Tag Archive for 'spelling'

Is Pittsburgh Hard to Spell? Definately.

Published by Robert Pondiscio on July 14, 2009 in Education News and No category. 3 Comments

For 80 years, a beacon atop the Grant Building in downtown Pittsburgh has flashed out the word “Pittsburgh” in Morse code.  At least it was supposed to.  No one knows for how long it’s been happening, but a sharp-eyed city resident waiting for a 4th of July fireworks show noticed the dots and dashes actually spell out P-I-T-E-T-S-B-K-R-R-H

“I was looking at it, and I saw the letter ‘K,’ which is dash-dot-dash,” Tom Stepleton tells the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “I remembered ‘K’ because my sister’s name starts with ‘K.’ And I knew that wasn’t supposed to be there.”   He took a video of the dotty message and dashed it off to YouTube.

<a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=3fTYzoSDAS4">http://youtube.com/watch?v=3fTYzoSDAS4</a>

Meanwhile, a survey reveals that “definitely” is the most misspelled word in the English language.  A significant number of people insist on spelling it “definately,” the UK’s Daily Record notes.   The other most commonly misspelled words include sacrilegious, indict, broccoli, and prejudice.  The poll also finds that “57 percent judge other people on their spelling, with 42 per cent admitting they believe people who can’t spell are ‘thick.’”

Personally, I always need to check “embarrass” and ”cemetery” and for some reason, “judgment” never looks right to me, no matter how many times I’ve written it.

Stoopid

Published by Robert Pondiscio on September 11, 2008 in Education Theory. 1 Comment

Is good spelling a sign of an educated person?  Or merely a formality fetishized by pedants?  A leading British academic believes it’s the latter and says we should stop worrying that “textmessage speak” is creeping into the language.

John Wells, president (irony of ironies) of Britain’s Spelling Society, tells London’s Daily Mail that the informal language of texts, emails and chat rooms is the “way forward.”  An Emeritus Professor of Phonetics at University College London, Wells says irregular spellings place an undue burden on schoolchildren. 

Let’s stop worrying if people sometimes spell “you” as “u”; “your” and “you’re” both as “ur”; and “whose” and “who’s” both as “whos”.  Nowadays we often see “light” written as “lite” and “through” as “thru”. Let’s not hold up our hands in horror – people should be able to use whichever spelling they prefer….’We should no longer fetishise the ability to sort out “their”, “there” and “they’re”. There are more important things to life.’

And apostrophes? A waste of time. Sack ‘em.  ”Have we really nothing better to do with our lives than fret about the apostrophe?” sez he.