July 15, 2015

Word: Spelling

You can't help respecting someone who can spell Tuesday even if he can't spell it right. -- Winnie the Pooh

The spelling of words is subordinate. Morbidness for nice spelling and tenacity for or against one letter or so means dandyism and impotence in literature - Walt Whitman

-As our alphabet now stands, the bad spelling, or what is called so, is generally the best, as conforming to the sound of the letters and the words. -- Benjamin Franklin

I don't see any use in spelling a word right, and never did. I mean I don't see any use in having a uniform and arbitrary way of spelling words. We might as well make all our clothes alike and cook all dishes alike. - Mark Twain

I have no respect for a man who doesn't know more than one way to spell a word - Walt Whitman

“It’s a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.” — Andrew Jackson

A gentleman received a letter, in which were these words: Not finding Brown at hom, I delivered your meseg to his yf. The gentleman, finding it bad spelling, and therefore not very intelligible, called his lady to help him read it. Between them they picked out the meaning of all but the yf, which they could not understand. The lady proposed calling her chambermaid, ‘because Betty,’ says she, ‘has the best knack at reading bad spelling of any one I know.’ Betty came, and was surprised that neither sir nor madam could tell what yf was. ‘Why,’ says she, ‘yf spells wife; what else can it spell?’ – Benjamin Franklin, letter to his sister, July 4, 1786

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

“In the first place, there is no point whatever in being able to spell anything. Shakespeare and Milton could not spell; Marie Corelli and Alfred Austen could. Spelling is thought desirable partly for snobbish reasons, as an easy way of distinguishing the “educated” from the “uneducated”; partly, like correct clothes, as a part of herd domination; partly because the devotee of natural law feels pain in the spectacle of any sphere in which individual liberty remains.” ― Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays

Capt. America said...

The speler or usser should be focused on the spelcheker morons who discus and make decissions about double consonants. It would be consistent to make double esses unvoiced and single esses voiced, or to use the zee for voiced, but this iz not done. It's a pity izn't it?