THREE words. World. Hell. Handcart. It's not often I despair of civilisation as we know it (okay, I despair rather more often than is good for my peptic ulcer, but that's what comes from dedicating the best years of my life to the glorious Fourth Estate). But when a university lecturer proposes an amnesty on students' 20 most common spelling mistakes, I fear things may have taken a turn for the apocalyptic.
"I am fed up with correcting my students' atrocious spelling," moans Dr Ken Smith, a senior lecturer in criminology at Buckinghamshire New University. Excuse me, doctor, but isn't that your job?
Anyway, his solution to this woeful situation is not
, as you might imagine, to call for the introduction of better teaching methods in our schools, to ensure future generations are not saddled with such a debilitating handicap. Nor is he willing to continue with the red-pen approach. Heaven forfend! That sounds far too much like hard work. Much simpler for everyone, surely, just to let the lazy blighters get on with it.
Errors that would be featured in his proposed amnesty include 'Febuary' instead of February, 'kew' instead of queue and 'twelth' for twelfth – which makes more sense in any case, according to the learned Dr Smith. "How on earth did that 'f' get in there?" he says incredulously. "You would not dream of spelling the words 'stealth' or 'wealth' with an 'f' (as in 'stealfth' or 'wealfth'), so why insist on putting the 'f' in twelfth?"
Excuse me while I splutter into my English breakfast tea, Dr Smith, but that is because stealth and wealth are not spoken with an 'f', whereas twelfth clearly is. The three words do not rhyme. And just because your strangulated diction causes you to misspell some of the most simple words in the English language, it does not make it right.
Likewise, he claims the word 'judgement' is now widely accepted as an alternative to 'judgment' (not in my dictionary), "so why can't 'truely' be accepted as a variant spelling of 'truly'?" Quick, pass the Pepto-Bismol…
It's not just in university that the ability to spell has its uses. I have friends who have dipped their toes into the waters of online dating, and God help the man who sends a misspelt e-mail to the virtual object of their affections. Dangle your apostrophe in the wrong place and you might as well have admitted to a fondness for wearing women's underwear and an occasional pavement-licking fetish.
It's a similar situation in the workplace. In a recent survey, 54% of UK employers said spelling mistakes on a CV were by far their biggest pet-hate. (You needn't bother mentioning The Apprentice's Lee McQueen, whose CV was littered with howlers, including 'tommorrow', 'ambtion' and 'recoingsed'. He may have got the job in the end, but that's only because the rest of the candidates were such helpless, bickering incompetents.)
And only this week a judge branded a court official "illiterate" after receiving a charge sheet littered with spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.
At this point, I feel it is only right that I make a small confession. Two correspondents have kindly pointed out a sloppy error in last week's column, in which I wrongly used the word 'I' instead of 'me'. One even suggested some helpful reading material should I have ongoing difficulties with my grammar (another got so cross they misspelt my name, dampening the effect somewhat).
Still, I have taken their advice on board and have attempted to ensure everything this week is shop shape and Bristol fision. Premise. Honest to dog. Cross my heart and hope to diet.
The full article contains 635 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
