Why Spelling Counts

I had an English and Journalism teacher in High School named Mr. Christian.  I respected his wisdom and his opinions highly.  He flat out caught me bluffing on an oral book report once.  The Caine Mutiny.  I did eventually read the book.  He’d written his own book, a journalistic style guide, and taught from it.  Come to think of it that could be viewed as blatant self-promotion but, actually, I thought it was pretty awesome.

Raquel Welch and some guy playing a caveman, 1 Million Years B.C.

Anyway, there was once in class he goofed, and everybody in the class realized it instantly.  I don’t know if he ever did.

He was trying to make a hip cultural reference and he said something about Raquel Welch, who was the Penelope Cruz of 1972, but he pronounced it as Ra Kwee El.  It’s logical, really.  It just showed that he’d never heard her name spoken, he’d only read about her.  That’s how you’d pronounce it, or at least a possible.

Now, when I see people on the Internet writing Lybia or Libiya, I know that their source of information is strictly oral and so they are basically guessing at the spelling.  It’s only 5 letters and it sounds pretty much like it’s written.  It’s not a hard word to spell, like beautiful or socialism.

That is to say, they watch Fox News, haven’t read a book since school and hate movies with subtitles.  They also hate it when anybody corrects their spelling.  Partly, I’m sure, that’s because they know, deep down, that they are ignorant.  Partly it’s because, as many of them say openly, they don’t care about correct spelling.

But it helps the rest of us, or it should.  We can see at a glance who reads.  Those who read are literate.  They are aware of history and science and culture.  We can take them seriously, and have an interesting exchange of ideas.

Those who do not, are not, and so we can safely dismiss whatever they say as uninformed drivel.

I hope that simplifies things.