Why Spelling Counts

I’m one of those obnoxious people who is on all the comment threads, correcting people’s spelling.  Partly it’s because I teach English (as a foreign language), partly it’s because I am a naturally pedantic sort of person, and partly it’s to score cheap points in whatever the

See What I Mean?

argument is about.  Correcting someone’s spelling is an easy way to point out that someone is stupid without actually saying “you are stupid.”  That would be an ad hominem attack, and bad netiquette.

Of course, the usual response is that I’m being petty.  They say the argument wasn’t about spelling, that everyone makes a typo now and again, and that spelling ability has no bearing on someone’s intelligence or the validity of their argument.  So I feel compelled to explain, here and now, why spelling matters.

First, there are several different reasons why people make spelling mistakes.  Admittedly, an occasional typo is no big deal.  If you write “the bamk stole my house,” I know what you mean.  Left or right, I won’t criticize you for that.  Usually, the typos are pretty obvious.

Also, someone who is not a native speaker of English may make mistakes.  Lord knows, I make plenty of them whenever I try to write (or even speak) in Czech.  Like the typos, the cause is usually obvious.  If someone says “I was to New York week last” instead of “I was in New York last week,” I know what they mean.  Better linguists than I am can sometimes even point out where they’re from, depending on the nature of the mistake.

One occasionally sees deliberate misspellings, for humorous effect.  It’s like satire.  Unless you’re really, really good at it, you should probably avoid it altogether.

It’s the 4th category of spelling mistake which proves to me that the writer is a semi-literate moron, and I will continue to point it out whenever I see it.  When someone writes “speach” instead of speech, “Lybia” instead of Libya or, one that particularly bothers me, “loose” instead of lose, I know that they are only familiar with the word through hearing it.  They have heard it on the news, maybe even in conversations, but they aren’t used to seeing it in print.  That is a sure sign that they do not get their news from newspapers, magazines or any source capable of detailed analysis.  Their thinking is entirely in sound bites.  Semi-literate is not an exaggeration.

So, one more time: lose is the opposite of win, loose is the opposite of tight.  If you can’t get that right, then you lose the debate.  Automatically.