< PREVIOUS ] [ 1992 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
English teachers should be ecstatic: Spelling may become
a campaign issue this year. We've all had fun with Dan
Quayle's potatoe
gaffe, and last Tuesday, the
invitations to an incumbent campaign function in
Pennsylvania were issued by the Bush-Quale
Committee.
I ought to be pleased about this emergence of spelling. I've always been fairly good at spelling -- two trips to the state spelling bee resulting from my fourth place in the Weld County contest of 1963 and my silver medal in 1964.
But I've yet to see any evidence that a proficiency in spelling improves your income, social standing, credit rating or anything else that truly matters in America.
For instance, good spelling ought to be important in
education, especially elementary education. But for a
decade, we endured a grade-school principal who sent home
dozens of misspellings, ranging from humorus
to
dissiplin.
Was this man decertified by the Colorado Department of Education and then sent out to do work for which he was qualified, such as scooping up pet wastes?
Of course not. He's now a superintendent elsewhere in Colorado, no doubt out stumping for Gov. Roy Romer's sales-tax increase so that we can all give more money to various subliterate educationists who already make $60,000 a year.
Then perhaps linguistic skills are vital in journalism?
The Cañon City Daily Record used to be fond of
would of
instead of would have,
but no
imbecile was ever dismissed on that account. In Pueblo and
Fort Collins, the papers erroneously insist that we are
Coloradoans,
despite a clear rule.
(The Rule: If the place name is not from the Spanish,
and ends in o
, just add an,
as with
Chicagoan
or Idahoan.
For Spanish place
names, drop the o
before adding an
, as with
San Franciscan.
If there are Coloradoans
or
Puebloans,
then citizens of the southern republic
should be Mexicoans.
)
A friend once toiled at the Greeley Tribune, where he
discovered that his paycheck -- printed on the premises in
the job shop -- was from the Greely Tribune.
He
pointed this out to the management. He was fired shortly
thereafter, supposedly for other reasons.
Pick up any recent novel, and you're apt to see
alright,
aquire,
fascanate,
and dozens
of other abominations.
Some pundits have predicted that computers might
alleviate some of these spelling woes. But I've used
spell-checkers which allowed horrors like miniscule
and heighth,
and these were expensive programs
praised by reviewers.
So if proper spelling is not significant in important matters like education, journalism, literature or computer software, how could it matter in politics?
As H.L. Mencken noted years ago, 'Correct' spelling,
indeed, is one of the arts that are far more esteemed by
schoolma'ams than by practical men, neck-deep in the heat
and agony of the world.
I don't quite agree. Correct spelling is a snobbish pursuit that I delight in because it allows those of us who have neither trust funds nor designer clothes to enjoy a comfortable sense of superiority over the vast majority of our fellow citizens. Self-esteem is important these days.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 1992 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >