On 2/21/09 8:47 AM, "lucretia borgia" wrote:

On Sat, 21 Feb 2009 08:39:16 -0500, "lucille"
opined:


"biig" wrote in message
...

Our village library is staffed totally by volunteers and last
week were delighted to have a nice young woman come in offering her
services....until we asked her to shelve some books, alphabetically by
author's last name.....she didn't know her alphabet......Sharon in Canada


I'm a firm believer in the fact that some very intelligent people can't
spell and that it doesn't have a lot to do with their level of education,
their ability to read and comprehend what they read, or their IQ.

Nonetheless, a resume full of spelling errors will not be impressive
and heaven only knows, it doesn't take much to learn to spell. The
reverse is also true, I looked twice at a person who said very little
but presented a beautifully written piece of work.

Very true. But some people, regardless of intellectual capability, do have
issues that interfere with their ability to spell. My DB is dyslexic, not
very, but was constantly doing poorly in spelling when in elementary school,
finally they figured out the dyslexia, and he got some special counseling to
work with it. Essentially, they (teachers) told my parents that when he
grows up and has a job - he'll have a secretary to fix his spelling. And
it's true. He's very bright, and quite capable in his field, as a litigator
who also consults (his clients - other lawyers for the most part). At the
same time, he knows enough to be sure that his documents are thoroughly
checked.

Having been caught myself with stupid typos in a resume, I hate that. Now I
go back and check the dictionary in WORD to remove any misspelled words that
may have been accepted in error.

If you are really intelligent surely you know how people regard sloppy
work and you are intelligent enough to learn to spell, now, if not in
school. That's what I meant originally, kids are told the piece is
okay (in spite of the errors because we mustn't damage their egos by
saying they made mistakes) so they leave school certain they are
perfect and can't believe others do not see them that way.

See above. All of our god kids learned to spell, and their parents work
through it with them, I know lots of young children that seem to have fun
learning to spell. OTOH, I'm one of those people that does spell well,
always did, and was always the spelling bee kid (even if my DM wouldn't let
me go to nationals 'cause I was too young). It's pretty said to assume
that all kids are told "it's okay" when turning in a paper with spelling and
grammar errors. I think that is more likely an issue specific to different
areas, school boards, etc. I've heard plenty of whining from the 14 year
old god daughter about her paper getting marked down for sloppiness, poor
grammar, etc. But, I'm sure it happens as you say.

It's the whole thinking and presenting ideas in a clear format that IME
seems to be missing in the education through high school. I can remember
teaching thermo, and for the first half the term, letting kids redo their
homework because it was so poorly presented, unclear, couldn't follow their
work - which meant in those kind of problems there was no way to give
partial credit, or see where they went wrong. And this is a junior class,
not a freshman one - but primarily with kids taking it early - as sophmores
- they hadn't really been thru a basic engineering class that required them
to present things in a structured, clear, manner. Chemistry usually does
that. And English with grammar used to, but who knows any more. It was
astonishing to me to be explaining the reason to have your work be legible,
logically constructed, and....in ink (so you cross out the error, don't
erase - let's the back-tracking be seen for info as you work). I'd let them
turn the homework back at the next class - and usually that was done.

Ah, well - we're such sticklers.

Ellice