Spelling is a bug-bear for many of us, and for today’s SoapBox, David has gotten himself into a lather about the breakdown of British society, as reflected in the generally decreasing standards of punctuation.
For those of you wondering about the cryptic blackboard writing, do have a look at David’s column over at The Guardian: It just goes to show, you can’t be too careful…
Enjoy the SoapBox and do leave your comments for David to read below.
Well i am very nervous now as i am one you will be judgeing as my spelling is not one of my strong points. Maybe David you would be kind enough to teach me? And yet again you have done an excellent episode i look forward to these every week. Take care xxxx. IJGTSYCBTC!
Is the misused comma in the blackboard phrase there to be ironic? Let’s hope so.
I agree totally, my bug bear is people who write your instead of you’re, and strangely, my boyfriend who writes your instead of you’ll. There are so many more!
I will admit that unfortunately this is my least favourite episode so far. this is becasue i disagree with him almost completely. in my mind if you want a good philosophy on language and spelling listen to stephen frys podgram series 2 episode 3 entitled language. i agree with fry’s thoughts almost entirely, for those that cant be bothered to listen or dont trust me i will breifly summarise his thoughts. basiclly he says as long as there is pleasure and beauty in writing and language then whether it comes perfectly spelt or not does not matter. he does however recognise the fact that for job applications or exams etc he says you should take care and ’smarten’ your language up so as not to show you dont care. in summary a disappointment in this episode and i think mitchell needs to abandon his belief in how things should be done just because he conforms and appreciate good writing and language for what it is.
Very much enjoyed this weeks rant David, as always, though I must confess this topic is a prickly one for me.
Due to illness I missed a good deal of my early education, which left me with gaps in my grammer skills. As I was determined not to be left behind by my peers I did my best to try and fill in the blanks (the fact that my mum had been a teacher, and developed in me a love of reading from a very young age, probably had a good deal to do with it!) but my spelling is far from perfect, I still struggle with where to put commas and apostrophes, and I probably couldn’t tell you the difference between a noun and a verb if my life depended on it?!
Despite, or perhaps because these things don’t come easily for me I appreciate correct spelling/grammar when I see it, and slightly despair when I don’t. Now even the most educated will make mistakes, but some folks seem to have given up using Capital letters, or seperating their sentences all together. If I can make an effort, why can’t others who have had the privilage of a full education?
I think it falls under the catagory of “use it or lose it”, if we don’t foster these skills they will go the way of the Dodo… I guess it just goes to show you can’t be too careful! 
“Incentivised”? Really?
You should try spelling in Dutch, it’s horrid.
I am Dutch and always have been, yet I find English spelling easier than Dutch spelling. Bloody d’s and t’s and word combinations. And I’m a writer, which makes it even worse when I mess up (yup, “when”, not ” if”).
Marvellous panellist; didn’t even have to look that up ;).
How about the folks that use letters and numbers to stand for words? Or is that so far out of line that they have dropped off the grid?
Thanks, David and John!
Kick they’re f*****g thick nuts in Dave!
I love this - it is surprising how widespread the problem is, too. It still amazes me every time that as a German, I have to tell my fellow readers and lecturers at University (!) that “Deer colleges, I feel quiet well today, see you latter and please bring your camera’s” is just not acceptable if you TEACH PEOPLE!
I saw a misspelling at bbc.com a few days ago. What is the world coming to?
May I gloat over the fact that I also know how to spell certain words both the British and American ways? Color/Colour…Favorite/Favourite…Tire/Tyre…etc
it just goes to show you can’t be too careful.
I hope that that comma was misused deliberately for irony; it really should be a semicolon.
“The Squiggly Red Gods of Microsoft Word”, LOL! Which reminds me: one of these websites where you can post comments doesn’t like the way I spell “can’t”. But I can’t remember which.
So am I being judged, David? Please be gentle. I’m an American.
LOL DATS REYT FUNNI LIEK XDDDD EHS REYT GUD INT HE LOL I LYKED HIM ON DAT PROGRM WIV THAT UVA BLOKE TOO CALLED WEBB OR SUMAT XD ^___^
txt spk hs a lt 2 ansa 4
This is so funny. I’ve watched it several times and it’s still making me laugh. Sadly, I think that is because I can relate to it just a little bit too closely.
Stells x
I’m not surprised Dan H disagrees. He is quite clearly exactly the kind of moron David M was talking about (I’m referring of course to all the linguistic errors in that brief paragraph that Dan was blissfully unaware of). Yes I left a dangling preposition there (I think they’re ok, Winston Churchill agreed), but like DM it’s not pedantry that gets on my nerves, it’s the ‘why does it matter’ fuckwits. It matters because language and thought are inextricably connected. If you don’t understand that ‘definitely’ is not spelt ‘definately’ then you don’t fully understand the meaning of the word, with its root ‘finite’, and its relationship with the rest of the language. I could go on for hours. If Dan H is the future we’re all fucked.
Couldn’t disagree with David more. If well all had that attuituted we’d all be speaking old English or some pre-historic African language.
Did the a Cromagnon caveman look look at a cave painting and go well your drawn that antelope all wrong the body’s too thin and the antler’s at the wrong angle I judge you to be be inferior , No he would have looked at and gone it’s a an antelope .
When the fist Mnemonic symbols were written did some one like pedant say but it looks nothing like An antelope. My personnel bug bear is the apostrophe if you can’t tell it’s meaning by the context then you really are stupid I went to a school call City boys how thick do you have to be not not realize it’s a school for boys not made of or owned by boys.
I have great deal of difficulty writing and spelling because i’m a severely Dyslexic if you judge me on my spelling, ( spell checks are a god send) punctuation or repeating word’s, You might as well Judge me for not walking properly because my left leg was amputated above the knee 25 years ago. My smug satisfaction is knowing i’m not a git.
i agree with the guy up there listen to stephen frys podgram on language anybody who cares that much about it truly is a pathetic excuse for a loser disagree if you like but i really dont care
i left out caps and punctuation just to annoy you pathetic people.
I’m an English teacher and have to say that I could prove 100 times over EVERY DAY that what David is on about is perfectly true.
Commonly misspelled words in my lessons:
Sum (some) e.g. he gave her sum beans
Exited (excited) e.g. Romeo was exited when he first saw Juliet.
Alot (a lot/many) e.g. there are alot of metaphors in this poem
Wierd (weird) e.g. it was a wierd class and the teacher was wierd
Should I be worrying about the fact that these misspellings are some oversight on my part? No, of course not. I correct them every time. They’re just lazy. I blame MSN.
The amount of things people don’t know. Like the difference between ‘your’ and ‘you’re’. I really hate reading something saying ‘your welcome’. It irks me. I mean, I picked most of this stuff up reading and I wouldn’t say I was all that clever, but is the correct placement of the apostrophe SO VERY difficult to learn?
And now when you watch tv, you see huge captions with “too” written, when it should be “to”. People are really lazy.
ewe shod all weighs ewes ay spellchecker 
I will be the first to admit. My spelling is not great. I often confuse my spellings of words like their and where etc. However I do get annoyed when people just don’t try. That and people who use ‘z’ in place of ’s’. Its just wrong.
Do an episode on netspeak. You know, textspeakk on the net. The extra “k” is nut due to a spelling error but I have OCD. Actual OCD not the whingy celecrity kind.
Spelling is important to me (in spite of not actually always being able to spell accurately myself). I’m anal about capitals and split infinitives and not using the passive and saying fewer instead of less than, and first instead of firstly..I could go on here…but in fear of boring people I will reign myself in.
I simply cannot understand people who don’t know the difference between a noun and a verb. I learnt that when I was eleven years old, which is some time ago. I remember it clearly. How could I forget? It’s ingrained in me.
That’s what drives me insane. How can people not know what is an adjective and what is an adverb? Or a preposition?
I also find myself being irritated by people who can’t spell, though I try to be tolerant. We can’t all be good at the same things. English was my best subject at school, but Art was a nightmare. I simply cannot draw. However, I’ve managed to get by in life without any drawing ability. On the whole, I’d rather be able to spell.
As someone who’s just finished an English Language A level I fell it’s necessary to concur with Mr Mitchell. Just look at how awful communication was before standardisation. All praise to Caxton and Johnson.
What a brilliant episode. Besides making me laugh, just like the other episodes, I was delighted to hear Mitchell confess to being ’secretly judgemental’. I wonder how many of us would actually profess fitting this category? I certainly agree, because paying attention to how you write things shows how much you care to put an effort into it. I am tolerant of grammatical or spelling errors if I know that it’s done to someones best ability (e.g. someone learning English), but if it’s due to laziness (especially by native speakers) I can’t help but judge or at least get disappointed.
He’s also right on one more point; the people who struggle probably care more sometimes. As someone with dyslexia, and English being my third language, I think I’m a good example. I get it wrong, a lot, but I try and always correct my mistakes. I care.
“It just goes to show you can’t be too careful!”
Isn’t he saying that he doesn’t mind people who can’t spell well because you can always check your spelling and fix it but that he doesn’t like people who just don’t care about writing properly?
He’s not saying kill all dyslexics, he’s saying care about writing.
gokuminkey’s posting is a perfect example of why good language skills are important. It took me about five times as long to read as it would have if it had been correctly spelled and punctuated. In several places I had to go back and guess what the author meant to write in order to understand it. I accept that this person is dyslexic and has a good excuse, but this text does prove that badly written English is difficult read, thus disproving his or her own point.
Well done David, my thoughts precisely.
There’s only so many times you can tell people you’ve never met and don’t have any real interest in getting to know which version of the word ‘your’ they should have used in their (there’s another one) last post before simply deciding that the task of educating the masses is ultimatly futile and you have to take to the roof of a large building with a sniper rifle. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that when the apocalypse arrives, it won’t be fire and brimstone but English language lecturers who have finally decided that enough’s enough.