Where have all the good spellers gone?
Is some unfortunate soul close to you suffering from a severe case of chronic misspelling? Someone in your office in need of a gentle be-aach slap across the keyboard, but you are not quite sure how to approach the situation without offending them? Well, what do you know? I just happened to have a guilt-free solution here with me today.
Here is a way to let the orthographically challenged know that the time has arrived to take charge of their disability and come right or scrawl off into obscurity.
Simply send the bumbling scribe in your life this article and I'll take the heat. Serious! Forward it from a fake email account; accidently attach it to a company wide memo; paint the offender's work station in 52 shades of rainbow with fluorescent post-it notes if you have to, but take action today. Do something to let the bad writers know that they are not only hurting you, the reader, but losing stacks of cold hard cash and stomping their credibility to dust with every error. But before you do, beware the wrath of the scorned tragedian ego, and prepare for triple-proofed-perfectly-spell-checked comebacks, and do not stand back in astonishment when people mistake your gentle nudge for a full fledged personal attack on their character. People seem to suffer from the delusion that their self worth is linked to the way they can, or can't spell. How can that be if we all had the same crappie education?
Conscientious writers don't let their reabers hit speed bumps half way through sentences.
I have had my fair share of boomerang typos and have more than just a few words that I keep getting wrong. Accomodating, consciusness, flourecent, accross, and complemnenting still obviously trips me up, but after 13 globe trotting years as a self-taught creative copywriter I have realised a very important fact. When a writer writes for cash, spelling becomes a matter of good finance and not rushed oversight.
Is some unfortunate soul close to you suffering from a severe case of chronic misspelling? Someone in your office in need of a gentle be-aach slap across the keyboard, but you are not quite sure how to approach the situation without offending them? Well, what do you know? I just happened to have a guilt-free solution here with me today.
Here is a way to let the orthographically challenged know that the time has arrived to take charge of their disability and come right or scrawl off into obscurity.
Simply send the bumbling scribe in your life this article and I'll take the heat. Serious! Forward it from a fake email account; accidently attach it to a company wide memo; paint the offender's work station in 52 shades of rainbow with fluorescent post-it notes if you have to, but take action today. Do something to let the bad writers know that they are not only hurting you, the reader, but losing stacks of cold hard cash and stomping their credibility to dust with every error. But before you do, beware the wrath of the scorned tragedian ego, and prepare for triple-proofed-perfectly-spell-checked comebacks, and do not stand back in astonishment when people mistake your gentle nudge for a full fledged personal attack on their character. People seem to suffer from the delusion that their self worth is linked to the way they can, or can't spell. How can that be if we all had the same crappie education?
Conscientious writers don't let their reabers hit speed bumps half way through sentences.
I have had my fair share of boomerang typos and have more than just a few words that I keep getting wrong. Accomodating, consciusness, flourecent, accross, and complemnenting still obviously trips me up, but after 13 globe trotting years as a self-taught creative copywriter I have realised a very important fact. When a writer writes for cash, spelling becomes a matter of good finance and not rushed oversight.
The first rule of Write Club is spellcheck your work. The second rule of Write Club is always spellcheck your freak'n work again.
Keep making stewpit mistakes and sooner or later your readers will treat you like a vegetable and simply pull the plug. It's a matter of mutually beneficial exchange. In return for useful information the reader gives the writer his time and full attention, and expects nothing but the same respect in return.
You do not need to be a good speller to be a good reader, but you have to be a good speller if you are going to be a great writer.
The solution is really simple and requires nothing but a little more good old-fashioned focused attention on the task at hand. I personally think that dramatically precise grammatical utterances are overrated and increasingly becoming redundant. I've made over 13 spelling mistakes in this article alone and you still seem to be reading.
These days we say things in device specific ways and shorter forms of snappy comprehension is not a bad thing. In a society where we are literally charged per character, fewer words = less cost to communicate, but like some nameless bright spark said: "you have to know the rules before you can break them".
If you write for long enough you will realise that nothing is ever written. It is rewritten and the only way to improve is apply ass your ass to a chair, and do not get up until you have bled ink on that blank page. If you experience physical discomfort and suffer mental anguish, you are doing it right.
Delete your spellchecker and ignore the red squiggles, but whatever you do, remember the 52 ways to slap a stewpit writer:
Due knot all ways rely on a spell Czech two due you're work four ewe. (I dare you to spell check this sentence.)
As an astute artist always avoid articulating alliterative utterances at all opportunities.
Clichés are like swatting flies with a sledge hammer, and believe it or not, should be avoided like a cow in an Indian shop.
Try to avoid abbrev. & ampersands, e.g., etc.
Don't ever not use contradictions. They're never unnecessary.
Exaggeration is the greatest evil by far and will surely doom you to eternal damnation in the lowest depths of Hell.
You should never try to shift my point of view without telling him in his writing.
Don't repeat yourself. It is redundant, severely unnecessary, uselessly obsolete and should be avoided
because of it's repetitiveness since it is superfluous.
Don't use no double negatives. Don't never use no triples nor quadruples neither.
Just between you and I, case is important.
One word sentences? Avoid.
Sentence fragments.
Never reveal everything you know.
Commas, are not, always, necessary.
Try to avoid split infinitives.
The passive tense is to be avoided.
Similes are like a snake with feathers, pointless.
Together easy, clauses should go.
One should never generalise. Ever!
What is the point of using rhetorical questions?
Profanity at the right moment is priceless but expensive when abused.
Eliminate quotations. As wonderful Waldo Emerson said: "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
Parenthesis (although helpful) can usually be avoided.
Do not use hyphens to connect all two-word phrases.
A verb need to agrees with the noun.
Don't verbify nouns.
A preposition should never be used to end sentences with.
Sarcasm in writing is good. Really.
One can use statistics to prove anything. Even 73% of 9 people know($) that.
only capitalize Proper Nouns and the beginnings of Sentences.
Don't contradict yourself in writing.
Contradictions can be used when desired.
Its important to put apostrophe's where necessary.
Do not actuate singular utterances to influence the persuasions of others because it becomes extrinsic,
extraneous, and incommodious to fathom.
Make sure the antecedent is modifies in it.
Always proofread to check for any missing .
Commas can be used to separate in lists multiple modifiers letter heads clause separations and such.
In writing; punctuation. should be double checked:
Make sure to acknowledge sources and help, as someone said.
Brevity is...wit.
Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
Poetry is the only time, when one should try to rhyme. In just regular prose, all it brings is reading woes.
Alas, Ye shouldeth always be in avoidance of olde English. Anon!
Overused adjectives aren't good.
Don't use made up words like kajillions. Automagically will expire soon.
Constantly using idioms can land an author in hot water with two birds, one stone and a pickle.
Foreign phrases should be avoided a outrance. Por vafor and shokran habibi.
Yo dog! Don't ya' be bustin no gansta holler, It don't be no language bro.
Alot of words are not one word, but two.
When used in writing, modifiers can be confusing.
Avoid run-on sentences through the use of punctuation as well as dividing the single sentence into a series of smaller sentences for the sake of the reader not having to read a really long sentence especially since such sentences become redundant and hard to understand.
It deos not mtaetr ni waht oerdr teh ltteres in a wrod are wtrietn baceuse the olny iproamtnt tihng to rebemmer is taht the frsit and the lsat ltteers be in the rghit pclae. The huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but erevy wrod as a wlohe.
Yala!
DF Bothma
Ghost Writer
Be Good. Be Grand. _e Gone.
Keep making stewpit mistakes and sooner or later your readers will treat you like a vegetable and simply pull the plug. It's a matter of mutually beneficial exchange. In return for useful information the reader gives the writer his time and full attention, and expects nothing but the same respect in return.
You do not need to be a good speller to be a good reader, but you have to be a good speller if you are going to be a great writer.
The solution is really simple and requires nothing but a little more good old-fashioned focused attention on the task at hand. I personally think that dramatically precise grammatical utterances are overrated and increasingly becoming redundant. I've made over 13 spelling mistakes in this article alone and you still seem to be reading.
These days we say things in device specific ways and shorter forms of snappy comprehension is not a bad thing. In a society where we are literally charged per character, fewer words = less cost to communicate, but like some nameless bright spark said: "you have to know the rules before you can break them".
If you write for long enough you will realise that nothing is ever written. It is rewritten and the only way to improve is apply ass your ass to a chair, and do not get up until you have bled ink on that blank page. If you experience physical discomfort and suffer mental anguish, you are doing it right.
Delete your spellchecker and ignore the red squiggles, but whatever you do, remember the 52 ways to slap a stewpit writer:
Due knot all ways rely on a spell Czech two due you're work four ewe. (I dare you to spell check this sentence.)
As an astute artist always avoid articulating alliterative utterances at all opportunities.
Clichés are like swatting flies with a sledge hammer, and believe it or not, should be avoided like a cow in an Indian shop.
Try to avoid abbrev. & ampersands, e.g., etc.
Don't ever not use contradictions. They're never unnecessary.
Exaggeration is the greatest evil by far and will surely doom you to eternal damnation in the lowest depths of Hell.
You should never try to shift my point of view without telling him in his writing.
Don't repeat yourself. It is redundant, severely unnecessary, uselessly obsolete and should be avoided
because of it's repetitiveness since it is superfluous.
Don't use no double negatives. Don't never use no triples nor quadruples neither.
Just between you and I, case is important.
One word sentences? Avoid.
Sentence fragments.
Never reveal everything you know.
Commas, are not, always, necessary.
Try to avoid split infinitives.
The passive tense is to be avoided.
Similes are like a snake with feathers, pointless.
Together easy, clauses should go.
One should never generalise. Ever!
What is the point of using rhetorical questions?
Profanity at the right moment is priceless but expensive when abused.
Eliminate quotations. As wonderful Waldo Emerson said: "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
Parenthesis (although helpful) can usually be avoided.
Do not use hyphens to connect all two-word phrases.
A verb need to agrees with the noun.
Don't verbify nouns.
A preposition should never be used to end sentences with.
Sarcasm in writing is good. Really.
One can use statistics to prove anything. Even 73% of 9 people know($) that.
only capitalize Proper Nouns and the beginnings of Sentences.
Don't contradict yourself in writing.
Contradictions can be used when desired.
Its important to put apostrophe's where necessary.
Do not actuate singular utterances to influence the persuasions of others because it becomes extrinsic,
extraneous, and incommodious to fathom.
Make sure the antecedent is modifies in it.
Always proofread to check for any missing .
Commas can be used to separate in lists multiple modifiers letter heads clause separations and such.
In writing; punctuation. should be double checked:
Make sure to acknowledge sources and help, as someone said.
Brevity is...wit.
Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
Poetry is the only time, when one should try to rhyme. In just regular prose, all it brings is reading woes.
Alas, Ye shouldeth always be in avoidance of olde English. Anon!
Overused adjectives aren't good.
Don't use made up words like kajillions. Automagically will expire soon.
Constantly using idioms can land an author in hot water with two birds, one stone and a pickle.
Foreign phrases should be avoided a outrance. Por vafor and shokran habibi.
Yo dog! Don't ya' be bustin no gansta holler, It don't be no language bro.
Alot of words are not one word, but two.
When used in writing, modifiers can be confusing.
Avoid run-on sentences through the use of punctuation as well as dividing the single sentence into a series of smaller sentences for the sake of the reader not having to read a really long sentence especially since such sentences become redundant and hard to understand.
It deos not mtaetr ni waht oerdr teh ltteres in a wrod are wtrietn baceuse the olny iproamtnt tihng to rebemmer is taht the frsit and the lsat ltteers be in the rghit pclae. The huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but erevy wrod as a wlohe.
Yala!
DF Bothma
Ghost Writer
Be Good. Be Grand. _e Gone.
