Increasingly lax education standards

Spelling “truely atrosious,” says academic

LONDON (Reuters) – Embaressed by yor spelling? Never you mind.

Fed up with his students’ complete inability to spell common English correctly, a British academic has suggested it may be time to accept “variant spellings” as legitimate.

Rather than grammarians getting in a huff about “argument” being spelled “arguement” or “opportunity” as “opertunity,” why not accept anything that’s phonetically (fonetickly anyone?) correct as long as it can be understood?

“Instead of complaining about the state of the education system as we correct the same mistakes year after year, I’ve got a better idea,” Ken Smith, a criminology lecturer at Bucks New University, wrote in the Times Higher Education Supplement.

Continue reading, Spelling “truely atrosious,” says academic

Spelling rules exist for a reason. Now I’ve probably made my fair share of spelling/grammar mistakes on this blog (though the built-in OS X spellchecker alerts me to the majority of the spelling errors). However, mistakes that I do make are just that, mistakes. They are most often a result of a mistyped key. If I don’t know how to spell a word I usually just Google it to get the correct spelling. Granted, phonetically misspelled words are somewhat “readable” but should never be allowed in any formal usage. If I’m reading a blog or any form of written communication and see incorrect spellings to the extent that the above article suggests allowing, I’d laugh and completely disregard the source. If anything, the educational system must crack down on improper spelling. Just because something is “hard,” doesn’t mean that it should be changed to accommodate those that can’t handle it.

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