Spelling

I found a spelling mistake in The New Yorker last week: "vender" instead of "vendor." It was in the double issue on cooking, probably 100,000 words or more. It's the first misspelled word I've ever seen in 30-some years of reading that fine magazine, which has always been the gold standard for accuracy as well as style. So what's the big deal? It means the Spelling Apocalypse may be upon us.

"Does spelling count?" That's one of the first questions I hear when I give my students a writing assignment. Of course it counts, I tell them. If you can't spell, people assume you're illiterate. It's not true and it's not fair, but that's how it is. Now I'm beginning to have doubts.

Many of my students are poor spellers, and some can't spell at all. They grew up during the Phonetics Wars, when some teachers used a new approach to teaching reading and writing called "whole language." I don't wish to get caught in the crossfire, but let's just say that spelling took a back seat for a while, and it shows.

But that's not the whole story. There are rules for proper spelling, so I'm told, but nobody ever taught them to me, and I grew up long before whole language. I learned to spell because I was a voracious reader. I know a misspelled word because it looks wrong.

Sadly, most of my students are not voracious readers. And what they do read often betrays them. On my way to the office this morning, I passed a church offering "Kiddie Kollege" on Sundays, a florist selling "bokays", and a Dunkin Donuts.

What about computers with spell-checking programs? Fine, except they can't handle homonyms, words that sound the same but have different meanings and spellings. But that's neither hear nor their.

What worries me as an English teacher is this: How much effort should I put into teaching spelling, an endeavor most experts regard as futile after elementary school? We all remember Vice-President Quayle's problem with "potatoe," but it didn't cost him his job. Former Pittsburgh Steeler quarterback Terry Bradshaw was once described as a man who "couldn't spell cat if you spotted him the 'c' and the 'a'," but he won three Super Bowls and now makes a ton of money as a sports commentator and commercial pitchman. One of the best writers we ever had at Yankee was a terrible speller, but we had an excellent copy editor who cleaned up after him. Her salary was about half his.

Does spelling count? Apparently not, if we measure by income or celebrity, which is how this society keeps score. Name one famous speller.

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