Spelling Bitch needs to rant

I pride myself on being able to spell. It is deeply interlinked with being made to feel good about myself because in primary school, my siblings and I were generally smarter than our peers. This is not bragging - it's true (although maybe not so true anymore). But between the ages of 5-12 this advancement manifested itself in different ways - my brothers and sister did advanced mathematics (the eldest one used to batter his teacher for supremacy in chess), whereas I was given advanced comprehension tests which led to different spelling tests owing to a larger vocabulary.

There are always rounds about falling literacy and numeracy rates among the population at large, grammar being a particular favourite topic, and after the publication of Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynn Truss an increased emphasis on punctuation . But what about spelling? What good is it to have perfect grammar and punctuation if the components that make up your text are themselves incorrect?! I'll never forget when my biology lecturer said one of his PhD students gave the spelling of mammal as *MAMAL*. That is appalling. People can read, why can't they spell?! When you see the incorrect spelling, doesn't a bell go off in your head that something is wrong? I blame two things for this - various attempts to *simplify* the English language by trying to alter words to their phonetics (cough cough, America), and the spell-checker function. Don't get me wrong, I think it's good to have a program which picks up words that seem *wrong* but the automated way of fixing it is lazy. If it's wrong, pick up a dictionary, don't rely on a machine that may not understand what you're trying to communicate.

Here's a few of the common mistakes which never fail to get my goat:

• alot - it's TWO WORDS!!!
• your/you're - people who don't understand this need a lesson in who they are
• there/their/they're - ditto
• definately - the root word is *finite*
• L8ter and other examples of mobile phone language in formal communication
• aluminum - ALUMINIUM (cough cough, Americans)
  

Spelling is not an arbitrary, intellectual conceit - it's a very important component of communication!