A spelling Comic

Not a lot of content here, but it’s on topic…

I counted five spelling errors, not counting the comma.

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First the comic, Reality Check. Doesn’t work this way in real life, of course.

I still have trouble remembering whether or not to put that “e” into that word. It’s because I don’t follow my own rule about learning to spell those last couple words that you don’t remember how to spell.

When I was younger, I had trouble remembering how to spell “until.” Was it one “l” or two? I also had trouble remembering the conjugation of “lie,” as in lie down. Then someone told me a trick, and here it is:

Write down the thing you have trouble remembering on a card, and tape it up where you can see it when you write. Look at the word whenever you feel the slightest doubt. Eventually you’ll remember and stop doubting.

It worked. I now remember “until,” and know the past tense of lie is “lay,” not “laid.” The wall in my desk nook was not quite plastered, but adorned maybe, with 3×5 cards containing the correct spellings of an assortment of words. Currently I have a card in front of me with a half dozen or so ASCII codes for several symbols that I use occasionally. I have about half memorized, the others I use maybe once a year or less, so they’re there when I need them.

So there you have it: post your doubtful spellings up where you can see them.

Well, according to Perry Bible Fellowship, the Orca thinks not…

Unless the cartoonist is suggesting that reality is more important than spelling. On closer examination I see the Orca got the whole group of penguins, not just the lecturer. Hmm.

Two comics about spelling in one day! How can I resist???

By the way, don’t trust your spell checker a whole lot.

Scott Meyer is a pretty funny comic strip artist and writer. This recent comic made me twitch. See how many mistakes you can count. You should be able to find at least one in every panel. I counted more than a dozen. I don’t think he’s writing about me; I corrected him only once and that was years ago.

Two of my rules about good writing are to be clear and correct, the latter partly meaning to follow the rules of grammar and spelling. We call these rules the mechanics. I even proofread my emails and seldom abbreviate even my grocery lists (ahem, whenever I write one).

I even have a sixth rule, to write for your readership, and here I must depart a bit from correctness. There’s a place for variation in writing style. On the one extreme, we have passages like the Olive Leaf Petition I mentioned two posts ago, addressed to King George III, and on the other extreme, well, I’ll let this 9 to 5 comic speak for itself, and for me:

Sigh, I hate to say it, but he has a point.

I generally write these posts in advance, so sometimes another comic comes along that also makes my point. Case in, um, point: