Yesterday I criticized the usage of incorrect homophones in specific situations. It is quite possibly my biggest pet peeve in the world and I could easily write a few thousand more words on the subject. But since I’m not one to beat a dead horse, I’ll move on to something equally important, something I touched on yesterday without going into any great depth: spelling.
Like I said, I’m not the best speller, but I’m far from the worst. I sincerely expect people my age to be able to spell certain words without a second thought, but it appears that is not the case. I used to think it was another form of shorthand typing, but now I’m wondering if they’re just so used to spelling particular words that way that they’ve become irredeemable.
Some examples that come to mind:
“My sister just had a babby.”
“My fone is being stupid.”
“I lyk everything xcept that.”
“I was gonna go home but den I got lost.”
“I definately misspelt that.”
“I’m so kewl.”
Seriously, come on. Is it incomprehensible that “PH” can make a sound like an “F”? Because if you can’t wrap your mind around that, you should go back to phucking school. And the irony behind misspelling “misspelled” never fails to amuse me.
Which reminds me, how do people that type like this pass any classes anyway? When I was younger, these words weren’t even an issue. We had to focus on words that were actually challenging, like the one day we had a substitute teacher and she thought it would be fun spending the entire day teaching us how to spell pneumosilicovolcanoconiosis (which I don’t even think is an actual medical term, but I digress). I’m sure there were days where I had to learn words like “dog” and “child” but that was probably in the first grade. If you can’t spell “phone” then my logic tells me you haven’t made it to a first grader’s level of intelligence.
Saying that spelling isn’t beneficial to you is like asking how math is going to help you later in life. It is an invalid argument, immediately dismissed by every adult in the civilized world. Misspellings can lead to accidental meanings that weren’t your intention, just like failing to learn how to do math can result in you getting audited or being the unlucky winner of a speeding ticket. It is the fundamental element of language: without letters there are no words, and there are no words if the letters aren’t correct.
So I urge you, learn how to spell. If not for yourself, then do it for others. Have some respect for yourself, and I might learn to respect you in turn.
Nicholas Jae 