Spell Check Will Not Always Save You

Independent Learners, Writing

Maybe I’m getting old, but I really dislike the acceptance of ‘u’ for ‘you’ and ‘r’ for ‘are’ in texting.  Is this really ok?  It doesn’t take much to write the word out correctly!  It does make you wonder if a) our youth are just too lazy to spell correctly, b) they will be able to spell well when needed, or even worse c) this will become so widely accepted and start showing up in books and newspapers.

Some grammar and spelling rules have changed over time based on societal acceptance.  I pray LOL isn’t one of them.  My 16 year old employees will even speak their texting language, and I have to ask for an interpretation.  I’m not even in my mid-30’s yet!  Here’s a test — do you know what YOLO means?  I had to google that one.

Greg Toppo from usatoday.com wrote this problem saying,

Amercia, we have a spelling problem.

 

As the Scripps National Spelling Bee wraps up Thursday near Washington, we’re once again confronted with the annual question: In a world of spell check and r u there texting, does spelling even matter anymore?

 

Even Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney came face-to-face with the consequences of bad spelling this week, when a user of his campaign’s iPhone application noticed the phrase “a better Amercia.” By Wednesday afternoon, the campaign had fixed the flub, but the phrase had already become an Internet meme: It had its own “Amercia is With Mitt” Tumblr account and #Amercia Twitter hashtag.

 

Louisa Moats, author of several textbooks about language, said good spelling, in a word, means credibility.  “If a paper or an application or a report or even an e-mail contains spelling errors, people who read it judge it harshly,” she said. Research even shows that people with misspellings on job applications and résumés are less likely to get interviews.

 

 

As an employer of 40+ part-time teenagers, I can confirm a misspelling on an application is not a good sign for you.  Beyond the fact you should show competence in this area when you apply to a math and reading center, it tells me something about your thoroughness.  If you turn in an application with spelling errors, you must not want the job that badly.  Details in our business are very important, and you won’t be able to spell check a student’s work!

The article continues here to discuss the decline in good spelling is in line with the decline in time spent on it in the classroom in recent years.  This is just like the argument about using calculators early in math.  You must learn the basic skills before given tools to speed up large and difficult projects.  Technology is great, but spell check will not help you on a piece of paper!

On the other hand, Ki Mae Heussner at abcnews.com reports here that studies have shown that text messaging can actually improve spelling (really?!), researchers do note that text speak is being reported as showing up in formal writing for classrooms.  However, she also reminded us that

“Even when postcards took off in the early 1900s, critics bemoaned the perceived effects of postcards on traditional letter writing.”

So maybe I am just getting old!