Re: Typ o sin Rsms

Subject: Re: Typ o sin Rsms
From: "Wayne J. Douglass" <wayned -at- VERITY -dot- COM>
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1997 09:26:59 -0800

At 04:58 PM 2/27/97 PST, Robert Plamondon wrote:
>
>Even spelling is not a basic writing skill. There are good writers who
>can't spell consistently (Shakespeare leaps immediately to mind). In
>fact, rigid spelling rules are a relatively new invention. Much of the
>world's great literature predates this newfangled concept. Composition
>is the central skill -- word choice and (to a lesser extent) punctuation --
>with spelling being distinctly secondary. Heck, in many languages it's
>not even an issue, since the spelling rules are so straightforward that
>there's little chance to screw up.
>
Shakespeare is not the best example because English orthography was nowhere
near standardized in the Renaissance. As someone who has examined English
plays from the period, I can testify to the charm of seeing the same word
spelled four different ways *on the same page.* F. Scott Fitzgerald, to
choose someone closer to our time, was a notoriously bad speller - and he
went to Princeton!

And remember Marshall McLuhan's dictum: "Nobody made a grammatical error in
a preliterate society."

--Wayne Douglass

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