Since people don't spell very well, shouldn't we just give up and accept variant spelling?
Is "misspelt" even a word? I don't think we should give up so easily. Here at Neatorama, we often misspell words, but it's not because we aren't trying. If everyone spelled words any way they wanted, reading would be too difficult for too many people. What do you think? Link
(image credit: Flickr user edwardfilms)
"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," Ken Smith, a criminology lecturer at Bucks New University, wrote in the Times Higher Education Supplement.
"University teachers should simply accept as variant spelling those words our students most commonly misspell."
To kickstart his proposal, Smith suggested 10 common misspellings that should immediately be accepted into the pantheon of variants, including "ignor," "occured," "thier," "truely," "speach" and "twelth" (it should be "twelfth").
Then of course there are words like "misspelt" (often spelled "mispelt"), not to mention "varient," a commonly used variant of "variant."
Is "misspelt" even a word? I don't think we should give up so easily. Here at Neatorama, we often misspell words, but it's not because we aren't trying. If everyone spelled words any way they wanted, reading would be too difficult for too many people. What do you think? Link
(image credit: Flickr user edwardfilms)
EXACTLY. I can't think of any other field of academic study where getting the answer "almost" right is accepted.
double sheeeeee burgr
capitalization of the first character in a sentence is the correct protocol except when you're stealing office time to put in some comments into neatorama