Brief Intermission Eight
HOW TO SPELL A WORD
The spelling of English words is archaic, it’s confusing, it’s
needlessly complicated, and, if you have a sense of humor, it’s
downright comical. In fact, any insulting epithet you might wish to
level against our weird methods of putting letters together to form
words would probably be justified—but it’s our spelling, and we’re
stuck with it.
How completely stuck we are is illustrated by a somewhat
ludicrous event that goes back to 1906, and that cost philanthropist
Andrew Carnegie $75,000.
Working under a five-year grant of funds from Carnegie, and
headed by the esteemed scholar Brander Matthews, the Simplified
Spelling Board published in that year a number of recommendations
for bringing some small semblance of order out of the great chaos of
English spelling. Their suggestions affected a mere three hundred
words out of the half million then in the language. Here are a few
examples, to give you a general idea:
SPELLING THEN CURRENT
SIMPLIFIED SPELLING
mediaeval
medieval
doubt
dout
debtor
dettor
head
hed
though
tho
through
thru
laugh
laf
tough
tuf
knife
nife
theatre
theater
centre
center
phantom
fantom
These revisions seemed eminently sensible to no less a personage
than the then President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt. So
delighted was he with the new garb in which these three hundred
words could be clothed that he immediately ordered that all
government documents be printed in simplified spelling. And the
result? Such a howl went up from the good citizens of the republic,
from the nation’s editors and schoolteachers and businessmen, that
the issue was finally debated in the halls of Congress. Almost to a
man, senators and representatives stood opposed to the plan. Teddy
Roosevelt, as you have doubtless heard, was a stubborn fellow—but
when Congress threatened to hold up the White House stationery
appropriation unless the President backed down, Teddy rescinded
the order. Roosevelt ran for re-election some time later, and lost.
That his attitude toward spelling contributed to his defeat is of
course highly doubtful—nevertheless an opposition New York
newspaper, the day the returns were in, maliciously commented on
the outgoing incumbent in a one-word simplified-spelling editorial:
“THRU!”
Roosevelt was not the first President to be justifiably outraged by
our ridiculous orthography. Over a hundred years ago, when
Andrew Jackson was twitted on his poor spelling, he is supposed to
have made this characteristic reply, “Well, sir, it is a damned poor
mind that cannot think of more than one way to spell a word!” And
according to one apocryphal version, it was Jackson’s odd spelling
that gave birth to the expression “okay.” Jackson thought, so goes
the story, that “all correct” was spelled “orl korrect,” and he used
O.K. as the abbreviation for these words when he approved state
papers.
Many years ago, the British playwright George Bernard Shaw
offered a dramatic proposal for reducing England’s taxes. Just
eliminate unnecessary letters from our unwieldy spelling, he said,
and you’ll save enough money in paper and printing to cut
everyone’s tax rate in half. Maybe it would work, but it’s never been
put to the test—and the way things look now, it never will be.
Current practice more and more holds spelling exactly where it is,
bad though it may be. It is a scientific law of language that if
enough people make a “mistake,” the “mistake” becomes acceptable
usage. That law applies to pronunciation, to grammar, to word
meanings, but not to spelling. Maybe it’s because of our misbegotten
faith in, and worship of, the printed word—maybe it’s because
written language tends to be static, while spoken language
constantly changes. Whatever the cause, spelling today successfully
resists every logical effort at reform. “English spelling,” said
Thorstein Veblen, “satisfies all the requirements of the canons of
reputability under the law of conspicuous waste. It is archaic,
cumbrous, and ineffective.” Perfectly true. Notwithstanding, it’s
here to stay.
Your most erudite friend doubtless misspells the name of the
Hawaiian guitar. I asked half a dozen members of the English
department of a large college to spell the word—without exception
they responded with ukelele. Yet the only accepted form is ukulele.
Judging from my experience with my classes at Rio Hondo
College, half the population of the country must think the word is
spelled alright. Seventy-five per cent of the members of my classes
can’t spell embarrassing or coolly. People will go on misspelling these
four words, but the authorized spellings will remain impervious to
change.
Well, you know the one about Mohammed and the mountain.
Though it’s true that we have modernized spelling to a microscopic
extent in the last eighty years (traveler, center, theater, medieval,
labor, and honor, for example, have pretty much replaced traveller,
centre, theatre, mediaeval, labour, and honour), still the resistance to
change has not observably weakened. If spelling won’t change, as it
probably won’t, those of us who consider ourselves poor spellers
will have to. We’ll just have to get up and go to the mountain.
Is it hard to become a good speller? I have demonstrated over and
over again in my classes that anyone of normal intelligence and
average educational background can become a good speller in very
little time.
What makes the task so easy?
First—investigations have proved that 95 per cent of the spelling
errors that educated people make occur in just one hundred words.
Not only do we all misspell the same words—but we misspell them
in about the same way.
Second—correct spelling relies exclusively on memory, and the
most effective way to train memory is by means of association or, to
use the technical term, mnemonics.
If you fancy yourself an imperfect or even a terrible speller, the
chances are very great that you’ve developed a complex solely
because you misspell some or all of the hundred words with which
this Intermission deals. When you have conquered this single list,
and I shall immediately proceed to demonstrate how easy it is, by
means of mnemonics, to do so, 95 per cent of your spelling
difficulties will in all likelihood vanish.
Let us start with twenty-five words from the list. In the first
column you will find the correct spelling of each, and in the second
column the simple mnemonic that will forevermore fix that correct
spelling in your memory.
CORRECT SPELLING
MNEMONIC
1. all right
Two words, no matter what it means. Keep in
mind that it’s the opposite of all wrong.
2. coolly
Of course you can spell cool—simply add the
adverbial ending -ly.
3. supersede
This is the only word in the language ending in
-sede (the only one, mind you—there isn’t a
single other one so spelled).
4. succeed
The only three words in the entire
5. proceed
language ending in -ceed. When you
6. exceed
think of the three words in the order given
here, the initial letters form the beginning of
SPEED.
7. cede, precede,
recede, etc.
All other words with a similar-sounding final
syllable end in -cede.
8. procedure
One of the double e’s of proceed moves to the
end in the noun form, procedure.
9. stationery
This is the word that means paper, and notice
the -er in paper.
10. stationary
In this spelling, the words means standing, and
notice the -a in stand.
11. recommend
Commend, which we all spell correctly, plus
the prefix re-.
12. separate
Look for a rat in both words.
13. comparative
14. ecstasy
to sy (sigh) with ecstasy
15. analyze
The only two non-technical words in
16. paralyze
the whole language ending in -yze.
17. repetition
First four letters identical with those in the
allied form repeat.
18. irritable
Think of allied forms irritate and
19. inimitable
imitate.
20. absence
Think of the allied form absent, and you will
not be tempted to misspell it abscence.
21. superintendent
The superintendent in an apartment house
collects the rent—thus you avoid
superintendant.
22. conscience
Science plus prefix con-.
23. anoint
Think of an ointment, hence no double n.
24. ridiculous
Think of the allied form ridicule, which we
usually spell correctly, thus avoiding
rediculous.
25. despair
Again, think of another form—desperate—and
so avoid dispair.
Whether or not you have much faith in your spelling ability, you
will need very little time to conquer the preceding twenty-five
demons. Spend a few minutes, now, on each of those words in the
list that you’re doubtful of, and then test your success by means of
the exercise below. Perhaps to your astonishment, you will find it
easy to make a high score.
A test of your learning
Instructions: After studying the preceding list of words, fill in the
missing letters correctly.
1. a__________________right
2. coo__________________y
3. super__________________
4. suc__________________
5. pro__________________
6. ex__________________
7. pre__________________
8. proc__________________dure
9. station__________________ry (paper)
10. station__________________ry (still)
11. sep__________________rate
12. compar__________________tive
13. re__________________o__________________end
14. ecsta__________________y
15. anal__________________e
16. paral__________________e
17. rep__________________tition
18. irrit__________________ble
19. inimit__________________ble
20. ab__________________ence
21. superintend__________________nt
22. con__________________nce
23. a__________________oint
24. r__________________diculous
25. d__________________spair
Mere repetitious drill is of no value in learning to spell a word
correctly. You’ve probably heard the one about the youngster who
was kept after school because he was in the habit of using the
ungrammatical expression “I have went.” Miss X was going to cure
her pupil, even if it required drastic measures. So she ordered him
to write “I have gone” one thousand times. “Just leave your work on
my desk before you go home,” she said, “and I’ll find it when I come
in tomorrow morning.” Well, there were twenty pages of neat script
on her desk next morning, one thousand lines of “I have gone’s,”
and on the last sheet was a note from the child. “Dear Teacher,” it
read, “I have done the work and I have went home.” If this didn’t
actually happen, it logically could have, for in any drill, if the mind
is not actively engaged, no learning will result. If you drive a car, or
sew, or do any familiar and repetitious manual work, you know how
your hands can carry on an accustomed task while your mind is far
away. And if you hope to learn to spell by filling pages with a word,
stop wasting your time. All you’ll get for your trouble is writer’s
cramp.
The only way to learn to spell those words that now plague you is to
devise a mnemonic for each one.
If you are never quite sure whether it’s indispensible or
indispensable, you can spell it out one hundred, one thousand, or one
million times—and the next time you have occasion to write it in a
sentence, you’ll still wonder whether to end it with -ible or -able. But
if you say to yourself just once that able people are generally
indispensable, that thought will come to you whenever you need to
spell the word; in a few seconds you’ve conquered another spelling
demon. By engineering your own mnemonic through a study of the
architecture of a troublesome word, you will become so quickly and
completely involved with the correct spelling of that word that it
will be impossible for you ever to be stumped again.
Let us start at once. Below you will find another twenty-five
words from the list of one hundred demons, each offered to you in
both the correct form and in the popular misspelling. Go through
the test quickly, checking off what you consider a proper choice in
each case. In that way you will discover which of the twenty-five
you would be likely to get caught on. Then devise a personal
mnemonic for each word you flunked, writing your ingenious result
out in the margin of the page. And don’t be alarmed if some of your
mnemonics turn out kind of silly—the sillier they are the more
likely you are to recall them in an emergency. One of my pupils,
who could not remember how many l’s to put into tranquillity (or is
it tranquility?), shifted his mind into high gear and came up with
this: “In the old days life was more tranquil than today, and people
wrote with quills instead of fountain pens. Hence—tranquillity!”
Another pupil, a girl who always chewed her nails over irresistible
before she could decide whether to end it with -ible or -able,
suddenly realized that a certain brand of lipstick was called
irresistible, the point being of course that the only vowel in lipstick is
i—hence, -ible! Silly, aren’t they? But they work. Go ahead to the
test now; and see how clever—or silly—you can be.
SPELLING TEST
1. a. supprise
b. surprise
2. a. inoculate
b. innoculate
3. a. definitely
b. definately
4. a. priviledge
b. privilege
5. a. incidently
b. incidentally
6. a. predictible
b. predictable
7. a. dissipate
b. disippate
8. a. descriminate
b. discriminate
9. a. description
b. discription
10. a. baloon
b. balloon
11. a. occurence
b. occurrence
12. a. truely
b. truly
13. a. arguement
b. argument
14. a. assistant
b. asisstant
15. a. grammer
b. grammar
16. a. parallel
b. paralell
17. a. drunkeness
b. drunkenness
18. a. suddeness
b. suddenness
19. a. embarassment
b. embarrassment
20. a. weird
b. wierd
21. a. pronounciation
b. pronunciation
22. a. noticeable
b. noticable
23. a. developement
b. development
24. a. vicious
b. viscious
25. a. insistent
b. insistant
KEY: 1–b, 2–a, 3–a, 4–b, 5–b, 6–b, 7–a, 8–b, 9–a, 10–b, 11–b, 12–b,
13–b, 14–a, 15–b, 16–a, 17–b, 18–b, 19–b, 20–a, 21–b, 22–a,
23–b, 24–a, 25–a
By now you’re well on the way toward developing a definite
superiority complex about your spelling—which isn’t a half-bad
thing, for I’ve learned, working with my students, that many people
think they’re awful spellers, and have completely lost faith in their
ability, solely because they get befuddled over no more than two
dozen or so common words that they use over and over again and
always misspell. Every other word they spell perfectly, but they still
think they’re prize boobs in spelling until their self-confidence is
restored. So if you’re beginning to gain more assurance, you’re on
the right track. The conquest of the one hundred common words
most frequently misspelled is not going to assure you that you will
always come out top man in a spelling bee, but it’s certain to clean
up your writing and bolster your ego.
So far you have worked with fifty of the one hundred spelling
demons. Here, now, is the remainder of the list. Test yourself, or
have someone who can keep a secret test you, and discover which
ones are your Waterloo. Study each one you miss as if it were a
problem in engineering. Observe how it’s put together and devise
whatever association pattern will fix the correct form in your mind.
Happy spelling!
SPELLING DEMONS
These fifty words complete the list of one hundred words that
most frequently stump the inexpert spellers:
1. embarrassing
2. judgment
3. indispensable
4. disappear
5. disappoint
6. corroborate
7. sacrilegious
8. tranquillity
9. exhilaration
10. newsstand
11. license
12. irresistible
13. persistent
14. dilemma
15. perseverance
16. until (but till)
17. tyrannize
18. vacillate
19. oscillate
20. accommodate
21. dilettante
22. changeable
23. accessible
24. forty
25. desirable
26. panicky
27. seize
28. leisure
29. receive
30. achieve
31. holiday
32. existence
33. pursue
34. pastime
35. possesses
36. professor
37. category
38. rhythmical
39. vacuum
40. benefited
41. committee
42. grievous
43. conscious
44. plebeian
45. tariff
46. sheriff
47. connoisseur
48. necessary
49. sergeant
50. misspelling