Academic Says We Should Give Up on Correct Spelling

Fed up with his students inabillity to spel korrectly, Ken Smith, a criminology lecturer at Bucks New University, has purposed an inovative solution, not caring. "Instead of complaining about the state of the education system as we correct the same mistakes year after year, I've got a better idea. University teachers should simply accept as variant spelling those words our students most commonly misspell.", Ken wrote in the Times Higher Education Supplement. Some of the new wurds that Ken thinks we shood axxept include: "ignor," "occured," "thier," "truely," "speach", "twelth", "misspelt", and "varient".

I find it hard to believe

[mattstorer]

that this guy thinks this is a good idea. spelling correctly isn't particularly difficult, and anyone who misspells common words, especially the common words, IMHO, has some serious issues, and it says something uncomplimentary about the person's character.

"Use the spell-checker Luke! It's all around you!"

Spell a word wrong? Oh hey, what's that little red line underneath the word? huh, let's check it out. Oh hey! Whaddya know? "alot" isn't a word at all, is it? Huh, now I know!

And knowing is half the battle!

... or we could just give in to apathy. it's a slippery slope here people.

Oh right, one more thing: not knowing how to spell words, unless you're talking about really difficult, uncommon ones, makes you look really, really stupid. Even if you're not, otherwise.

Practical example. You apply for a job. If your resume or cover letter has even a single misspelled word, and the person reading your docs picks up on it, chances are good your resume gets tossed. If nothing else, it says you're not detail oriented and gives an impression of incompetence. Not exactly an impression anyone wants to give.

Okay, all done ranting.

Re:I find it hard to believe

[danlock4]

I agree with you.

      However, sometimes a university professor is trying to teach a different writing concept and a few misspelled words are unimportant compared to the usage guidelines being taught. Misspelled words should be identified, but only in the worst cases should they reduce the score of the paper if the intent of the assignment is something other than accurate spelling.

      A class or assignment about writing resumes and cover letters, of course, should emphasize correct spelling and appropriately deduct points for errors.

Re:Really?

[twistedsymphony]

Isn't this similar to the solutions we've used to "fix" education up to this point?

... we seem to simply lower the educational standards until the crappy education system looks good, we don't actually do anything to foster change. People don't like change, but they do like thinking they're right, this idea is perfect.

In all seriousness, proper grammar and spelling might not be important in terms of people understanding your message, but it goes a long way towards professionalism and people actually giving your message any merit.

Dumb idea

[StormShaman]

Dumb idea; people who speak different dialects would misspell in different ways, being opaque to speakers of other dialects. This is why Germany standardized their spelling even though it doesn't remotely reflect the pronunciation of half its dialects.

Postel's Law

[gronofer]

Postel's Law seems relevant here:

be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others

In this case, spell correctly if you know how, and ignore misspellings from others.