Spelling Counts

Third in a series of occasional pieces about the wonder and beauty of the English Language.

Earlier this month, middle school English teacher and author Jessica Lahey published an article in The Atlantic magazine called “Does Spelling Count?”  Her answer arrested my attention.

Yes, Ms. Lahey writes, in her class spelling does count, but only because it also counts “out there” in the world of professionals and professors and admissions officers who, according to Lahey, are all too quick to evaluate written work based on superficial criteria rather than focusing on content: “Ideas should be judged on substance rather than appearances, but this is simply not how our world works. We live in a society where appearances matter, where . . . we are judged quickly and superficially.”

Lahey also writes that “In a perfect world, students might be judged by their ideas alone—not by whether they write “your” or “you’re.” But that’s not the world we live in.”

No, indeed, it is not the world we live in, and we should all be very, very grateful that we don’t. While I am glad that Lahey teaches grammar and spelling, I am intrigued by the reluctance with which she does so. She clearly believes that conventions of written communication such as spelling are concerned primarily with appearances, and she hopes her students will one day “grow up to be the people who can help the world embrace [a] vision of substance over style.”

But I believe Lahey offers a false dichotomy. She wishes to draw a distinction between writing conventions and written content, but can we really separate what we want to say from how we want to say it?  Lahey concludes: “I would love to promise [my students] that society will see past their flawed spelling, grammar, and diction to the ideas beneath.” My response: if students compose documents filled with errors in spelling, grammar, and diction, their readers will be unable to discern the ideas “beneath.”  In fact, I think ideas do not reside underneath expression at all; ideas reside within expression. The two are inseparable.

Because content and style are inseparable, we need conventional standards of writing. If an author wants her readers to understand what she is trying to say, then she and her intended audience need to be “speaking the same language,” if you will.  If my son John and I want to communicate in Morse Code, I can’t just “misspell” the dots and dashes in the hope that John will just overlook my stylistic quirks and still somehow get my meaning. This holds true for English as well.

Consider the excerpt above in which Lahey dismisses the importance of distinguishing between “you’re” and “your.”  The word “you’re” communicates “you are,” and the word “your” communicates “belonging to you.” If you intend one and write the other, your meaning becomes less clear. These are two different words, often confused yet both distinct and useful, so why not learn the difference between the two? This is not mere “style.”

I wonder if Lahey would make the same argument for all similar words in English?  If we dismiss the distinction between “affect” and “effect” (Lahey does), then why not also disregard the difference between “it’s” (“it is”) and “its” (“belonging to it”)? How about “there,” “their,” and “they’re”?  “Amity” and “enmity”?  “Personal” and “personnel”?  How far can we take this attitude before communication fails?  If I want to say “they’re your personal effects,” but I write “their you’re personnel affects,” then my idea, if not lost entirely, becomes much more difficult to discern.

To degrade how we communicate as mere superficial, frothy “style” to be distinguished from the real, solid substance “underneath” is to misunderstand the very nature of communication.  The world cannot judge individuals “on their ideas alone.”  There must exist a shared system through which ideas can be shaped, communicated, and understood. And we have a splendid system, the English Language. The richness of our vocabulary is matched only by the chaos of our spelling conventions.  I get it.  English is a complicated gift that requires time and energy to master.  With great freedom of expression, there comes great responsibility to pay attention.

So rather than toss aside fine distinctions, I say embrace them. Accept and Except! Precede and Proceed! Harbor your allusions and your illusions! Cite, site, and sight! Acquire them all!  Deploy them with joy and confidence!

But whatever you do, spell ’em right!  Because it really does count.

. . . And that is such a wonderful thing.

 

Read Jessica Lahey’s article “Does Spelling Count?”