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!
HA! Good timing for me to find this post. I’ve spent the past hour or so scanning around WordPress for some new blogs to watch. I just passed on one when I saw on her “About” page that an ongoing interest of the author is writing about how music can illicit (sic) strong reactions in listeners. Rightly or (more probably) wrongly, seeing something like that makes me think a writer won’t offer much to interest me.
On the other hand, I like appropriate invented variations or uses of words. I heartily endorse “snarkage” as legitimate. I might be biased on that example, though– take a look at my email address!
Hank
By: hdjones on December 30, 2009
at 5:28 pm
Pleased to meet you, Hank. Snarkbit, eh? Hee! Do you have a snarky blog I should be following?
I’d love to listen to music that elicits illicit responses in people. Like you, that kind of mistake makes me less likely to read a writer’s work. I probably miss out on some interesting content that way, but…I am a snob. A grammar, spelling, and punctuation snob, like my father before me. (Or is it “as my father before me?”) On the other hand, I never met a language rule I didn’t want to break, which makes me quite different from dear Dad.
My next snark is already in the works…
Pampered Chef, my pinched nerves! How about renaming it Injured Chef for purposes of truth in adverising?
By: lizscott on December 30, 2009
at 7:28 pm
“Snarkage” sounds (and reads) just fine to me. New words are created all the time, and this is a good time for this particular one. Too bad for the edu folks out there, but English is just too irregular to permit spelling to be learned (learnt?) except largely by rote, alas. I think spelling bees still exist in some far corners of this great land. Your Father Before You.
By: FAH on December 31, 2009
at 1:04 pm