🚀 go-pugleaf

It is no wonder that people who have trouble spelling don't want to
change.  The tools they have to help them spell are absolutely horrible.
Everybody says "use a spelling checker." or "use a dictionary, just don't
insult me with bad spelling."  But I don't agree, and I am a very good
speller.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about this subject, and my belief
is that people have trouble with specific CLASSES of spelling, not with
spelling in general.  That is, some people have difficulty with "ie"
vs. "ei", and they consistently have difficulty, no matter how many
times they look the words up in a dictionary or spelling checker.  You
just don't know which one is right, and you can't remember what the
rules are, if there are any.

In the "olden days", people were taught rules like "i before e except
after c."  It is amazing how many people still violate that simple
rule.  Perhaps because people feel it is silly to resort to nursery
rhymes to spell.  You're supposed to be INTELLIGENT enough to spell
well.  And, they are always told that there are so many exceptions to
the rule in English spelling and grammar that there's not point in
learning the rules, so they don't, and they flounder.

I think that people can learn to become good spellers.  It is not an
issue of being a poor speller and that is that, and "I don't feel like
using a spell-checker so you'll just have to put up with it."

It's not easy, but I think people need tools and rules to help them
learn, not just lookup tables.

For example, a VERY common class of spelling errors is the difference
between these two columnes of words (those that end in "nse" and those
that end in "nce"):

	avoidance	license
	finance		defense
	guidance	incense
	audience	expanse
	essence		expense
	sentence	suspense

Here are a few of them misspelled.  How many of us think that at least
some of these words "look right"?

	licence		essense
	suspence	defence		(I know, British spelling)
	lisence		expence

Those are difficult, but there may be a rule in there somewhere.  I can
certainly spell most of them right most of the time, but I'll bet you
that "license" is one of the most misspelled words.  As is "belief",
and a few other common ones.

Let's talk about how we learn the underlying rules, and how to help
people with them.  No matter how good a speller you are, you have a
weakness like this, and we could all benefit from this discussion.

Please, don't suggest that rules aren't worth learning because there
are exceptions to them.  You are just being silly.  There are
exceptions to the "i before e except after c" rule, but if everybody
blindly followed the rule and ignored the exceptions, they would be
right far more often than they are now.

Glenn Reid