Friday, December 11, 2009

Look Mom, I Can Spell - Almost

Lately I’ve been impressed with the quality of my own spelling. When I started this blog, I decided not to run spell check, so that my non-dyslexic readers could experience the pleasure of sounding out everything they read. While my spelling isn’t always accorate, I did endure nearly four hundred hours of one-on-one phonix training as a child. So my guesses are always phonetic.

But here’s the thing. My spelling has improved. A lot. By cutting Wednesday’s post into word and running spell check, it appears I misspelled 10 out of 477 words. 98% accuracy isn’t perfect, but if that post was a spelling test, I would have gotten a high A. And the words that I did misspell were all really close. Spending 30 seconds running spell check, and I could have been error free.

I’ve noticed my improved spelling in my fiction writing too. I completed the first draft of my first novel about eight years ago. At that time, I misspelled about 25% of the words I attempted to write. I would have to stop and correct my spelling at the end of each sentance. And it would often take me ten or fifteen minutes to figure out the correct spelling of the words I wanted to use. But I can’t even remember the last time I made it to step ten in the dyslexic’s guide to spell check. Now my fiction is just as accurate as this blog. I type a couple paragraphs, zip through spell check, and move on.

I know that I still misspell a lot of words that the average twelve year old can write with no problem. But I railrly feel self concious about my spelling. I can limp along well enough to get my point across. And my failures tend to fall close enough to the mark that they are easily corrected.

So I was a bit shocked when my husband started making fun of my grocery list yesturday. It turns out, of the fifteen items I put on the list, two were spell correctly. His favorite was pretselz. Apparently that isn’t how it’s spelled.

I’m not sure why I can spell revelation without problem, but I still haven’t learned how to spell cheeze. My guess is practice. I’ve been spending more and more time writing. And after correcting the same word a hundred times, my guesses slowly move closer to the mark. But I never worry about making my grocery lists legible. Perhaps I just need to write a cook book. Then I might figure out how to spell orenges.


Joke of the Day
A boy asked his teacher, "How do you spell ichael?"
"Do you mean Michael?" the teacher asked.
"No, I already have the M down."

2 comments:

Ray Ray said...

I experience the same thing. One day I spell like a whiz kid surprising myself with spelling mile-long words correctly and other days I can't spell kat wright. I'm learning that a lot of my spelling errors are because I don't pronounce some words correctly, like interpreter, I've written two novels over the last fifteen years that has that word in it at least a hundred times, and each time, I have to waste time looking it up. I just recently started keeping a list of these words on a fill I keep open as I write. It saves time, as you know, sometimes I cannot spell enough of a word for a spell checker to suggest a correct spelling. I use Google search a lot if spell check isn't helpful enough. I can usually pick the word out of the suggestion list. BTW my grocery list are atrocious too. Sometimes, even I can't decipher what I wrote down. Happy holidays.

Anonymous said...

I'm so glad I found your blog i have never talked to any one ells who has dyslexic,I though i was stuid all this years, I cried after reading you comments. I knwo I'm not alone it makes me so happy. thank you from the bottom of my heart * fyi no spell check used *