Quotes about Spelling

I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.

You can't spell 'brothers' without at the same time spelling 'others.'

In 1963, when I assigned the name "quark" to the fundamental constituents of the nucleon, I had the sound first, without the spelling, which could have been "kwork." Then, in one of my occasional perusals of Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce, I came across the word "quark" in the phrase "Three quarks for Muster Mark." Since "quark" (meaning, for one thing, the cry of a gull) was clearly intended to rhyme with "Mark," as well as "bark" and other such words, I had to find an excuse to pronounce it as "kwork." But the book represents the dreams of a publican named Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker. Words in the text are typically drawn from several sources at once, like the "portmanteau words" in Through the Looking Glass. From time to time, phrases occur in the book that are partially determined by calls for drinks at the bar. I argued, therefore, that perhaps one of the multiple sources of the cry "Three quarks for Muster Mark" might be "Three quarts for Mister Mark," in which case the pronunciation "kwork" would not be totally unjustified. In any case, the number three fitted perfectly the way quarks occur in nature.

A kiss can be a comma, a question mark, or an exclamation point. That's the basic spelling that every woman ought to know.

We are so farre off from condemning any of their labours that traveiled before us in this kinds, either in this land or beyond sea, . . . that we acknowledge them to have been raised up of God, . . . and that they deserve to be had of us and of posteritie in everlasting remembrance. . . . Therefore blessed be they, and most honoured be their name, that breake the yce and give the onset upon that which helpeth forward to the saving of soules. Now what can be more available thereto, than to deliver Gods booke unto the Gods people in a tongue which they understand? . . . So if we, building upon their foundation that went before us, and being holpen by their labours, doe endeavor to make that better which they left so good; no man, we are sure, has cause to mis like us; they, we persuade ourselves, if they were alive, would thank us. For is the Kingdom of God become words or syllables? Why should we be in bondage to them if we may be free? [Some antique spelling is original; some is modernized. - Ed.]

As I have said before, I never had any large respect for good spelling. That is my feeling yet. Before the spelling-book came with its arbitrary forms, men unconsciously revealed shades of their characters, and also added enlightening shades of expression to what they wrote by their spelling, and so it is possible that the spelling-book has been a doubtful benevolence to us.

This morning arrives a letter from my ancient silver-mining comrade, Calvin H. Higbie, a man whom I have not seen nor had communication with for forty-four years. . . . [Footnote: Roughing It is dedicated to Higbie.] . . . I shall allow myself the privilege of copying his punctuation and his spelling, for to me they are a part of the man. He is as honest as the day is long. He is utterly simple-minded and straightforward, and his spelling and his punctuation are as simple and honest as he is himself. He makes no apology for them, and no apology is needed.

I have had an aversion to good spelling for sixty years and more, merely for the reason that when I was a boy there was not a thing I could do creditably except spell according to the book. It was a poor and mean distinction, and I early learned to disenjoy it. I suppose that this is because the ability to spell correctly is a talent, not an acquirement. There is some dignity about an acquirement, because it is a product of your own labor. It is wages earned, whereas to be able to do a thing merely by the grace of God, and not by your own effort, transfers the distinction to our heavenly home - where possibly it is a matter of pride and satisfaction, but it leaves you naked and bankrupt.

Original spelling. But Dulness sits at Helm, and in this Age, Governs on Councils, Pulpits, and the Stage: Here a dull Councellor ador'd we see, And there a Poet, duller yet than he, With beardless Bishop, dullest of the three, 'Tis dangerous to think - For who by thinking tempts his jealous Fate, Is straight arraign'd as Traytor to the State, And none that come within the Verge of Sense, Have to Preferment now the least Pretence. . . .

Abraham Lincoln tells somewhere that as a boy when he met an obscure or ambiguous sentence in his reading it threw him into a sort of rage. The fact is that this was simply a form of instinct for clear thinking which is found in every child and manifests itself abundantly to the perception of the good teacher. Far more important than any particular piece of knowledge, than geography or arithmetic or spelling, is this love of clearness in our mental life and instinctive hatred of confusion and obscurity. Let us learn to know what we know clearly and definitely, and also how we know it. The great intellectual need of men and women in the outer world is not so much more knowledge as it is better knowledge and better thinking. There is much philosophy in the humorist's remark, "It was never my ignorance that done me up, but the things I know'd that wasn't so." The great enemies of intellectual life are superstition, gullibility, and fallacious reasoning. A mere knowledge of facts, important as that is, is no safeguard against these. A conscious desire and resolve to think clearly is the true remedy. Our national success will depend largely upon the development of a generation of men and women who have formed a love and habit of clear thinking and who can do their part in solving the problems that confront civilized man today.

X, n. In our alphabet being a needless letter has an added invincibility to the attacks of the spelling reformers, and like them, will doubtless last as long as the language.

ORTHOGRAPHY, n. The science of spelling by the eye instead of the ear.