[...]Is Spelling Overrated? – bly.com blog – bly.com direct marketing blog[...]…

[...]Is Spelling Overrated? – bly.com blog – bly.com direct marketing blog[...]…

People seem to miss the salient point that they are not in the “dictionary” business, they are in the “communication” business.

Yes of course bad grammar and spelling can hinder communication, but there is line then when crossed turns you from a person trying to communicate as effectively as possible to a weirdo grammar nazi who misses the subtle yet important cultural elements of communication.

“The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, Her majesty’s Goverbment conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan for what will be known as Euro-English (Euro for short). In the first year ‘s’ will be used instead of the soft ‘c’. Sertainly sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard ‘c’ will be replased with ‘k’. Not only will this klear up konfusion, but keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome ‘ph’ wil be replased by ‘f’. This will make words like ‘fotograph’ 20 per sent shorter.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will encourage the removal of double letters, which have aways ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent ‘e’s in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go.

By the fourth year, peopl wil be resptiv to steps such as replasing ‘th’ by ‘z’ and ‘w’ by ‘v’. During ze fifz year, ze unesesary ‘o’ can be dropd from vords kontaining ‘ou’, and similar changed vud of kors, be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil b no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru.”

Um, how do we know?

Some of the examples in these comments are from signs in windows. Were they hand-written? If so, the author’s won’t have used a spell-checker. If they printed, then the spell-checker won’t be at fault – “chedar” won’t have passed.

“Spelling skills are declining.” Again, where’s the proof? My suspicion is that with the rise of online messaging (blogs, social network profiles, instant messaging, emails etc) we simply have more opportunities to see people’s writing. I’m happy to be proven wrong, but I want cold, hard facts.

Anyway, one week he shared that he places misspelled words in his email every now and then because his readers reach out to him and he makes a connection. His readers are trying to help him. It makes him more human and personable.

I thought that was awesome. Now you know…when there is a mistake or two in my ezine I always share that story — my “typos” are there so I can connect with readers and not seem like a “cold corporation”.

Work for clients is always checked over by a proofreader. That’s a very different story. These companies should without question spend more time and energy on their spelling.

Kelly Robbins