Yes, good readers, it’s time for another Writing Mechanics Rant. Let the snarkage* begin!
My sister, a connoisseur of stupid ideas in education, posted this little bit of idiocy yesterday:
http://blog.coreknowledge.org/2009/12/28/a-n-a-c-h-r-o-n-i-s-m/
Okay, fine, it’s true. As a professional writer, I rarely face spelling tests in the traditional “list of words to be memorized” format.
On the other hand, as a professional writer, I face a different sort of spelling test every day of my life. Each word in every article, book chapter, and query letter I write must be spelled perfectly before I send it off to an editor. Yes, perfectly. Editors and literary agents have neither the time nor the patience to deal with even one word of awthentick speling. Spell just three or four words wrong in a query, and the editor will probably hit the delete key before you can utter “PhD in Educational Theory.” Time is too precious and writers too plentiful for editors and agents to bother with someone who can’t even spell.
Does this seem harsh? Possibly even demeaning to a would-be author’s fragile and delicate psyche? Welcome to the real world, into which all children will eventually be thrust. As opposed to the reel whirled, which a spell-check program might not catch. (Yes, I use spell check too. All writers need editors, and these days, canned electronic help is about all we can get.) A writer must know how to spell the right words at the right time. So must the average business executive, the occasional engineer, and most every educational professional.
Happily, I can spell fairly well. Why can I do that? Because as a child, I studied for and took a lot of spelling tests. It turns out that all that boring, inauthentic rote memorization stuck. And the information I memorized has in turn helped me in my adult life. Shocking!
* Yes Dad, I know that “snarkage” is not a real word. I reserve the right to break rules occasionally, when the situation warrants it and when I bloody well feel like it. I’z authentic like that.
