Improve Your Spelling: Teach Yourself

Elspeth Summers

• Publisher: Teach Yourself
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781444105063
• eBook ISBN: 9781444131093
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This practical guide to spelling will help you to feel more confident by teaching you simple strategies to boost your ability. You'll learn which words are commonly misspelt and how to avoid falling into these traps. With simple rules and guidelines to follow, you'll discover when it's acceptable to misspell and when it's not, and you will finally learn how to enjoy - rather than fear - the written word. With plenty of exercises, crosswords and games to practice and perfect your skills, your spelling will never let you down again. NOT GOT MUCH TIME?One, five and ten-minute introductions to key principles to get you started.
AUTHOR INSIGHTSLots of instant help with common problems and quick tips for success, based on the authors' many years of experience.
TEST YOURSELFTests in the book and online to keep track of your progress.
EXTEND YOUR KNOWLEDGEExtra online articles at www.teachyourself.com to give you a richer understanding of spelling.
FIVE THINGS TO REMEMBERQuick refreshers to help you remember the key facts.
TRY THISInnovative exercises illustrate what you've learnt and how to use it.

1

Who cares about spelling?

In this chapter you will learn:

• why spelling matters
• how poor spelling can hamper you in your professional life
• how poor spelling can create a bad impression.

You are reading this, so it would seem safe to assume that you care about spelling. Or you are at least interested enough to pick this book up and browse through it.

But does spelling still matter? If you are writing an email or texting a friend, you may well use a combination of abbreviations, numbers and symbols in place of full English sentences, for example: ‘c u l8r’ for ‘See you later’ and ‘pub 8 sat:-)’ for ‘Do you want to meet me in the pub at 8 pm on Saturday? It will be fun.’ Not only is this type of communication quicker, it is also cheaper, as many mobile networks charge more for longer text messages.

This kind of writing is absolutely fine between friends for gossip, jokes and making arrangements.

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Insight

We all do this. You may have one style of language for talking to your friends, another for work, and another for when you have to see your child’s head teacher. The technical name for this is ‘style-shifting’.

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Now imagine you want to write a letter to the building society to complain about the cashier who was rude and unhelpful when you went in to withdraw some money. A letter that begins ‘i want 2 complain 2 u’ is unlikely to be taken seriously by the person who receives it, and is less likely to achieve its aim than one that begins ‘I wish to make a complaint’. Certainly, there are few adults who would think of using texting language in a formal letter and ‘i want 2 complain 2 u’ is probably a bit of an exaggeration. But what about a letter that begins ‘I want to complain too you’? What sort of impression does it give to the person reading it? Does it really matter that ‘too’ should be written ‘to’?

Obviously, the answer to the last question is yes. You can argue that the spelling mistake does not make any difference to the meaning of that sentence and a person reading it could overlook the error and still understand what the writer is saying. In this case that is true. After an initial surprise at reading ‘too’ where you expect ‘to’, the reader adjusts and carries on with the rest of the letter. But this is just one spelling mistake in one sentence. The reader of a 5000-word essay or 3-page letter full of spelling mistakes is likely to become more and more impatient and irritated as the mistakes pile up and the writer’s meaning becomes harder to follow. If the 5000-word essay is part of an assessment for a course of training or study, the examiner is probably not going to feel very sympathetic towards the student whose essay has taken twice as long to read and mark as the rest because of all its spelling mistakes.

This may seem unfair, and many lecturers and teachers would deny that poor spelling influences them in any way, but it is a fact that if your written work has spelling mistakes, people make assumptions about you as a result.

If your spelling is not good, people often assume that you are not very intelligent. There is absolutely no evidence to connect poor spelling with low intelligence or, indeed, good spelling with high intelligence. Plenty of highly intelligent people struggle with spelling, and the list of famous poor spellers includes many high achievers such as Winston Churchill, W B Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Henry Ford, John F Kennedy, Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin. However, if the only contact a person has with you is a piece of writing that is riddled with misspellings, their impression of you is unlikely to be positive.

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Insight

The English writer A A Milne once said ‘My spelling is Wobbly. It’s good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places.’

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People might also assume that, because your letter or report is badly spelt, you are careless and probably lazy too, as you have not taken the time to check over what you have written. These assumptions, although they may be entirely false, can be difficult to dislodge.

Think of the occasions on which you have to write something that is important. Maybe you are looking for a job and have to write a covering letter, fill in an application form, sit a written aptitude test or provide a CV. You and another candidate could have identical qualifications and experience. You could both have been knowledgeable, personable and enthusiastic at the interview. But there is only one position available. What if the only real difference between you and that other applicant is the quality of the spelling in your CV? Theirs is perfect and yours is not. Many employers admit that they have rejected candidates purely because of badly spelt applications, no matter how well-qualified they were for the job. Your CV, with its spelling mistakes, allows your prospective employer to assume that you are careless, probably a bit lazy, and not very bright – and you never get the chance to prove these assumptions wrong.

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Insight

A survey in 2006 showed that over three-quarters of employers were put off a candidate by poor spelling and punctuation in applications.

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This is just one example of how poor spelling can be costly. There will be many times when you have to write something that needs to be just right, in order to get the result you want: a letter of complaint to a local council or your MP; a report that is to be circulated at work; a newsletter for your sports or social club; an essay for a course of study; or a letter to your child’s head teacher.

If your letter or report is spelt correctly and properly punctuated with capitals and full stops, you increase the likelihood that it will be taken seriously and that people will respond to it in the way you would like.

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Insight

Research done in 2008 showed that the reputation of a company could be damaged if its employees made spelling mistakes in business correspondence.

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And that, after all, is the purpose of most writing: to provide the reader with information in order to evoke some kind of response. The information could be a complaint to a travel company for losing your suitcase on holiday, and the desired response is an apology and a cheque for compensation. It could be a letter to the council about the nonstop barking of the dog next door where the response would be a visit from the council’s antisocial behaviour wardens. A job application is a piece of information sent in order to obtain an interview and, ultimately, a job. A newspaper article is information written in order to expand the knowledge of the readers, or to influence their opinions.

All these outcomes are made much more likely when the information presented is clearly written and correctly spelt.

Remind me: why do I need to be able to spell?

A few months ago a friend sent me a jokey email. Last week another friend sent me the same email and it occurred to me that it had a relevant point to make. Here it is, although without the photograph that accompanied the original email:

Resimay

To hoom it mae cunsern,

I...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Meet the author
• Only got a minute?
• Only got five minutes?
• Only got ten minutes?
• 1 Who cares about spelling?
• 2 Why do people find English hard to spell?
• 3 How can I improve my spelling?
• 4 What are the rules?
• 5 Full stops and capital letters and apostrophes and hyphens and accents – oh my
• 6 Problem words
• 7 English in pieces
• 8 Which is which?
• 9 Memory tricks
• 10 Dictionaries and spellcheckers
• 11 What are you doing here?
• 12 A spell of fun
• Glossary
• Recommended websites
• Answers to exercises
• Index