Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Words I wish I knew how to spell


Since I'm an editor, you may be under the mistaken impression that I'm a good speller. But historically, I'd whip through diagramming sentences on a sheet of notebook paper, but put me in front of that week's 2-page spread in the spelling workbook and I'd suddenly become completely uninterested. So I'm still a bad speller. But since I'm an editor,
a) all of my superiors not only have pristine spelling, my boss sometimes uses words I have to look up in the dictionary; and
b) if I ever misspell anything at any time, some one inevitably says, "you're an editor, you should be able to spell!" I always get picked for the spelling questions on Cranium. A bad spellers worst nightmare.

To that end, I have striven to become a better speller. Afterall, by my estimation, I type more than 12,000 words a day (2.5 hours a day typing at 82 words per minute). But there are some words I can never seem to get straight:


necessary - is it two Cs, one S; or one C, two eses? I can never remember
traveling - I'm sorry, but the rules of spelling dictate that a short vowel (the "e") should have a double-consonant after it if adding -ing. The British do it correctly...so why only one L? This baffles me.
occasionally - the only way I could get myself to remember that there were two Cs is to start to pronounce it in my head wrong: OCK-casionally. But since I type it more than I say it, I always want to say it wrong now.
Michael - the "a-e-l" just seems so unnatural. Every time I type it I have to say in my head "m-i-c-h-A-E-L!" I have to say it with an exclamation point, too (therefore, it always makes me happy to write it).
their - my fingers somehow started spelling their as "thier" all the time. I have to retype it the correct every time. But I've typed it wrong so many times, I'm never 100% sure how to write it when I'm writing longhand now.
Renaissance - ugh. there is no hope for me and this word
absorption - I actually totally know how to spell this word, but I always have to pause when writing it. I find the changing of the "b" in absorb into a "p" absorption to be awesome, and how often do you get to write "absorption"? When you do, take a moment to appreciate it.

3 comments:

Sarah G. said...

haha, this was a good one. i have spelling issues as well, a real downer when i realized it. i can't spell privilege. i always want to put a D in there, like FRIDGE.
as for absorption, another whole monkey wrench is that adsorb is also a word, and it's counterpart also changes the b to a p for 'adsorption'
on a similar thought, i think traces of dyslexia are popping out of me slowly when i'm writing. kind of a scary thought. am i mentally deteriorating?!?? prodably.

Anonymous said...

People should read this.

Stuart Shea said...

I can NEVER get the right spelling of traveling either. I want to add an extra 'l'.