I’m not a good speller — never have been. I used to hate that subject in school. Of course I was excited when I saw my first “spell checker” on a computer. I figured my troubles were over.
One thing I learned early on was that the spell checker might give you a word (that was correctly spelled) but it might not be the word that you intended and, worse yet, the word very well might be inappropriate. For that reason I got into the habit of taking an extra step in my writing process by checking the meaning of the word suggested by the spell checker. That system seems to have served me well over the years.
Over the last few years a trend has started that should make me ecstatic, but it hasn’t — in fact I find it a little bit disturbing. With the popularity of “texting” increasing, a lot of what gets written (and read?) isn’t even words. Some (a lot?) people believe that with the new technologies, the way that we write and read is changing, therefore so must spelling. I’ve even read articles that suggest that we do away with spelling rules altogether.
For someone like me, who should at least be a member, if not the president, of the Bad-Spellers Club to become a proponent of good spelling may seem a bit out of character. But let me explain — personally, I like to be able to understand what I read without having to stop and puzzle over ‘creative’ spellings. I’m not exactly sure when this all started, but I began to notice it when texting became popular. It’s not clear to me why the use of digital media changed our writing habits so much. One theory is that we use our computer, phones, etc. to communicate so much and so often, that the “written (typed) word” has become a more casual form of communication — becoming more like speech than letter writing. One school of thought is that standardized spelling is an outdated dogma, and that civilization got along for centuries without spelling rules.
When our kids were growing up they couldn’t understand the need for rules. I tried to explain (probably unsuccessfully) that rules were necessary to prevent confusion, and inefficiency and even chaos. We have a “rule” that in the United States, we must drive on the right-hand side of the road. If everyone ignored that rule, we’d have a lot more accidents than we do now. What if newspapers decided to spell words any way that strikes their fancy? How long do you think it would take to read the newspaper — and, would anyone get the same meaning/message from the story?
I guess I agree that it doesn’t matter how we spell any given word — what matters is that we agree on the spelling. Standards make communication possible — just look at the Internet; it’s based on standards. Out spelling system (and I’ll admit it’s a bit strange) is an agreed to set of rules.
English spelling is a pain to learn — but the fact is, once you master the core vocabulary, as most people do by high school, you’ve pretty much got it made. And there’s always the dictionary. Using the dictionary on a computer, or phone is actually easier than dragging out a book and if you’re writing something important (like this blog) and you want to keep the reader’s trust and care about his experience in reading it, it’s worth the small extra effort.
Again, the argument that “texting” is not really “writing,” but simply an informal means of communicating and that spelling and grammar aren’t really important, doesn’t set well with me. Kids (and probably lots of adults) are texting more than anything else these days — certainly more than they’re writing themes for English class. Constantly spelin like dis 2 say hi translates to becoming a crummy speller. I usually send properly spelled and grammatically correct text messages.
One of the oldest arguments against learning to spell is that spelling needs to be simplified (and made more consistent.) Why does “rough” sound like “ruff” and “tough” sound like “tuff” but “dough” doesn’t sound like “duff?” In some respects, texting seems to be attempting to do just that – simplify spelling. The apostrophe requires an additional step on the iPhone, so text-ers send your or UR instead of you’re. And, in fact, this is rarely mis-understood.
I’m still not convinced we need a new set of spelling rules, although I agree maybe the English language doesn’t have too many good ones. Maybe I’ll try doing the blog in “text-ese.”
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