Sunday Star/'Have a Spelling Style of Your Own'

by Ring Lardner

 

"Have a Spelling Style
of Your Own," Says Ring

TO the editor: I see by the papers where they are putting on a old fashion spell down in Detroit and giveing away prizes to the kids that can spell the best and etc. and a event like this kind always stirs up a lot of int. in a town and is a good thing for a town though it does seem kind of funny to hold a spelling contest in a place where they put a z in Cousins.

But any way they's no subject which I am more interested in it than the subject of spelling: and this may come as a surprise to some of my readers as the impression seems to of got around that I am not a A. No. 1 speller though nothing could he further than the truth. They may be a good many wds. which I don't spell them the same way like they are spelled in the dictionary but that is no sign that my way ain't just as good and maybe a little better and I always say that if people can understand easy what a man means, why that means he is a good speller and I will bet you can't find no wds. in any of my writeings that is ¹⁄₂ as hard to understand as wds. you will find in the dictionary.

In fact the dictionary way of spelling wds. is so hard that after every wd. they half to write down some other wd. that means the same thing so as people can tell what the 1st wd. meant.

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SPEAKING about the dictionary it has got a couple of chapters in it which you can read without going to sleep and one of them tells where several different men of learning has tried to fix up our language so as every letter would have only one sound and as soon as you seen a wd. spelled out you would know the right way to pronounce it, and one of these men said the only way that could be done would be by adding 14 more letters to the alphabet. This idear was throwed in the ash can on motion of the people that makes alphabet soup.

In another chapter it tells where a man named Ellis was trying experiments with the letters we have all ready got and he found out that you can spell the wd. scissors 6,000 different ways. It didn't tell what he done with himself the rest of the morning. And it didn't tell why we half to go on spelling it scissors when sizzers would cut your nails just as pretty.

H. L. Mencken has wrote a book on the American language which he brings out in it how different we spell than the English though we are supposed to both be useing the same tongue.

THE DICTIONARY WAY OF SPELLING IS SO HARD THAT AFTER EVERY WORD THEY HALF TO WRITE DOWN ANOTHER WORD TO TELL YOU WHAT IT MEANS

Well, they will be more and more differents as the yrs. go by, so what I say is that it don't do no harm for me to spell a wd. different from the way some old English dictionary writer spelled it, provided I make the spelling easier, which is what Americans generally always do. Like for inst. an Englishman would say:

"I have the honour to inclose a cheque."

Whereas we would say:

"I have the honor to enclose a check," which is two less letters which don't amt. to much in one sentence but would be a big savings in a long book. Take Well's history book for example, and if he had used American spelling I bet he could of wrote it in at least a ¹⁄₂ hr. less time.

While we are on the subject of spelling, though I don't want to discourage none of the Detroit boys and gals that's trying to improve themselfs along those lines, yet it seems nessary to say at this pt that spelling is something which you can't master no more than singing alto. Either you are a born good speller or a born bum speller and If you are a good speller you won't half to spend no time in school studying how to spell this wd. or that.

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ON the other hand if you are a rotten speller you will keep on being a rotten speller though if you have got a good memory you can get high marks.

Like for inst., I know a gal that when she was in school she always got a 100 in spelling because she studied all the wds. that was in the book and memorized how to spell them. But for the 1st. 2 yrs. after we was married we lived on Prairie Ave. in Chicago and every time she wanted to write and tell one of her friends her address, she would half to go out first and look at the street sign. But a woman don't half to be a good speller to be a good wife and in fact some of the best wifes I know has their bad spells.

But they's another wd, of cheer which I might breath to folks that has trouble with their spelling and that is that some of the most famous people in history was rotten spellers and men like Shakespeare and Chaucer and etc. was so bad that it you read their stuff you will sometimes find the same wd. spelled 4 and 5 different ways on the same page. Geo. Washington, Babe Ruth and John L. Sullivan is others who might be mentioned as guys that clumb to the pinnacle but if you asked any of them to spell pinnacle they would probably bust you in the jaw.

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AS for good spelling being nessary for financial success it would almost seem like the facts of the case was just opp. The richest people in the world is the boys that draws the comical cartoons. These guys makes more money than a boot 1egger, but when they get their cartoons all drawed they half to send out for a copy of yesterday's paper before they can sign their name.

If those ain't enough alibis to tell teacher, why you might mention that nobody but a nut could spell our language right—that is according to the dictionary with all the paradoxs and inconsistents and etc., which we have got in it. We may think the Russians and frogs has got a hard lingo to master, but suppose you was a foreigner going to school in this country and you thought you was getting wise to the system of spelling when all of a sudden you would run across 5 wds. like lough, bough, dough, rough and cough. There is 5 wds. spelled the same way only for the 1st letter. Try and make them rhyme.

RING W. LARDNER.

Great Neck. Jan. 6