Writing Pet Peeves #9: Spelling

John Guillen70 Comments

I understand that many people struggle with spelling even the most basic words. I’m no good with math, no big deal there. But generally speaking, someone who’s bad at spelling knows they’re bad at spelling. Which is why it drives me crazy to see people make no real attempt to spell words correctly whenever they write something.

I’m not talking about people who write with acronyms or intentionally shorten words, I’m talking about those who know they’ve likely spelled a word or two or ten incorrectly and refuse to take the extra 30 seconds to verify its spelling. How hard is it to make something you write just a little bit easier to understand?

There are rare occasions in which I’m not 100% sure if I’m spelling a word correctly, and what do I do? I take ten seconds to figure out if I’m right or not. So easy.

On this day in 2014 I published Help Wanted!. Very rarely will I spotlight a single person on here, so read this because that’s exactly what I did last year!

 

70 thoughts on “Writing Pet Peeves #9: Spelling”

  1. I basically grew up with a dictionary at hand and I still misspell a lot of words. I do make it a point to TRY fixing my errors though. If autocorrect shows me a mistake, often times I’ll erase the entire word and rewrite it correctly in hopes of having the spelling finally sink in.
    That said, I can’t fault others for messing up now and then—doing it repeatedly just makes you looks lazy or unintelligent though. I guess some people don’t care if they look stoopid.

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    • And those are the ones I’m talking about. Not the mistakes every now and then, the repeated misspellings that happen out of laziness. I like how you use autocorrect.

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  2. So. Much. Yes.

    I suck when it comes to spelling. I freely admit this. Sometimes, I look at words that I’m pretty sure are spelled correctly, and I still go look them up. I’ve corrected bad spelling habits and have improved my spelling using this practice.

    When you are on the Internet, there is no excuse for misspellings (auto-correct is something else entirely 😉 ). Most comment fields underline misspelled words. Many provide context-menu dictionaries. Dictionary.com is one click away.

    Now, that said, a friend of mine is a college English professor. She has pointed out the spelling and grammar features of MS Word to her students, and they literally have said, “Is that what those red and green lines mean? I had no idea.”

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    • You’re exactly right. No excuse to be misspelling a bunch of words online when it’d take half a second figure to out if it’s correct or not. College kids are all lost. 😂

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  3. I struggle with spelling myself. I may overlook a word that I think is spelled right. If you take the time to check your spelling, you may learn how to spell it next time. Great spellers are the ones that recongize the sounding of the words along with all the rules. I urge everyone to improve on there weakness and it will give you more confidence and don’t worry about changing overnight, but the effort will start improving your writing right away.

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  6. I agree but also know that we all make mistakes in spelling from time to time. It is hard to digest information when there are a lot of errors in the writing itself. I was raised with a dictionary and a bookcase in my room and no TV or radio. Ah, the good ole days.

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  8. Amen. There’s no excuse though with the number of spell checking tools we have access to these days. It’s no longer become who can spell and who can’t, it’s who can be arsed checking what they’ve written.

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  9. I agree. Ur so rite. Wel witen.
    Ha, ha! Just kidding. You’re so very right. I leave my spell check on for that very reason. When the red squiggly line pops up I fix it right away.

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  10. I agree completely! And when I’m sure I’ve spelled something correctly, and then realize I haven’t, I’m mortified. I have the good-speller gene as well, but now that I look at mortified….

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  12. Shameless bragging ahead: I was the spelling bee champ when I was younger.
    While I have occasional spelling typos like everyone does, it is quite annoying when people won’t take have a second to correctly spell a word.
    I’ve also found that many people who spell incorrectly, speak terribly! I believe their poor spelling equates to changes in correct speech. Have you noticed this? I definitely have.

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