back to article Suprise at spelling snafu sanctions

Proof that the revised maxim "If you can't beat 'em, fuck it all off and have some pie" is increasingly the norm reaches us today, as a senior university lecturer throws his hands aloft and declares a spelling amnesty. According to the Times, Dr Ken Smith of Buckinghamshire New University* suggests a list of 20 common mistakes …

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  1. Bob Boswell

    Awl is ok.

    "whatever piss of junk MS have put on their PC, awl is OK."

    Daniel, much as I loathe the MS universe and sympathiz(s?)e with your point (!), an Awl is a small pointy tool for making holes in leather and possibly wood. Which is, presumably, why it is let through.

    This idiot professor should be shot at dawn every day for a week, just to teach him a learning. ( Arrrrghhhh, NO, Please the pain. Bloody consultants )

    And I though my grasp of my native language was a bit flaky, good grief.

    Boz

  2. This post has been deleted by its author

  3. Mike Street
    Paris Hilton

    Irony

    Are Paris and I the only people on here who thought he was probably being ironic, or even sarcastic?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Weirdly...

    Wierd would be right if it were a Germanic word like Brief.

    (Also cf. Reichstag.)

    But it's not.

    (Also, this is a proud day, that was the first of my Hazel Blears comments

    that has ever been permitted past the censor. I know not what stopped the others.)

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    marks off

    In his memoirs, Alvin Kernan mentions giving a -16 to a paper turned in by a Yalie who later achieved minor celebrity playing a teacher on some TV show. Four percent off per misspelling x 29 ...

    Theodore Roosevelt attempted a spelling reform during his presidency. The Congress declined to pay for the printing of any materials using his reformed spelling, and it died quietly.

  6. Rhyd

    Warning: This post contains (mostly) correct spelling. Continue with caution.

    Considering that English is technically my second language and was banned at school outside of the twice-weekly English lessons, why is it that I'm continually correcting the spelling and grammar of English friends and colleagues?

    On the topic of further education, I once attended a lecture about the importance of "spelling and grammer". Sigh.

  7. Funky Dennis
    Thumb Up

    @Sarah Bee

    Did you change

    "Email hacker banged up for exposing boss' sex life"

    to

    "Email hacker banged up for exposing boss's sex life"?

    If so, thank you. I learn with sadness that the first version is now apparently acceptable.

  8. Fogcat

    Ole hatt

    Nigel Molesworth esquire pieoneared this form ov speelling in the 50s- As any fule kno

  9. Stevie

    Ah

    This "student spelling" rant is as transparent as it is specious. The British education system is the best in the world and simply could not turn out classloads of University students unable to spell or parse their work. Is he suggesting they all got in through clearing?

    No. The man is obviously unhinged by his interminable stint with the Space Family Robinson in the mid 60s. Ten minutes with the bubble-headed booby would do for mi brayn tu.

  10. Steve Carter
    Unhappy

    queue protests in a long cue

    There a buttload of difference between queueing a programme for air and cueing it.

    *stab* *stab* *stab*

    Imprecise language is fine if you're not trying to say anything clever or important. One would hope that you are trying both when writing in a university exam.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Cue the Kew Queue

    They're there. Not a knot, Knott. What, a watt? Write the right rite, Wright. Thyme time!

    et bloody cetera.

    While I might sympathize with him to a certain degree, his call to allow spelling mistakes is telling the lazy / crap teachers that it's just fine for them to carry on not doing their jobs properly. He is telling the students that their shoddy, misspelled work is just terrific. I would have thought that criminology required some degree of accuracy and attention to detail. Apparently not.

    Students who can't spell properly, do arithmetic without a calculator really shouldn't be in university in the first place.

    The ongoing dumbing down of the education system and thus future population is depressing.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Both sides

    I can see both sides of the argument. Students should be expected to be able their, weird and truly. On the other hand, if they are studying criminology, why should their marks be significantly affected by their inability to spell - it would be different if they were studying English Language.

    Without going into too much detail, I know someone who is dyslexic and a master's degree physics however he got a much lower honours than he ought to have done, purely because he has difficulty remembering the formulas required by the exams (essentially very complicated spellings). No allowance was made for his dyslexia because they are 'formulas' and not 'spellings', so he had the derive most of these formulas from first principles, which took a lot of the exam time - not something most (or even any) of the other students could have done. However, does this inability to remember formulas make him a worse physicist, of course not, in 'the real world' he would just pull out a pocket book of formulas if he ever need.

    Now I realise the article wasn't talking about dyslexics, but why should anyone, dyslexic or not, be assessed on their spelling, memory for formulas, or anything else which isn't directly related to the subject. Especially when these other things can easily be overcome in the 'real world' e.g. by using a spell/grammar checker, book of formulas, etc..

  13. david

    No excuses

    FFS, don't even deduct marks, that impies you have to read it. Mark the first mistake and reject the work until they can do it right.

    That way they might put in the effort to learn between watching daytime tv and pissing their grants up the wall.

    Pathetic. That's all really.

  14. Garth
    Coat

    They should all be forced to learn...

    The Kings proper French... err

    I mean German... err

    I mean Latin...

    Phoenician?

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Word shapes

    "We read by recognising word shapes (not their spelling)"

    So why do I wince and stumble whenever I hit anything but the most trivial misspelling. Those paragraphs written to "prove" that wordshape is all we use cause me physical *pain*

    Physical

    Physiacl

    They're just fuckin' *different* and my mind can't read "Physiacl" fluently. And it's not like I'm a slow reader (about a paperback page a minute).

    There, they're, their. Where, ware, wear. They're all different. Dinnerware, dinnerwear and "Dinner? Where?" are all different, and you can tell that by reading them if they're spelt differently.

  16. Inspector_Morse
    Stop

    Latin = Dead, English = Alive

    Living languages constantly change. Live with it.

    Geoffrey Chaucer wrote, circa 1580, The Miller's Tale:

    Original (modern English version is below):

    This Nicholas anon leet fle a fart,

    As greet as it had been a thonder dentght

    That with the strook he was almoost yblent.

    And he was redy with his yren hoot,

    And Nicholas amydde the ers he smoot.

    Of gooth the skyn an hande-brede aboute

    The hoote kultour brende so his toute

    And for the smert he wende for to dye.

    Converted to modern English:

    Nicholas then let fly a fart

    As great as if it had been a thunder clap,

    That with the stroke Absolon was almost blinded;

    But he was ready with his hot iron

    And hit Nicholas right on the arse.

    Off went about a hand's breadth of skin,

    The hot coulter so burned his butt,

    And he thought he would die of the pain.

    Finding gems like this when studying O level Eng. Lit was great fun!

  17. Mark Norton
    Unhappy

    And while we're at it

    why don't we start accepting incorrect answers in mathematics too. I'm tired of correcting 2+2=5 so if we just made 5 a "variant answer" then that would be fine wouldn't it.

  18. Samantha Clinton

    Blimey!

    We're all capable of the occasional typo, and for me personally my brain sometimes runs ahead of my fingers...generally when I'm in a real rush to be a pedant and correct someone else, making myself look stupid in the process, but REALLY?? As it is I have friends that texts make so little sense I have to reread them 4 times before I can decipher them. If we suddenly decide that spelling is irrelevant I'm going to go and find myself a little dwelling on an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, build a library and stay there till I die.

    JonB...on an island the ironing will be less of an issue...and I'll still do the cooking ;)

  19. Lupus
    Flame

    So angry.

    Angrier than I probably should be, but these fuckwits are actively defiling my native tongue, my precious English!

    Hang them! Or better yet, give them a nasty case of Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.

    Grr.

  20. Mike Crawshaw
    Flame

    Dear Dr Ken Smith,

    You, sir, are a fool and a charlatan. I would respectfully suggest that you stop whining like a big bitch and just do your fucking job. Which, in case you may have forgotten, is to *educate* - to improve the level of knowledge of your students. It is NOT to lower the standards further so that sub-literate morons are able to attain a certification which was, once upon a time, an achievement.

    Kind Regards,

    The English-speaking nations.

  21. GrahamT
    Happy

    Pot, Kettle...

    Setting myself up for a fall here; better re-read this 3 times.

    I find it amusing that several of the commentators that disagree with this guy (no names, no pack-drill) have some of those common mis-spellings in their own comments - accepting the deliberately ironic ones. At least two use thier. OK, this is a common typo, and I've done it myself, but "People in glass houses, etc."

    Having said that, I am quite pedantic about bad spelling and grammar, and my C.V. is checked and double-checked before it goes out of the door. I am, therefore, ruthless with poor C.V.s that land on my desk. If you use there/their incorrectly or don't know the difference between of and have, or misuse the apostrophe, you won't work for me. In addition, anyone applying for a job in I.T. who doesn't know how to change the spell checker from U.S. to U.K. spelling doesn't deserve to work.

  22. Sam

    Koff

    "** Anyone correcting our deliberate (as in the headline) misspelling, or indeed our accidental misspelling, will be cast onto the barbecue."

    That's me in the clear, because this is grammar..shouldn't there be a semicolon after "maxim"?

  23. RW
    Coat

    The Myth of English Spelling Irregularity

    "notoriously mercurial English spelling system"

    According to Jeanne Chall's "Learning to Read: the Great Debate" (McGraw-Hill, 1967), in 1954 researchers estimated that 85% of English has regular spelling. Another estimate, from 1965, asserts that English language rule-based text-to-voice software could be devised that would correctly pronounce 95% of English text.

    Bernard Shaw's famous "ghoti" pronounced "fish" is in fact a counterexample of spelling irregularity. The "gh" digraph never occurs at the beginning of a word with the value "f". Likewise, "ti" never appears at the end of a word with the value "sh". And the use of "o" to represent the short "i" sound is equally restricted, though the details escape my sluggish memory.

    The underlying cause of much apparent irregularity in English spelling is Caxton's early printing of books in English. Out of necessity, he had to standardize spellings to match pronunciation. As a result, English spellings reflect the pronunciation current in the late 15th century. Unfortunately, English underwent a sea change in pronunciation during the 16th & (iirc) 17th centuries, leaving the older pronunciation fossilized in the form of non-phonetic spellings.

    None of this historical detail will have the least effect on the natural smoothing down of spelling rules, a process accelerated by the increase in the number of people now writing online who, in the pre-internet age, would have written nothing more than "Thank you for the Christmas gift, Aunt Fanny."

    Footnote: English has an exceptionally rich vocabulary and has always welcomed the adoption of words from other languages. Many apparent irregularities in English spelling supply etymological information that distinguishes words otherwise homophones: khaki vs. cacky, for example. (That may be a bad example of the phenomenon.)

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    None

    Wow. So much bad spelling in these posts. At least for once it seems to be deliberate. Well, hopefully. Unlike the vast majority of Reg posts. Either a lot of Reg Readers are in no position to criticise others' education or are damn sloppy and can't be bothered proof-reading their posts. Or just as likely both.

    Michael Lyne - was your first sentence an attempt at humour?

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    I think I'll

    just cut my own degree into strips and wipe my arse on it. Just what was the fecking point, I ask myself?

  26. Anonymous John

    The problem is mainly with the vowels.

    S why nt jst get rd f thm? Hrd t rd t frst dmttdly, bt t gts sr wth prctc.

  27. John Goodwin
    Heart

    I salute you Mike Crawshaw

    There are no words full enough in the English language to describe my support for your post, Mike Crawshaw.

    I've been called a pedant before for my attention to punctuation and grammar errors on office correspondence and the like. I don't care. I know that I'm right, and the dullards who can't spell or don't know how to use an apostrophe are just cretins.

    Simply visit any street market in the UK to see prolific use of apple's, pear's and the like. I like to confuse them by asking "The apple's what?"

    <Pedant mode off>

    Don't accept it!

    Heart, because mine died a little reading this - similar to a previous poster.

  28. Rob Holmes
    Joke

    @David, RE: No Excuses

    "FFS..."

    *Stops reading post*

    Please go back and do it again. Oh, and repair the irony-guage whilst you're about it, it seems to have exploded.

  29. Jonathan Richards
    Stop

    @Martin Lyne

    > Oh and less people that say "think" instead of "thing",

    Fewer, dammit. FEWER people that say "think" instead of "thing".

    We don't have this confusion with 'many' and 'much'. 'Many' and 'few' are for countable quantities. 'Much' and 'less' are for continuous quantities.

    I thank you. I am getting fewer of these attacks, provided that I take my meds.

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Logical conclusion

    We should let students submit in lolspeak.

    I'll go halves with anyone who wishes to introduce Ken Smith to a small pit of kwiklime (sic).

  31. Steve
    Coat

    I had thought semi-literacy was an American trait

    So you Brits have your share of rediculous loosers with miniscule brains, as well? And fuzzy-headed enablers for them, too?

    No marks at all for the pretentious twats who are feeding the unholy current 'whilst' fad, either.

  32. Richard
    Paris Hilton

    No joke...

    This is depressing beyond belief.

    Maybe there's a reason that some 'new' universities are treated with disdain.

    I have trouble keeping to the speed-limits, maybe we should increase them to match my infringements.

    Paris, for the obvious reason.

  33. William Old
    Flame

    Aaaaargh!

    Step forward to accept an award: JohnG, Pete, Bob Boswell, and GrahamT...

    Mike Crawshaw, to you goes the supreme accolade: my sincere thanks...

    These esteemed correspondents to El Reg have, thankfully, crafted appropriate responses to the maladjusted Brainiac from Thames Valley Polytechnic (or whatever it used to be), responses that enabled me to retain my sanity after reading the mindless vomit-babble that has passed, in some quarters, for an academic opinion... may his worthless mutterings be hereafter consigned to the /dev/null bitbucket of nothingness...

  34. Jolyon Ralph
    Happy

    @Rik Hemsley

    Sadly, I don't.

    I lost count of the number of CVs I saw with people who had 'Batchelors' degrees. Those, along with people who had experience with "PC's", were discarded pretty rapidly.

    The best ever CV I received was a six page handwritten letter that started off as a CV and then turned into a furious rant about how bad Microsoft are.

    And yes, he genuinely did get the job in the end. (Programers, strange people).

    Jolyon

  35. xjy
    Flame

    Fucking Christ Almighty

    Everybody except AC both sides and Inspector Morse (with a tip of the hat to RW) seems to think that the cleverest cunts under the sun are the people who can spell. Which means that the American obsession with spelling bees should be imported here, and that proofreaders are the top brains in the country and should be paid accordingly.

    However...

    Writing and spelling and grammar all reflect the spoken language, which is FUNDAMENTAL to ALL human communication. Speech is primary, writing is secondary.

    Humanity has managed without writing and spelling for untold millennia, thank you very much, including our immediate linguistic ancestors the Germanic tribes, the vulgar Latin users (and their Old French etc successors), etc. Most Romans and Greeks couldn't read or write. During World War I an awful lot of soldiers used the one book-learned guy in the platoon or company to read and write their letters for them. But the letters were their own.

    Writing was a scribal thing first of all, to RECORD transactions carried out in speech. It has only been simplified enough to be generally used very very recently, and this has only been possible with the invention of printing and the revolutionary needs of the oppressed (first the bourgeoisie, then the working class) to participate in social life - at church with access to bibles and services in the common lingo and in politics with manifestos, exchange of ideas, etc.

    Dictionaries and pedantry (demonstrated by most of the commenters here) came along very very late. And destroyed the exact representation of changing speech by petrifying the speech of one period and class of people and their hired hacks and turning it into a compulsory norm. This kind of strait-jacket crap is burst and thrown away pretty soon by real language development and change, like a snake casts its skin.

    So fetishizing spelling is completely mad, except for a small professional cast of editors, sub-editors and proof-readers.

    The purest form of English we ever had - Old English or Anglo-Saxon (and even that was a mish-mash of Continental dialects) - never had consistent spelling, and they got a lot of good stuff put down in writing anyway.

    Middle English was an utterly chaotic and constantly changing mess of Old English and Norman French, used by people bilingual in the two. Chaucer and Caxton rode the crest of the emerging new language consensus from the early Middle English creoles and made it generally available to the "masses" - those who could read at the time. And - bang! - in a few decades with the Reformation and the fresh translations of the Bible into the vernacular, we had New English. A couple of centuries later the hacks (ie Sam Johnson) attempted to set all this in concrete with dictionaries and rules, copying the French.

    So all you Canutes out there can sit on the beach and admonish the tide to stop as much as you like (in Old East Norse ie Old Danish) and it won't do you a bit of good. Most of you will drown, and good riddance!!

  36. dave lawless
    Thumb Up

    spelling schmelling

    If you read some 18th century text such as Adam Smith's "On The Wealth of Nations" you will expose yourself to many of what we would term spelling mistakes. Rigid & standardised spelling is a 20th century invention.

    I'm all for flexibility, so long as text speak isn't permitted !

  37. Jonathan Tate
    Flame

    Wow. Just wow.

    As an American, when the English forget how the language is supposed to work we're all screwed. As absolutely hilarious as this article and following comments are, there is something deeply troubling about it.

    This is further proof that I am one of the very few people left that take pride in his written language. I always write properly -- even in instant messages and notes to myself.

    Oh, and I (and perhaps most Americans) don't pronounce "they're" the same as "there" and "their", rather, a little like a (much less exaggerated) "they-urr".

    Flames because my god, that guy needs to feel them.

  38. David Gillies
    Pirate

    My policy was zero tolerance

    As a doctoral student, I used to supplement my meagre income by working as a lab assistant. There was good dosh to be made marking lab books. I took enormous pleasure in marking the idle little toads down for every spelling and grammatical error they made. There were howls of protest, naturally, but I prevailed. The fact that this was in an electronic engineering department rather than law school was neither here nor there: correct orthography and grammar are an aid to clarity and a courtesy to one's readers.

    xjy: you're talking bollocks. Insisting on correct spelling and grammar is not a fetish. Allowing 'variant' spelling, punctuation etc. breaks the standard. When Microsoft do that everyone screams like a banshee. It's not that one set of spellings is inherently more logical or superior to another. It's that it's (semi-)fixed, and everyone can read the RFC (AKA OED).

    Hoist the black flag and start slitting the throats of the illiterates!

  39. Neil Greatorex
    Thumb Down

    @ By Steve 17:04

    "rediculous loosers "

    Whilst posting to a thread complaining about spelling standards, you fail to check your own; sorry pal, you're a ridiculous loser yourself....

  40. Steve

    @xjy

    Canute's behaviour was intended as a demonstration to his sycophantic followers that he wasn't all-powerful. He knew what he was about.

    I'm with the pedants, using accepted spelling is an indication of education, which is what universities are there to do. I too get very irritated about people who are too lazy or ill-educated to spell correctly, and my own spelling is impeccable.

    I jsut wish my tyipng wans't so crpa.

  41. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Deer surs

    I am apling 4 the postion uv rapporter for the Reg. Plesse higher me, I cant seam 2 find werq any wear els des spite apling al ofer de place. I half a decrre in de Anguish languish.

  42. Rhyd

    @Sam

    No.

  43. Chris G

    Hang the son of a bitch

    He's a disgrace to British edukashun

  44. MHW
    Thumb Down

    @Al

    "tought"?

  45. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Those who can’t, teach

    I confess to being Dyslexic (not even sure if spelt that properly). My ability to spell correctly is rather hampered. I’m writing this post with the aid of a spelling and grammar checker.

    But, that said, I WANT to spell correctly and I WANT to be grammatically correct. Many posts I have made, emails and correspondence have taken me an hour or more to write. Because I CARE about what I am saying, most of the time. I don’t want to introduce ambiguity. Even with the help of spell checkers and grammar checkers, I still get it wrong.

    However, this Dr. Ken Smith is just a lazy git in my opinion. To advocate misspellings is just wrong. His job it to TEACH! If he finds errors in spelling and grammar, he should highlight them. He is basically saying it’s not his job. Get off your fat arse man and earn your wage! Feel free to criticise schoolteachers for not doing their job well enough.

    Thankfully, my reading ability is not nearly as impaired as my spelling and can say that I have enjoyed books from differing extremes of spelling and grammar:

    E.R. Eddison; The Worm Ouroboros. Found it hard, but rewarding.

    China Miéville; Perdido Street Station, The Scar, Iron Council. Some exquisite use of the English language, sometimes I read paragraphs aloud just for the pleasure of it.

    Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; Sherlock Holmes. Again, some beautiful, evocative language, I love passages where Holmes or Watson is reading from a newspaper. It evokes a real ‘taste’ for the period. Plus, if I find a word I don’t understand, I like to look it up and find out about its derivation. To me, this just adds more magic to the story.

    Ian M. Banks; Feersum Endjinn. This is the flip side of the coin; the majority of the book is a journal written in a phonetic style. I found this difficult to read for a couple of chapters. But, Banks is consistent, so it became jarring when chapters using correct English were introduced. In the end, I loved it because it created a language that, set in a far future, could be possible, even probable.

    The point is, I love these books and many more, in all these cases the authors have a good command of English and use it to different effect. I truly think that these books could not have been created in a climate where indifference to proper spelling was allowed.

    I know that my writing will never equal these authors. But, that does not mean I should not endeavour to try my best and admire those who do better.

    I have had my fill of teachers like this who told me I'd never amount to anything. This person is just as ignorant as his students.

  46. Juan Llodra
    Paris Hilton

    I'm no teacher...

    ...but would it not make sense to focus a little on the tricky aspects of our wonderful language during kid's early years in school? Just getting homonyms and apostrophes right will take care of half the mistakes. Reading books across a wide range of subjects, learning to infer what others are implying and standing by one's principal principles are all part of what I reckon could be done in one academic year to improve a student's lifetime English.

    Sh*t. I forgot, alright? The little scrotes have to be in school to begin with. My mistake...

    Paris because I bet she'll have her speech carefully proofread when she addresses the nation as the next US President. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/06/paris_runs/

  47. b166er

    Well, should become useful

    Let them mis-spell everything. Soon the UK will become illiterate and impoverished, but these new found skills will keep the cash rolling in to blighty via authentically composed 419 scams.

    Language is a virus.

  48. Tom

    Speling Checker

    I was using an Apple II when I first received a copy of this...

    I have a spelling checker It came with my PC. It plane lee marks four my revue Miss steaks aye can knot see.

    Eye ran this poem threw it. Your sure real glad two no. Its very polished in its weigh, My checker tolled me sew.

    A checker is a blessing. It freeze yew lodes of thyme. It helps me right awl stiles two reed, And aides me when aye rime.

    Each frays comes posed up on my screen Eye trussed too bee a joule. The checker pours o'er every word To cheque sum spelling rule.

    Bee fore a veiling checkers Hour spelling mite decline, And if we're laks oar have a laps, We wood bee maid too wine.

    Butt now bee cause my spelling Is checked with such grate flare, There are know faults with in my cite, Of nun eye am a wear.

    Now spelling does not phase me, It does knot bring a tier. My pay purrs awl due glad den With wrapped words fare as hear.

    To rite with care is quite a feet Of witch won should be proud, And wee mussed dew the best wee can, Sew flaws are knot aloud.

    Sow ewe can sea why aye dew prays Such soft wear four pea seas, And why eye brake in two averse Buy righting want too please.

  49. Steen Hive
    Thumb Down

    Let's go find some old davchek

    ..my droogies, and razzrezz his platties.

    Is that "A Clockwork Orange" I see before me?

  50. Charles Manning

    Bollocks!

    In the old days you had to be fluent in Latin to even get into University? Why? That requirement was relaxed some years ago.

    Why this need to have perfect spelling? If you're going to be a computer programmer or city planner then getting your "there" right hardly matters.

    Putting up arbitrary useless requirements as barriers to entry just keeps people from applying their skills properly. Just a good way to keep the blue collared workers in their place.

    We've hopefully got past that as it is not good for those people or the economy as a whole.

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