range of expression, nuance and argument. They had witnessed it in the writings of the English canons as had Lincoln and Franklin. They strove to emulate it.
Acccording to surveys, this generation of youg adults is not one of readers. The consequence of that is manifest here among posters who claim that it doesn't matter how words or pronouns are spelled if the ideas are communicated.
It does. Caring about those detais in standarized, written English leads to better understanding of what one reads and what one can express when it becomes necessary - and it will - to speak out against injustices and iniquities.
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Our party's days are numbered
Just today I saw "loose" used for "lose" in the NY Times (online edition) for cryin' out loud.
The end is near, I fear.
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lack of ability to spell
I really do care about spelling. When I see printed errors, I literally wince. The pains are small, but they occur all the time.
Once it happened that most everyone could read and spell, and compose a well balanced sentence, a thoughtful letter, or a lovely thank you note. I don't believe that it is any less important today.
If you feel stupid, you may indeed be stupid. If you would study, maybe you would feel more capable and happier. Give it a thought. Give it a try.
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To wilydigitalis..Careful use of grammar and punctuation is far more like
driving down a busy highway in a large city. If you don't abide by the signs, the risk of accident radically increases. I doubt your "more or less" approach to communication would be appreciated by Dennis Quaid, for example, whose twin babies were nearly killed by such a cavalier approach toward clarity and specificity. Granted, not everyone has learned to fall in love with language, but it's more difficult to attain literacy, if that passion has never been ignited.
I was fortunate that my immigrant grandmother was determined that her grandchild would develop a reverence for the written and spoken word. After age three, no one would tell me what a word meant. I was to "look it up". If my efforts proved fruitless, I'd receive some guidance on how to find the word. Ultimately, I discovered that it was actually fun to look up words and study their etymology. It helped that I was the only child in the household, surrounded by adults who never used "baby talk". With a dearth of other kids where we were, I learned to live in my books, instead. We had no television, although I did spend a lot of time listening to radio programs, which were far more imaginative in those days.
When we moved to an area with more children, I discovered the library. I went through it like a vacuum cleaner, arguing with the librarian to allow me to take out books above my "age level" and sneaking a flashlight under my bedcovers to read at night. There was a little down side, in my case. I'd grown up pretty much surrounded by adult conversation, and had spent very little time with other children. I was unaware of how I sounded to my peers, who quickly made it known that they thought I was sort of "snooty". Sad as that made me, I never regretted the opportunity I'd been given to discover the world of books and learning.
My mom always felt that journalists, in particular, were and should be held to a higher standard. We would no more have imagined Cronkite, Huntley or Brinkley saying "more close" or "less chimneys", than they would have said "ain't", on the air. Whatever happened to "fewer" or "closest"? Yet, today's broadcasters and written journalists are extremely guilty of this verbal sloppiness. One poster here has discussed "whole language" as a possible explanation. What a pity. I can't believe they aren't teaching spelling anymore! Obviously, they aren't teaching grammar, either.
All the grammatically irksome pecadillos mentioned by posters here are, in my estimation, reflective of a supreme laziness of thought that seems to have infected American speech. When kids are using BTW and BFF over and over, it's amazing they know more than the first letter in any word! Perhaps that accounts for some of the addle-brained and archaic political attitudes expressed in blogs, as well. We should have been, long ago, way past the sort of mental recalcitrance evidenced by too many responders to Rev. Wright's remarks, for one thing! Such bigotry and ignorance are nothing new, unfortunately. I speak of the acidic and largely unearned reaction to the pastor's remarks.
NOTE..On March 19, 2008, HILLARY'S Washington pastor (Rev. Dean J. Snyder, Foundry United Methodist Church) said:
"The Reverend Jeremiah Wright is an outstanding church leader whom I have heard speak a number of times. He has served for decades as a profound voice for justice and inclusion in our society. He has been a vocal critic of the racism, sexism and homophobia which still tarnish the American Dream. To evaluate his dynamic ministry on the basis of two or three sound bites does a grave injustice to Dr. Wright, the members of his congregation, and the African-American church, which has been the spiritual refuge of a people that has suffered from disccrimination, disadvantage, and violence."
"Dr. Wright, a member of an integrated denomination, has been an agent of racial reconciliation while proclaiming perceptions and truths uncomfortable for some white people to hear. Those of us who are white Americans would do well to listen carefully to Dr. Wright rather than to use a few of his quotes to polarize. This is a critical time in America's history as we seek to repent of our racism. No matter which candidates prevail, let us use this time to listen again to one another and not to distort one another's truth."
In light of this, it's interesting that Hillary now says Wright wouldn't be her pastor? Categorically refusing to even examine the possibility that something to which you negatively reacted, MIGHT have been intentionally DISTORTED, is sad indeed! Given the liklihood that it was done specifically with the intention to MANIPULATE you, it's downright foolish! I once took a course in propaganda and wish it could be included in every junior high school curriculum. The damage that can be done by "conveniently" leaving out words and sentences, or adding things that weren't there in the first place, or downright making something up, is well proven..or should be, by now!
This is the engine that drives war machines, as we have proven all too often! Hitler and others made an art form of using words as weapons. All the while, the underlying enabler was the well proven belief that people will ALLOW themselves to be manipulated, provided the right "buttons" are pushed..particularly those involving religion, patriotism or the notion that someone might be taking something away from you. Today, more than ever, we are bamboozled by news, advertising and politics, to such an extent that it makes it almost impossible to differentiate between truth and reality. Very scary! You really have to work at it. Since few people seem to want to make that effort, it all becomes a whole LOT scarier!