I love songs that have spelling in them. Obviously Aretha’s classic, that I used for my story title. Or Gwen Stefani’s song “Hollaback Girl” where she sings “this shit is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S.” Or the song from the musical The Most Happy Fella about a Texan character who is from “Big D, little A, double L, A, S.” And of course the Radcliffe College fight song, R-A-D-C-L-I-F-F-E. Here’s a clip of the fight song.
Proper spelling has always come naturally to me, and I'm happy that I was able to pass that trait on to my children.
I’m sure you can think of others, so feel free to write them in the comments.
Proper spelling has come naturally to me for as long as I can remember. I don’t think I was explicitly taught by my parents that spelling was important, but I must have absorbed it from them. I do remember if I ever asked either of them how to spell a word, they would tell me to look in the dictionary. This seemed a little counterintuitive – if you didn’t know how to spell a word, how would you find it? If you were looking for pneumonia, and didn’t know it started with a P, or mnemonic, and didn’t know it started with an M, you could spend hours poring over the N section of the dictionary and never find either one of those words. But of course it’s usually letters in the middle or at the end that are in doubt, in which case it’s not that hard to find the answer. So I learned to consult the dictionary instead of asking, but as I got older it became necessary less and less often.
Everyone in my family was a good speller. So it never occurred to me that one could write words any old way if you didn’t know how to spell them (is that phonics?). That would have been incomprehensible. Moreover, when I look at a word, I can immediately see whether it is spelled correctly or not. If I ever have any doubt when I am thinking about a word, I just write it down, and then I can tell if it looks right or if I need to try a different spelling.
The fact that I always notice if words are misspelled can be a curse as much as a blessing. Seeing words that are spelled wrong drives me crazy. If I’m reading a book, or an article, or even an email, and there is a misspelling, it distracts me so much that I can hardly pay attention to the content.
A college classmate was posting on our class Facebook page, trying to figure out the chronology of when various things happened our freshman year for a book he is writing. He posted this calendar of 1968 hoping it would jog people’s memories. All I could see was that September was spelled wrong, and it made me scream! Of course I had to comment on that, ignoring his underlying question.
Just today I saw a very moving post about all the members of the SF Men’s Chorus who had died of AIDS, but I could only focus on the way they had spelled the name of the city – “San Fransisco” – so I commented there too. Maybe nobody else notices these things, although when I comment on misspellings, I generally get several “likes” and so far nobody has told me I’m annoying.
I was once reading a newly-published novel by Faye Kellerman, a famous mystery writer, which was so full of misspellings that I started writing them all down. I wondered how they could possibly have gotten past all the proofreaders and editors at one of the big publishing houses. I sent her an email saying I thought you might want to know about all these errors so you can correct them before it goes to paperback. I listed a few of them and said I would send her the rest if she was interested. She wrote back a very terse note saying that she had her own copy editors, thank you very much, who would take care of any errors by themselves, and she didn’t need my help. She signed it FK. At first I thought the FK was her way of saying “f**k you” but then I realized it was just her initials. Still, it discouraged me from writing to other authors, even though I often find errors in the books I read.
I am happy that I passed my good spelling genes on to my children. My sister once sent an email to my oldest daughter, Sabrina, who was living in England at the time, about some important family issue that needed an immediate answer. When Sabrina didn’t respond for several days, my sister asked me to prod her. It turned out that Sabrina had deleted the email unread, because there was a spelling error in the subject line, so she was sure it must be spam. It couldn’t be from anyone in our family! I had to tell my sister to send it again and be careful about her typing this time!
I don’t remember there being any spelling bees where I lived when I was young, although my research tells me that the National Spelling Bee has been around since 1925. Too bad, because I think I would have done really well. Sabrina won the class bee at her elementary school, but then refused to continue out of shyness, so the first runner-up got to compete in her stead at the next level. She probably would have made it all the way to Washington for the nationals, because not only is she an excellent speller, she has an ear for other languages and how their words are formed. My son, Ben, got as far as the regional bee, and he was one of the last dozen left, but went down on the word “bicaudate.” It seemed a simple enough word to me, sitting there in the audience, but he spelled the last syllable d-i-t-e instead of d-a-t-e. I think he knew as soon as the letters were out of his mouth, but it was too late to take them back. He was annoyed with himself, but not as upset as some of the other kids were when they were eliminated, because it wasn’t as if he had studied for it, the way everyone else had. He knew he didn’t need to study and could just get by on his innate spelling ability, and that was true . . . up to a point. Molly, my youngest, is a great speller too, and as an editor at both her high school and college newspapers spent much of her time correcting all the spelling errors in the other students’ articles.
When I was looking for a picture to use as my featured image, I found a Buzzfeed quiz called Are You A Spelling Genius? It said “only a spelling genius can get over 10 on this timed quiz!” So of course I had to take it. Seeing the timer going inexorably down on every question was a little anxiety-producing. Sometimes it asked which of the 4 choices was correct, and sometimes which of the 4 was wrong, so that made it a little tricky. But all the misspellings jumped out at me, so I got all 15 right with time to spare. Here’s the link, if you want to try your luck. Spelling Genius test
I conclude with a Retrospect confession. From the time I first started writing stories for this site, and discovered that I could edit other people’s comments on my stories, I have been correcting the spelling errors that people made. And now that I am an administrator, and have access to everything, I have been correcting spelling errors in the comments on everybody’s stories when I read them. I have refrained from correcting spelling errors in the actual stories of other people, although sometimes my fingers are just itching to do it! So if you ever want me to correct your spelling errors, let me know, and I will happily do so!
Suzy
Wow, Suzy, a true gift, friend. Or maybe curse. Depends how you view it. As you’ll see, this is an area where we diverge. I was not born with the spelling gene, but I do admire your ability. Yes, lots of misspelled words jump out at me, but just as often, in my own writing, I glide right past them, no matter how many times I proof read.
As for looking up difficult words in the dictionary, I immediately thought of a scene in “The Miracle Worker” where Annie Sullivan is doing just that (can’t think of the word off the top of my head), but it is a word that doesn’t sound like it’s spelled and she struggles to find it, just as you describe.
The English language is full of such traps so we had to memorize lots of spelling lists when we were kids. Reading and speaking proper English in one’s household helps, I’m sure. But how our brains function is also related. You have natural talent.
Thanks for reminding me of “The Miracle Worker.” Annie is trying to look up the word “discipline” and she doesn’t know there is a C in it. Great example!
That’s IT! Thanks for remembering, Suzy.
As someone who has been on the receiving end of some of your Retro spelling corrections, I can confirm your amazing abilities in this regard. And, even though I am not as good a speller as you are, I am sufficiently decent that seeing obvious misspellings, particularly in books and public documents, drives me a bit crazy too. (And over the last four years, Trump supporters must have broken all sorts of records with their misspellings — staring with calling their opponents “morans.”)
I’m also impressed that good spelling obviously runs in your family, and especially that it has been passed down to your children as well. So much for the myth that our children’s generation, due to auto-correct, laziness or rebelliousness, couldn’t be bothered to learn correct spelling. I particularly loved the story about Sabrina assuming a letter from your sister must be spam because it had a spelling error in it — and then deleting it unread. Talk about a spelling purist!
Thanks for sharing all these stories as well as being — and continuing to be — the editor/spelling corrector ne plus ultra for Retro!
p.s. And yes; I proofed this three times just to make sure there were no spelling errors in it except for “morans” (sic).
Well, despite your three proofreadings, there IS a misspelling in your comment, and I’m not talking about “morans.” It jumped right out at me. I’m not going to fix it though, because I want to find out if anyone else will even notice it.
OK; I’ve now got it, too. However, because I’m such a good sport, I won’t call it out and ruin this for everyone else. And let the public shaming begin….
I don’t want any public shaming. If someone shames you in a comment, I won’t approve it.
You are lucky to have the good spelling gene, Suzy. Spelling has more to do with how someone’s brain works than anything else. Check out the link in my story.
Thanks for your comment, Laurie. I will be sure to read your link this morning.
I was a spelling bee participant (and continue to be a spelling nerd). The furthest I went was in seventh grade when I made it to the state (Ohio) spelling bee. “Tenement” was my downfall–a word I had practiced many times, but “tenament” came out after a little hesitation. I think there might have been only two participants left when tenement came my way, but that part of the memory is a little dim.
Oh Mike, how sad that you didn’t win your state bee, when you surely should have. You should write this up as a story. And the ending should be that you became a housing activist when you grew up, because this experience made you determined that nobody should ever have to live in a tenement again! 🙂
Brava Suzy!
And yes please correct any spelling errors you find in my comments or stories – altho I do pride myself on not making them!
And I’m like you, I HATE when others make spelling or grammatical errors. In fact just yesterday I posted a short diatribe on FB telling friends not to say “please excuse typos” in their emails to me, but to fix them!
And Suzy, what about OKLAHOMA, O-K-L-A-H-O-M-A, OKLAHOMA OK?
Thank you, Dana, I don’t know how I could have forgotten Oklahoma! Such a great song and a great musical (although the plot is pretty silly, when you think about it).
Once you pointed out there was a spelling error (more like a typo) in John’s comment, I did find it (no shame, John). I, too, am dismayed by all the spelling errors I find in newspapers and books lately. Although FK claims she has copyeditors, even the premier publishers have laid most of them off and just use spell checkers–if they even bother at all. Very distressing. One of my clients thought they could replace me with Grammerly software. While the program is useful, the client asked me back in a few months. “Real” copyeditors fact check and consistency check as well as look for spelling and grammar issues. Let’s hope we aren’t a dying breed.
Marian, John’s error consisted of a correctly spelled word, just not the right word for the context. So yes, a typo, but aren’t typos a subset of spelling errors? And btw, Retro’s own Joan Matthews works as a copy editor, but she is freelance, not an employee of any publisher. Maybe that’s how they all do it these days, when they do it at all.
Yes many musical theatre plots are silly, but oh the songs and the music!
Whoa! I’m unable to discern a misspelled word in John’s comment–and like Mike, I’m a confirmed spelling champ–and am working up my submission related to it! Now that (being unable to find this one) really sets back my spelling self-esteem.
I really enjoyed this narrative, Suzy! I will add one of my favorite, country & western songs, and one that proved that Loretta Lynn (songwriter as well as performer) was bringing feminism to that genre way before others: “The only four letter word that you don’t know is L-O-V-E love!” (She also wrote one called D-I-V-O-R-C-E and that’s also iconic and boundary-breaking.)
Dale, thanks for those two additional songs with spelling in them. Country and western is a genre I’m not that familiar with, but I will check those out.
And if anyone else is following this song list, it turns out D-I-V-O-R-C-E was sung by Tammy Wynette, not Loretta Lynn.
Excellent story, Suzy…so much to love! I’m a naturally good speller as well and, as I’ve personally mentioned to you, that’s why I was so mortified by my misuse of “imminently” instead of “eminently” in my comment to John Shutkin a while back which gnawed at me to such an extent that I used my administrative powers to go in and correct it after the fact (and, in my mind, after he undoubtedly thought somewhat less of me). A little power is a dangerous…er, I mean a wonderful thing.
I love that our prompt makes it so clear that spelling has little to do with intelligence (or is it vice-versa) and that so many of our stories bear that out.
So how about “Encyclopedia,” sung by Jiminy Cricket about what to do with curiosity on the Mickey Mouse Club? “…it’s the e-n-c-y-c-l-o-p-e-d-i-a.”
I found John’s teensy error…methinks it’s more of a typo than a misspelling or the wrong word, which begs the question: is a typo a misspelling?
Thanks, Barb, glad you loved it.. We should ask whether John noticed your eminently/imminently error – or whether he even saw it, because you might have fixed it before he got to it.
I didn’t know the Jiminy Cricket song, but I just saw him sing it on youtube – in black and white! I guess that was before the Wonderful World of Color came along.
I would argue that a typo IS a misspelling. You can misspell a word for different reasons, and one of them is typing it incorrectly. Admittedly in John’s case, it is a word that is spelled right, but it is not the right word for the context, so as I said to Marian, it’s still a spelling error. While spell check might not catch it, my gmail program did, and underlined it when I pasted the sentence into an email.
I loved the story, especially your parents telling you to look it up in the dictionary. For me, the errors that catch my attention are not spelling errors, but factual errors. For example, an article might say that Ronald Reagan was president from 1980 to 1988. Actually, it was from January 20, 1981 to January 20, 1989. Other errors I have seen are in poorly written aviation books. For example, they have a picture of a DC-8, but call it a 707. Oh well, after four years of fake facts from Trump, maybe I should not expect more.
I once read a book that had the JFK assassination happen on a Thursday. I did write to that author about the error.
Great spelling adventure, Suzy. I’m intrigued by the notion suggested by all the crack spellers in your family. Is it possible that there’s some genetic proclivity that explains why so many of your family members have a talent for arranging cryptic little squiggles in a sequence that other sentient beings will understand? We are funny creatures.
Thanks, Charlie. I hope you listened to my audio clip of the Radcliffe fight song, since you probably never heard it in college.