Spelling

Post Reply New Topic

Why you think Americans spell "colour" "color".
"centre" "center".

etc:-

http://www3.telus.net/linguisticsissues ... erican.htm

I went all the way to the state spelling bee in the capitol, representing my district, when I was in 5th grade.
Was a big deal for a small town girl, wherein I had one of those movie-like starry-eyed moments in the big city, seeing how far my smarts could take me...

I lost out on "impale" because the reader, like so many other Southernese people,
had a speech impediment involving hard vowels, so she pronounced it "impel".

I still can't hear/read either word, or think about the event in general without stimming.
I wanted another trophy, damnit.

I have to remind myself not to become irritated with people who are poor spellers, though my mother and I often send pictures to one another of misspelled signs outside businesses in commiseration about what we see as the disturbing lack of education in the world- some of these are outside schools, even. Still. I try to remind myself of my father, possibly the smartest person I know, and one who can't spell worth a darn.

I have no trouble with spelling or grammar. I've always been good with them, even from a young age. I think it's all the reading I do.

Taking a break from a research paper on women with Autism, and thought I'd duck in to share this:

"Baron-Cohen says that he believes that autistic girls are strong systemizers. That quality may manifest itself in letters rather than numbers."

"Contrary to the Asperger’s stereotype, Caitlyn struggles in math but tests in the highly gifted range in reading and writing. This is another sex difference that Lord sees among her patients. 'I don’t have any real data, but a lot of high-functioning girls are real readers — not great on subtleties, but they like fantasies and the ‘Baby-Sitters’ series,' she says. 'The boys are much less so.'"

"With her high aptitude for reading and writing and her difficulties with math, Caitlyn fits Skuse’s model. Even as she was failing school last year, she kept up her fan fiction, posting stories she had written on the Web site Gaia Online. On the 40-mile drive home from camp, she told me about her plan to write an original eight-book fantasy series about a werewolf, to be called 'Midnight Wind.'"

NYT: What Autistic Girls Are Made Of

It's five years old, and not about reading/spelling in particular, but it's long, and I thought it very interesting.
I've never found it before today- might post it in the women's section.

No, that's one thing that I'm good at doing. I've always been good at spelling different words. Language Arts was always one of my greatest strengths. It's math that I'm not good at.

Reading does not necessarily make spelling easier.

I read incessantly (always have) but trying to put the letters together in the correct combination is frustrating. This mystified my elementary teachers who could not make me put a book down (as reading was and still is one of my special interests). I can read a word 1000 times, but I cannot "see" it written. I do not know if this is because I see things in pictures, so that the written word is automatically put into a photograph of the meaning rather than a photograph of the page with the writing. The frustrating part of school was if I asked how to spell a word, I was told to look it up in a dictionary, but I could not find it in a dictionary because I did not know what order the letters were in, or what letters were in the word.

On the other hand, I won several contests in math and science. I have a very high intelligence and have taken more than a few graduate science courses because they are fun, but I cannot spell. It just depends on if something falls in my interest range. The irony is that spelling was the only subject I had to study in elementary school, and the lack of spelling test in junior high and up gave me great joy.

Just want to point out that I am very good at spelling always was even at school, its just certain words that catch me all the time. When reading offical letters, posts on here, newspapers etc a spelling mistake will stand out to me so clear I will always pick up on it. If I make a spelling mistake I will have to change it I could not send a post with one in it, if I do I will go back and edit it.

Keep a list of all the words you commonly misspell (your spelling and the correct spelling). Study the list and look for similar spelling errors, across multiple words. When you find those, study those words together in a group. You should be able to find and correct all of your spelling errors that way. It might take a bit of time, but its doable.

Thanks for advice Max000 will have a go!

I've always been very adept at spelling, and my VCI was by far (12-24 point margin) my highest WAIS subscore. These two things are probably related.

Somewhere between what I am thinking and what I want to say, the words gets lost and I misspell certain words. The bad thing is Outlook Express does not include spell check and it makes me look stupid to misspell certain words. If the site includes spell check I am ok, but if it doesn't - I have to go back one or two times until I get it right. Its frustrating.

Do you have a word processing program that has a spell check? If so, just copy and past your text three. Correct the spelling and copy and past it back to where you need it. If you don't have a text editor, then use an online spell check like this one, and do the same thing.

Add your own text and check the spelling

Also Google is a great spell check. If you are typing something and are not sure all the words are spelled correctly, simply copy the entire sentence and past it into a Google search bar. Google will give you "Showing results for..." with the corrected spelling.

I like languages like Romanian and Spanish that have phonetic spelling systems. They don't have spelling bees after maybe kindergarten because most sounds are represented by just one symbol (except in the case of the c in words like "cu" versus in "ce", but there is a reliable rule in place that, if a c comes before e or i, it is pronounced like "ch" in English--and, unlike in the case of English phonetic "rules", there are not exceptions to the Romanian phonetic spelling rules).

Its fʌn tu rayt In ay pi ey fənEɾIks, tu.

I've never had much trouble with spelling. It's one of my strengths and according to my WAIS result, I tested in the superior range. It could also be the reason why I like languages so much. I'm piss poor at Math though.

That is a pain in the ass - I have to much to say and so little time to say it...

Well, then I dono. I guess you could do what I do. Buy yourself a Mac, which has a very good spelling and grammar check built into the operating system.