Mind Your Language

I imagine that the episode would be a source of something more meaningful than passing amusement for Simon Horobin,a professor of English language and literature at Oxford. For,the question he poses in the title of his scholarly new book is: Does Spelling Matter? Among the many lines of inquiry he follows to answer that question is this one: “There is a tendency to view correct spelling as an index of intelligence,moral fibre and general trustworthiness.” As the then American Vice-President Dan Quayle found out 20 years ago when he told a child at a spelling bee to add an “e” to “potato”. No matter how much damage control he tried,his political career was now beyond rescue.

But the defence of misspelling has to be more than a defence of a lightweight American politician,and Horobin is extremely fair in taking up the arguments of both those for a more laissez-faire approach to spelling and those who see fiddling with accepted spellings as an assault on civilisation.

Of course,as Horobin points out,with emails,text messages and Twitter,it is difficult to be a stickler for perfect spelling. And while Horobin uses his classroom experience to say,“spelling is not a reliable index of intelligence,” it is a measure most of us nadopt in certain situations to flag off potentially suspicious content. He cites research to show that while there is substantial tolerance of spelling errors in online communication,consumers tend to be wary of commercial sites with spelling errors — good spelling is definitely a good business practice. People are also alert to spelling errors in emails that may indicate fraudulent emails that could compromise their data. In fact,consider your own sifting methods: when a Web search lands you on an unfamiliar website with poor spelling and grammar,don’t you tend to suspect its credibility?

Moreover,Horobin points out that even misspelling has its rules. Deliberately non-standard spelling falls into many categories and,in each,able practitioners are easily separated from the wannabes. For instance,in text messages,distorted spellings are used by a group to “establish an informal register,within which more intimate small talk could be exchanged”; however informally,conventions of what goes are evolved.

Similarly,the use of non-standard spellings of words in graffiti (“wot”,“skool”) is frowned upon as a sign of dipping standards. But: “Graffiti is a subversive and countercultural medium; spellings like these are not evidence of illiteracy,but of deliberate opposition to the norms of standard English spelling.”

But how about changing the standard itself? There is a movement to reform spelling for quicker literacy,and its campaigners make a case for phonetic spelling. It may make your blood curdle to read this,but among the suggestions proposed in British publications are these: “butiful” for “beautiful”; “enny” for “any”,“menny” for “many”; “frend” for “friend”; “grate” for “great”… you’ll get the drift. Such proposals are fun to debate,but Horobin lists the problems with this glib advocacy of phonetic spellings. Given the diversity of pronunciations and dialects,phonetic principles have obvious problems,especially if the point is to make English writing more accessible. (And with English now a global language,who’d dare to actually order the writing of its rules? Who’d listen?) Also,it would not account for the different spellings of identical-sounding words to register different meanings: “knot” versus “not”,say. Some silent letters are needed to prevent the loss of etymological spellings. For example: “Although we no longer pronounce the in sign,its presence alerts us to the link it shares with signal and signature… Although the in doubt has never been pronounced,it signals a link with indubitable,‘not to be doubted’,and thus may well help the reader to discern the meaning of the more unfamiliar word.”