Re: Holden/ Spelling,etc.
Tim O'Connor (oconnort@nyu.edu)
Mon, 13 Sep 1999 12:02:14 -0400
On Mon, Sep 13, 1999 at 03:39:41AM -0700, ellen tyler wrote:
> editing, spelling doesn't count. Apparently really bad spellers, like
> myself, can't ever learn to spell even if they try really hard. they can
> get better, maybe, but not much.
This is an intriguing subject. Quite a number of years ago,
International Paper used to publish these little pamphlets on different
topics regarding reading and writing, each written by a well-known
writer. Kurt Vonnegut did one on, I think, style. John Irving did one
on spelling. The cover showed him with those big arms and that muscular
chest hugging his unabridged dictionary. In his essay, he explains that
he has a spelling problem, and that what he does is use the dictionary
to find a word he can't spell (not always so easy if you don't know, for
instance, that a word spelled "aesthetic," but pronounced in the US,
approximately, as "essthetic," and you don't know where to start
looking!), and he makes a mark next to the word.
Then, the next time he needs to use the word, if he looks it up and
finds that he's already marked it once, he makes a different mark in
red. If it happens a third time (I'm doing this from memory, so I
may have it slightly inaccurate), he sets out on a special effort to
USE the word as often as possible in his written vocabulary, and
gradually he absorbs it.
I love your English/Latin dichotomy. I've never heard of such a problem
before!
--tim o'connor