Sit a Spell

         I used to love Spelling Bees.  Now the only ones I hear about are the national ones, where kids spell words like the one Norman Rockwell painted, called “Cousin Reginald Spells Peloponnesus.”

          But I have another complaint about spelling. It’s that there is no good way to spell certain things, without spelling something else. For example:

            1.      If you garden, you can be called a gardener. If you act, you can be        called an actor. But what if you sew?  Aha!  No one wants to be described as a sewer, especially in print.

            2.     As a writer, I often alert publications that this is a multiple submission. But when another writer asked me if I submit multiple-ly, I realized the only spelling of this could be multiply, and that means something else entirely. (And I do try to avoid multiplying.)

3.     Let’s say you accidentally got a cut on your finger and now you’re going to put medicine on it and a bandage.  You don’t want the one that stings, so you say to your spouse, “I want the less sting-y one.” Again, that would probably be spelled stingy, and now we’re totally off topic. 

4.     What if you’re doing a big assembly line to wrap toys for a charity? One person can be the wrapper (but that means something else), another the taper? Nope; a taper is a candle, or a verb for slimming one's pant legs. Tapist? Tape Specialist? Tape Manager? Better sign up to stick the bows on.  Oh, wait. A bower is also something else. So is a boxer.

And don't even get me started on the words "singer" and "flower."

HOWEVER, no such problems exist in my books—check ‘em out here.

A Fainting Spell

          I don’t know if you’ve ever been invited to a piano rectal, but it’s sure to be more interesting than one without accompaniment, no?

          Misspellings abound.  And we all make them (come on, admit to the occasional typo, at least).  But I am always perplexed when they occur after several sets of eyes have seen the wording.  

          Think about it—how many people have to approve a printed program, an invitation, a public sign?  You have the creator, their friends, the company producing the printed item, the painter perhaps—at least a dozen people.  And yet you see misspellings everywhere.   Even the word misspell gets misspelled.

          

          Just driving around the Sacramento area where I live, I’ve seen two such slip-ups this week.  The first is this street sign:

          Lest you think both signs are wrong—one for ocelot and one for suave-- I must tell you that this is wine country and soave is an Italian white wine that’s pronounced So-Ah-Ve, so I’m going to give them a pass on that one.  But oselot?  No such word and no such animal.  And we can only put just so much blame on the school system—I fault the developers here.  Who in their right mind wants to live on a misnamed street?

          The next blatant error was on the side of a truck.  Apparently they cannot even spell the very thing they rent.  Nor can the truck painters.  In case this is too small for you to read, it says, "Equiptment Rental."

          I’m thinking I might attend that piano rectal, after all.  Why should the child be punished for the carelessness of an adult who made up the invitations?  Just as I was happy to attend a Boy Scout Court of Honor where a poem called “The Uninformed Boy” was front and center on the program.  The boys were sitting there in their uniforms, and it was someone else entirely who was uninformed.

If you love words, you’ll love Sisters in the Mix, in which one of my characters takes grammar and spelling just a pinch too far.