Am I being impossibly stuffy when I admit that bad spelling drives me crazy? So many of my fellow bloggers seem to make certain elementary spelling mistakes over and over again. I don’t mean typos, which we all make from time to time, or misspelling of unusual, seldom used words. The ones that drive me nuts are the ones that I thought we all had drilled into us in primary school: to, too, two, their, there, picture, pitcher. Actually I saw this last one misspelled outside a school just the other day, as in “Don’t forget pitcher day September 29th”, sad really.
I also find it rather sad that so many Canadians don’t bother to change the default US dictionary when they install software programs. A whole generation is growing up assuming that the only correct way to spell colour is “color”, centre is “center” and honour is “honor”.
I suppose that distinctive Canadian spelling may have reached the end of its usefulness, but there will always be a need to distinguish between pictures and pitchers. On Halloween it’s a good idea, when looking at two small crones, to know which witch is yours even when they’re the same size and their costumes are similar too.
