People, Please! Use Your Dictionary!
Or, if not your actual, hardback, unabridged, at least type things into dictionary.com before you post a spelling that makes you look like a sloppy, uneducated wanna-be writer.
In flipping through blog titles this morning — just titles, mind you — I came across at least a dozen misspellings. Most of these might have simply been typos (which inspires me to urge you to do a careful read-through before you click that “post” button), but some of them were obviously attempts to spell a word with which the writer was familiar, a word that the author knew how to use and understood its meaning, but not its correct spelling.
I am all for phonics. Phonics is one reason that I read 800 wpm and can devour six average-length books a week. Phonics is one reason that I won my school spelling bee in the seventh grade. But phonics will get you only so far in the spelling game. English words come from many different sources: primarily German (surprise!), but also Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, and Dutch. In addition, English borrows scads of words from other languages, so that you can find Chinese, Hindi, Amerindian, Italian, Zulu, Tagalog, Russian, and countless other words that originated in other languages, even non-Indo-European language families.
Therefore, it is crucial to develop some sort of system for learning or verifying the spelling of a word before you try to incorporate it in your writing. For example, the word cynicism, which I have seen misspelled in some really horrifying ways—most of them attempts to spell it phonetically. (Think cinacism, synysym, sinasizm…..etc.) Phonetics won’t work with this word, nor with many others.
However, phonetics can help you find the word in the dictionary, even if you aren’t sure of the spelling. Continuing with cynicism as our example, you know that there are two letters that can be used to indicate the /s/ sound: S and soft C. Pick one to start, and go to the next sound. There are actually three possibilities for /i/, but only two are likely: I or Y. Pick one. Say you chose SI. Go to the SI- page in the dictionary and see if there are any words that incorporate the next sound /n/. You’ll find several, but as you peruse the list, you will find nothing that is pronounced /sin uh sizm/. So you back up. Obviously, one or more of your first choices was not right. Go back to the previous step and try SY. You won’t find anything there, either, so you assume it’s your initial sound that is wrongly written, and you try CI. Nothing. CY … AHA! There it is.
This procedure may sound cumbersome, and it will be the first few times that you act on it. But the more that you do it, the faster you will get. And the extra time is a small price to pay for the protection of your image and reputation as an educated, reliable, careful writer. You’ll be surprised at how much more attention you command with your writing when it is not riddled with spelling errors. Precision spelling, like precision grammar, lends a credence and an authority to your work that cannot be matched by the most erudite and well-thought out arguments. Trust me. Arguments do lose out to mechanics. It is rather petty, but it is part of the human wiring: if someone is not careful with the details, how do I know he can be trusted with the broader picture, and if I can’t trust him, why should I listen to him?
Think about it, and crack a dictionary. You’ll be glad you did!
5 Comments
Again I rant against teachers who need elocution lessons. People who cannot hear the difference between “pen” and “pin” or between /t/, /th/ and /d/ because their parents/teachers/mentors cannot or will not make that distinction in their speech will have a difficult time learning phonics and spelling.
And that, my dear Gryphon, is a subject for another post. I nearly lost that school spelling bee because the teacher was incapable of clearly pronouncing the word I was supposed to spell … and I lost the city spelling bee for the same reason.
Hopefully, you are not talking about my post! I have always been a good speller. Friends and family always ask me when they don’t know how to spell something. I am glad you posted this. I don’t understand how writers don’t know how to spell sometimes.
Guilty! Sometimes my mind draws a blank on the spelling of a word, and I am too lazy to look it up. You ever get those days when every word you write looks wrong? Even the word, “the” looks wrong?
Errr . . . looks incorrect!
My mother was the best speller of all time. She won a seventh grade spelling bee in Ireland. Genetics helps me with much of my spelling but as you said, I am not infallible in my spelling. Check that word for yourself. I think I spelled it wrong.