Lucky Dip

Useful Information No.15 Spelling

Spelling is difficult – but it is made easy by means of the assiduous use of a dictionary. To check spelling, a small dictionary is preferable to a large one, because the effort needed to handle and consult a large dictionary is likely to deter the user from consulting a dictionary at all.

Let’s face it: no one should be embarrassed by having to consult a dictionary to spell logorrhoea correctly. But how do you spell committment? Should it perhaps be commitment? People who like to spell correctly learn to recognize their weak spots; they build a mental collection of hazards: bouy or buoy, persuade or pursuade, persue or pursue, irresistible or irresistable.

Computer-based spell-checkers are useful too, but they conceal a pitfall: they check for the existence of words, and flag the presence of sets of characters that they don’t recognize as words (or names, acronyms, abbreviations and so on). So a spell-checker will accept stationary as correct when stationery is the word that the author should have used in the context. Other pairs of similarly spelled words that cause difficulty are:

• compliment and complement

• dependent and dependant

• lightning and lightening

• principle and principal

Does spelling matter? Yes. Incorrect spelling doesn’t usually get in the way of understanding. But it lowers the writer in the fastidious reader’s estimation, distracting from the point that the writer is hoping to make.