By Robin Garrison Leach
I really have a problem with words that are spelled incorrectly. It almost hurts, and I know that’s crazy. But I can’t help it. All around me, all day long, I see misspelled words on billboards. Bumper stickers. TV captions.
Words with apostrophes in the wrong place. Words without a necessary apostrophe. The wrong “THERE.” It’s enough to make me crave a can of spray paint.
When I see a misspelling or grammar error in public, I experience an immediate, visceral discomfort that I can’t control.
Am I all alone in this? Sure, there are more important issues in everyday life. War. Guzzling gas prices. Murder Hornets. In light of these things, spelling errors are small potato(e)s. But when did we stop trying to be literate?
It’s not that we don’t know the difference between “we’ll” and “well.” Or that we have trouble remembering the correct spelling for “please” (no EEZE in that word). We all went to school. Who can forget the nail-biting, nerve-pinging spelling bee competitions of elementary school? We knew how to spell then.
I think we’ve just gotten lazy. We traded accuracy for speed. Sounds like the word, looks similar. Good enough.
Well — you know what? IT’S WRONG.
A restaurant I pass every day on my way to work has a large sign out front for daily specials. Yesterday, it said:
“TRY ARE PIES. THERE DELICIOUS!”
My eyes almost started bleeding. I watched a school bus roll past this same sign, and thought of all the kids staring dully out the windows. What a great reading lesson for them:
For the complete column see this week’s edition of the Centralia Fireside Guard
