© Damen, 2002

12. Spelling.

I once had to edit a text by a full professor who spelled Freud persistently as “Fraud.” When I asked him whether he was making a point, he blandly replied that “spelling isn’t my thing.” Academic editor

Recantly I must of scene a hunderd things like theze in studants' papers:

"History is felled with information."
"Today Joan of Arc is a heron."
"The Roamins got their name because they roamed around a lot."

The use of correct spelling indicates that you are semi-litterate. I, however, do knot ask that much of you. If you misspell a word, I will correct it and hope you lern the correct spelling as soon as possible. I recognize that everyone misspells the occasional word—I certainly do!—and that is no basus on which to assess your knowledge, especially of something as important as the past. Still, good spelling makes you look competant, an important first step toward being persuasive.*

However, my complacency about misspelling does not extend to the specific names and terms you've been assigned to learn in this course. Those, especially the ones in your reading assignments, I expect everyone to know how to spell correctly. If you have paid careful attention at all, the spelling of the important names, terms and events from history should present no problem. They are, in fact, a good gauge of how well you've studied, and I will treat them as such, as a barometer of your efforts to master the course material.

Furthermore, all teachers have pet peeves that make them see "read." Certain misspellings are mine:

Iffen your gowing too mispell theze wurds, than pleese bee moar orriginal then ta misspel em thiss weigh. Kay?

*There is—did you notice?—at least one spelling error in every sentence in this paragraph, six in the first sentence alone: Recently, have, seen, hundred, these, students', semi-literate, not, learn, basis, competent. Can you identify the other misspellings?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.