Heironymus sent me a link to a spelling test. For the record I got an A+.
You’re a spelling genius! You’re an intelligent and careful speller with an eye for detail. You clearly know all of the most commonly misspelled words in English like the back of your hand. Use your spelling knowledge to save the world, because without you we won’t survive!
When I went to school, students were drilled in spelling with many, many spelling tests. We also learned the differences between to, too, and two. And there, their, and they’re. I before e, except after c, unless the word rhymes with way like weigh. Of course, there are many exceptions like weird. Woe betide me if I turned in an essay in high school with misspelled words. This was long before spellcheck. Because of this drilling and rote, misspelled words jump off the page at me. Alas, we no longer teach this stuff to our children. Even cursive is dying out. Remember Trayvon Martin’s girlfriend who was nineteen and in eleventh grade and didn’t know how to read cursive? I’ll venture to say that she didn’t know how to spell either.
I don’t think I have ever seen a single misspelled word on any essay Ron has ever sent me. He’s a few years older so he went through the same rigorous English language training I did. Same with my sister who is four years older. Even my senile old Canadian buddy who likes to take exception to my writing and politics never misspells a word except for those ending in or like color since he uses the British version colour. Those drills may have been tedious and boring but you would be surprised how much more intelligent one’s writing looks without misspelled words.
One more thing. Have you ever noticed that the finalists in the spelling bees seem to be dot not feather Indians?
For the record, I scored in the upper stratosphere on an IQ test I
took back when I was 14, but I cannot spell for shit! If it were not
for spell-check, I would be screwed. My mind works so far ahead
of my fingers that I make more errors (Even on words I know how
to spell) than your average third grader.
That being said, the answer to the dot Indian question is that they
still teach proper English in India. In some parts of Africa, (mostly
former English colonies) they speak some of the most proper
English anywhere on Earth, albeit with a heavy accent. Countries
in the Western hemisphere, in places like Belize and Suriname,
they have a higher English literacy rate than we have in America.
There is a story that has been going around for years that some liberal
chick visiting Nigeria, asked a native if anyone spoke Ebonics there.
The answer was “We speak the Kings English in this country.”
A friend of mine told me a story about a black nurse she worked with who was from Guiana. The black administrative workers started yabbering Ebonics at her and she looked at them and said, “You grew up in America. Don’t you know how to speak English? I don’t understand a word any of you are saying.” And then when her son would come home from school talking like that she would read him the riot act. You notice that blacks who come here from other countries, who aren’t refugees like Somalis, seem to do OK? Their ancestors were slaves and they do OK. Of course, they’re willing to work. One of my fellow instructors at IBM was from Jamaica and he worked his butt off.
Denny, I, too, am a spelling genius. But I can’t punctuate for shit.
I’m also old enough that I was taught to memorize how words were spelt and my times tables and when I was in high school calculators were forbidden. I find that good spellers pay attention to detail in other endeavours as well as spelling.
Come on guys, you’re not saving any time by omitting the ‘u’ in colour, valour, honour, et al. Why don’t you join every other English speaking country and put it back in?
Same reason we don’t use the metric system — it’s too easy. We Love Canada
Sergio, I use English/Imperial units for three reasons. First of all, Pierre effing Trudeau (our version of Obama) imposed it on Canada even though our greatest trading partner is and will always be the USA. Trudeau tried to destroy every link between Canada and Britain including how we buy our meat, gas and beer.
Second, you’re absolutely right, metric is too easy, it was designed for idiots who can only multiply or divide by 10. Using English measurements you have to multiply by 16 for ounces to pounds, 12 for inches to feet, 14.7psia per atmosphere, 5,280feet per statute mile and know that 1/16″ equals .0625″ etc.
Third, why the f#^k should the French be in charge of how the world measures everything?
Because, of course, all white surrender flags should be the same size.
Are you around, Prosper?
A spelling test was given to the negro quarterback who was failing, and if he got the correct answer, he could play.
Spell COFFEE, and even if you get only one letter correctly, I will pass you and you can play.
He failed!
Guess how he spelled it?
,,,
,,,
,,,
kauphy
A+ But I went to school back when we actually learned something. Yeah, I’m old.
A+ for me. I am in my 60s so there was no spell checker back when I was in school. We had to learn our times tables by heart. No calculators for us.
Dere Dennney; I tooked that speling test yoo refreenced on yore blogg.
I skored an A+, cuz i spelt all them funney werds good.
So wy iz it thet I em uenmployed an cant seem to find a jawb.
I voded for obamma an he prommissed me a new car an a sell
fone. So far all I gots is a cheep sell fone thets onliest valu is thet I dosnt haff to pay fer it.
Whut can yoo do to rectumfind this sadd sittyuashun?
Whah don’ yall tries gettin’ inta collidge awn uh baskuhmeball skahloship?
I too got a surprising “A+” on the spelling test in spite of the fact that it wouldn’t allow me to pencil-in the correct answer for number 8. It should have been “F-a-g-g-o-t” – Didn’t anyone else notice the 2 homos pictured above the sentence? I just E-Mailed Denny with that question too.
Yup , I’m an old guy , got an A+ , & looked at that stupid -ass pic , ” Valentine’s day ” ?? —– another Asshole trying to insert their queer shit into the mainstream like it’s ” normal ” —– some days I’d just like to take a two-by-four & get down to business on these morons .
The question was written as “Valentines day.” It should have been “Valentine’s Day.” (Or “St. Valentine’s Day,” if you want to be pedantic about it.)
A+. That’s because of two things – I went to school back in the Dark Ages, when there was actually some achievement expected from the students, and I read voraciously when I was a kid (still do when I have the time).
Schools today are pitiful. The first year of college is now actually remedial high school, where they have to bring the students up to speed on math and English.
And as long as I am ranting, as regards Trayvon’s girlfriend, I don’t think the problem was that she couldn’t read cursive. I’d bet even money that she couldn’t read – period.
Oh, another thing. After taking this spelling test I went over to Curmudgeonly & Skeptical’s blog site and found another test. This one was from Pew Research (http://www.pewresearch.org/quiz/the-news-iq-quiz/) “The News IQ Quiz – What do you know about the news?”
I did good on that one too with 11 out of 12 correct. I only missed the loaded/manipulated figures on question 7 and if I had a choice on question 9, above the only 4 offered, I would have missed that one too since I was thinking of how many of the 12 didn’t have balls.
Aced that as well. If you look at the results of that test by population you can understand why this country is in the shape it is in.
Missed one over there, and aced yours. Every one who reads my stuff knows I cannot spell for shit. I tailor my written language to compensate for my dyslexia.
Aced it. Wish my tests in high school and college had been this easy
A +. I didn’t learn English at school but by immersion at the age of 25. I probably know how to spell because I’m a voracious reader. Apart from French, I read British, Canuck and American. It can be confusing but it’s never dull!
A+ but this Kiwi had to cheat and leave out the ‘u’ in ‘neighbor’. I’m in my 60s and had all the basics drummed into me at school too.
A+ here too – love this one:
Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.
Another A+ here, and also older than dirt and went to school when it was for education, not indoctrination.
Something I have long advocated for is that spelling and grammar should count in EVERY SUBJECT. In other words, the paper you turn in for History class is checked for spelling and grammar along with content. Sadly, this is not the case, not least because the teachers can’t spell any better than the kids.
Back in about 1980, one of my daughters gave me a paper to look at for her Creative Writing class. The story content was okay, reasonably logical and consistent.
The spelling and grammar was atrocious and I bled all over it. She was pissed and turned the original paper in unchanged. SHE GOT AN “A”, COMPLETE WITH A PAT ON THE BACK FOR HAVING A GREAT IMAGINATION!
That’s when I knew we were doomed.
Yes, I agree that spelling and grammar should count. I took a Human A & P course a few years ago at a local college and my professor was an adjunct – a retired scientist who had researched vector-borne diseases at the CDC for 30 years. He was an excellent teacher; all his tests were fill-in-the-blanks, and spelling counted! As you can imagine, much of our anatomy and physiology terminology was difficult to spell correctly and most of my classmates hated it. I ended up being the only student of his to get 100% on every test, so naturally, most of my classmates ended up hating me, too. Oh well –
About four years after becoming an instructor with IBM, my manager had me assemble and summarize the monthly activity reports that all of the instructors had to submit to him and he had to submit to his manager. One of the reasons was because of my proficiency in grammar and spelling. This was before PC’s but the mainframe operating system (VM) we used to communicate with each other did have a spellcheck feature. Even so, I was appalled at the bad spelling that my fellow instructors used.
The original manager who hired me for the instructor job had blatant spelling issues. He was a Diversity (All Hail Diversity!) manager. We even gigged him on the opinion survey about that. The Spellcheck we used with VM was PROOF. You could even put it on a PF key or just type “Proof” on the command line and it would hilite all of the spelling errors. One of my fellow instructors changed his to say PRUF and joked that the reason our manager did not use PROOF was because he didn’t know how to spell it. He would type in “PRUF” and nothing would happen so he would figger that every thing was OK.
About two years before I retired, our 2nd line manager, who was a Diversity (All Hail Diversity!) manager retired and sent all of us a farewell letter. OMFG! It was deplorable! It was in freakin’ Ebonics! He mentioned “the hories of 9/11”. There were blatant misspelled words and this was written using Microsoft Word so there was a spellchecker. I remarked to some of my fellow programmers, “This is what you get when you lay off all of the secretaries.” An even average secretary could have cleaned up all of the mistakes and made it look professional.
That kind of hate is a good thing, Colleen.
One of my pet peeves is the incorrect use of the colon. Why? Because my 7th grade health teacher had our English teacher teach us the correct way when we were using it wrong on our assignments.
Wrong – Some people who are racist are:
Obungler
Moochelle
All Tawana Brawley Crown Heights Riots Freddie’s Fashion Mart Arson “Greek Homos” Sharpton
Eric “My people” Holder
Correct – Some people who are racists are as follows: (Or, Some of the following people are racists:)
Obungler
Moochelle
All Tawana Brawley Crown Heights Riots Freddie’s Fashion Mart Arson “Greek Homos” Sharpton
Eric “My people” Holder
Yeah. I know, it’s a nit, but from 7th grade on in the Webster Groves school system we were expected to know how to write and spell and it was drilled into us. It was assumed that all of us would be going on to college so they prepared us for it.
I don’t know about you but I use my colon for processing the remnants of yesterday’s dinner.
A+. It was far too easy.
A+ But, I’m terribly visually oriented and if the test were given orally ( instead of written) I probably would fail. Still have to look up spelling all the time when writing.
A+ – Did you catch the February/ Valentine’s picture? Two guys!
Sneaking it in at every opportunity.
I terminated the test when i saw that. Shame because I thought I was doing well
A+, but frankly, I’m surprised. I used to be an excellent speller (high school English teacher used to accuse me of cheating because I was always tied with Margie, smartest kid in class). Spellchecker has made me lazy.
I’m just under being older than dirt, but had the same rigorous learning experience.
How about using estimation? I am an engineer (notorious types for not spelling well) as are my two daughters. I was amazed as they went through high school that they had little ability for estimating if an answer was correct, instead relying on their calculators for the truth.
Wife is a fourth grade teacher. She hates what has happened to our education system and can’t wait to get out.
60+ and an A+.
I have to take Denny to task for an error in the post. Should be “an essay” not “a essay”. 🙂
I almost stopped the test when I got to the Valentine’s Day question. Ugh.
Bloody finger check. Just like Don Surber with his “teh” for “the”. I’ll correct in the post. Thanks!
Can’t resist a spelling test – also got them all correct. I really believe spelling is primary a visual skill rather than a verbal/linguistic skill. People with non-verbal learning disabilities are often excellent readers, but horrible spellers, and have trouble with mathematical concepts. The best spellers are not those who memorize all the spelling and phonics rules; rather, we have an almost photographic memory for words. Once we’ve seen a word a couple of times, we generally just know it from then on and can pull up a mental image of the word whenever needed. Anybody remember ‘antidisestablishmentarianism?’ lol
Yep, A+. Though, I’m positive I didn’t get them all right. I picked wrong for bellwether because it’s a word I pretty much never come across, and I’m fairly certain I have never used it myself until now.
I went to school in the 90s and early 00s, but my school emphasized spelling all the way through high school. We were still doing quizzes on spelling, vocabulary, word parts, etc. my junior year. Plus my dad tested my spelling, math, and science skills until I was well into middle school.
Spell check has spoiled me a bit; I’ve noticed my spelling ability has dulled somewhat the last few years, but I’m still pretty sharp.
That test was actually a lot trickier than I expected, because I would often second guess myself when I just had to pick an option out of several similar choices. Double consonants were the issue, really, since many correctly spelled words with double consonants in the middle just look weird. It would’ve been easier for me to simply type out the words correctly after hearing them said aloud.
I aced it but really it was much very easy..A+
My daughter took the test and intentionally made some incorrect choices. She got an A+.
I figure, since the gays were featured in Feb, it followed current liberal thinking in that everyone gets a trophy.
I got an A+ also, prolly cause it’s easier to pick them out of multiple choices.
How often do we see the (ahem) word “prolly” instead of “probably” in your writings?
I’ll spell “hypocrisy” for you.
I also use “figger” and “gonna” and other types of American slang so no, sorry, I don’t consider it hypocrisy. If I want to write correct formal American English I can, but this is a blog. And, I’ll spell “asshole” for you. GFY!
“If I want to write correct formal American English I can, but this is a blog.”
And yet:
“Those drills may have been tedious and boring but you would be surprised how much more intelligent one’s writing looks without misspelled words.”
No, I would not be surprised at all.
And your point is? Or are you just trying to be an asshole? If you are, you have succeeded. Once again. GFY!
Made me laugh, Denny! Most people who yammer about hypocrisy have no idea what the word really means. Anyway, he’s a loon and you gigged him well.
And he came back for more.