Occupy Webster: A Plea for Challenged Spellers

Three years ago ABC made a story of a Google study of searches for spelling under the title “Google Reveals the Top Misspelled Word in Every State” [https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/google-reveals-top-misspelled-word-state/story?id=39406176]. It made good human interest as a backdrop to the Scripps Spelling Bee, but it seemed to make sport of bad spelling, along with the sport of good spelling. It was ironic and vaguely hilarious, for example, that residents of Massachusetts could not spell “Massachusetts” and that the desert dwellers of California could not spell “desert.”  Without a doubt, some misspellings are entertaining and make good posting on Facebook.

But there is also an intellectual snobbery woven in to exposing spelling mistakes for a good laugh.  It makes the good spellers feel smarter, and the bad spellers feel dumber. Even if we discover that a smart person is a bad speller, it becomes evidence for compromised intellect.  Nothing is funnier than a teacher misspelling a word he just put up on the board, and a shrewd teacher will laugh along with his class, rather than swooning with embarrassment.

But how did Google identify these words misspelled in every state? “Using search queries that began with ‘how to spell’ and then the word in question, Google was able to determine the most troublesome words for people in all 50 states.” Now searching for a word’s spelling is not the same as “misspelling” it. The act of searching actually proves the speller was uncertain enough to look the word up. And if you live in Massachusetts, you are much more likely to use the word than spellers in other states, so of course you have to look it up.  It may be amusing to think that a speller does not know how to spell the state she lives in, but it is also impressive that she took the time to look it up, realizing how easily it can be misspelled.

Likewise the spelling of “desert” in California. It turns out that people in Connecticut and Indiana also found that word troublesome, and we can only wonder what atypical ways they used that word. Or maybe they were actually looking up a word pronounced “dessert.” Credit goes to those citizens dispersed across the country, who even realized that there are two words often mistaken for each other: “desert” and “dessert.” Having looked up the word, they undoubtedly spelled it correctly. That is what makes a good speller.

Apparently residents of Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Rhode Island were worried about cancellation, because they frequently searched for the word “cancelled.” Although I consider myself a good speller, I have looked up that word more than once.  Turns out the common American spelling is “canceled,” but outside of the United States “cancelled” is preferred (http://grammarist.com/spelling/cancel/).  Who can blame the citizens of these mid-Atlantic states for being confused?

And apparently South Dakotans and Michiganders both struggle with the simple word “gray” for the same reason.  “Grey” is preferred across the pond and “gray” in the United States, although both spellings are accepted. Smart people look it up just to be sure. Having lived 25 winters in Michigan, I also understand there are good reasons to seasonally use the word “gray.”

In an attempt to make news, ABC actually confounded the notion of “good speller” with “orthographer,” a “person versed in orthography or spelling” [https://www.dictionary.com/browse/orthographer].  Such a person has a talent for remembering spelling without the dictionary.  A “good speller” is not someone who gets it right the first time, but someone who knows when a spelling is in doubt and looks it up. The former is a parlor trick or a skill to win spelling bees, the latter is a competent writer. Not to slight the champions of the National Spelling Bee, but to applaud those who searched Google, rather than assuming they had it right.

English-speaking people find a lot of ways to act superior, but condescension about spelling is one I find distasteful.  Perhaps because it has classist overtones or because it is only consequential to those who are good spellers.  It is a way to exclude and demean, but it is worth very little in the marketplace. Smart people don’t need to spell spontaneously; they just need to know how to search Google.

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