Spelling vs Grammar

Deos aynnoe else rmbmeeer the acritle a wlihe ago taht mntnioed how ploepe cluod raed wodrs and sntecnes eevn if the mdidle was srelcmbard as long as the frist and lsat ltetres rmaenied uchagnend?

I don’t think so. Punctuation and spelling are very similar: both are issues only when putting the spoken word into writing. You can think and speak perfectly well without either. Plato, for one, wasn’t big on punctuation but somehow I don’t take this as evidence of a muddled mind.

And nobody uses semi-colons anyway.

And punctuation fetishism á la Lynne Truss is unspeakably dull.

I’d be very curious to know the evidence that Plato wasn’t big on punctuation. Other than there being no evidence of the use of punctuation for the Greek language in his life time.

Here’s another proposition. Spelling does not manifest itself in spoken language, whereas most grammatical functions do. Thus, grammatical errors are more likely to result from a failure to master the rules of language as such, whereas spelling errors are more akin to transcription errors.

Intellectually, stops matter a great deal.

Nonsense. Aesthetically, stops matter a great deal. But misunderstanding of punctuation rules is no more an indication of faulty thinking than poor spelling would be.

It seems like a useful distinction for everyday use, and the link between syntax and punctuation is much tighter than that between semantics and spelling.

Nonsense again. Sufficiently incorrect spelling can make a text far more difficult to decipher than even the worst punctuation. In fact, while poorly punctuated–even entirely unpunctuated–prose may be unsightly and clumsy to read, its meaning is almost always completely discernible.

The real distinction between spelling and punctuation rules is that spelling rules are completely clear-cut. Hence, anybody can learn to spell as perfectly as anyone else–especially with the help of a dictionary. Who wants to insist on the importance of something that anybody can master?

Punctuation, on the other hand, is a matter of judgment and style, on which reasonable people can, and routinely do, differ enormously. Such disagreements are grand opportunities to indulge the very worst excesses of quasi-intellectual snobbery. Indeed, merely by elevating punctuation over spelling, one discreetly signals that one’s sensitivity to the subtleties of prose far exceeds that of the jackbooted spelling fanatics.

I suppose if I had to choose between always having my sentences parse correctly and always spelling every word properly, I’d choose the former.

Of course–your friends will forgive you the occasional spelling slip-up. But if one were to catch you punctuating like a redneck/businessman/technogeek/middlebrow….

CRAP CRAP CRAP. I meant “4,” not “5.” The nitpicker hoist by his own petard.

For the record, I make no defense of my poor spelling. I just spell badly. Blame phonics.

Dan Simon (10), you’re right. Puncuation is a matter of choice. If I choose to mean, in my prior example, that Anne lives with Bob, I will choose to punctuate as I did in the first sentence. If I choose to mean that she lives with Rick, I will choose to punctuate as in the second example. But if I choose to mean that she lives with Bob, and still punctuate in the second manner, that is my choice; I have chosen to mislead my audience as to my meaning.
There come times where punctuational choices do not necessarily affect meaning (do I insert a comma after the penultimate item in a series, inventory, or list?); this does not mean that such choices are never dictated by a desire for clear meaning.

Spoken language has lots of non-verbal signals — body language, tone, emphasis — that written language doesn’t have. So the comparison doesn’t help.

Still, privileging punctuation over spelling seems to me wrong. Our standardized punctuation is more recent than our standardized spelling. Fashions in punctuation change. Most earlier English writers punctuated much more lightly than we do; the Victorians, though, punctuated more heavily: when was the last time you saw someone use a colash (a colon, followed by a dash)?

Was it Twain who invented the compositor who inserted a comma every time he took a breath and started a new paragraph every time he yawned?

Damn. Straight!

Some twenty years ago I attended a seminar by the general editor of the complete works of Herman Melville. While admitting that much of his work consisted of reconciling small discrepancies among various versions of the texts, he insisted that even the most innocuous correction of punctuation could be significant. Imagine, he said, that the first line of Moby Dick ran: “Call me, Ishmael.”

Mmm… I’m about as prescriptivist as its possible to get and still actually be a linguist, and all that means is that I think it’s normal that people should want to not sound like nitwits when they speak or write and that the things we teach them about language ought to reflect this. The truth is that language is pretty redundant, that most of the time the niceties can be ignored without loss of meaning, and that the minutiae aren’t really so big a deal. But, if you don’t know all the bizarre, archaic, often stupid rules of spelling and punctuation, you run the risk of looking like a dolt.

On the other hand, sound empirical studies show that prescriptive rules of style, spelling and punctuation can make language both easier to write and easier to read, but often don’t. In most of the world, these facts are taken seriously even if they are widely ignored. Good solid studies show that it’s easier to read written Texts when all the Nouns are capitalised like in German, while I expect that the English rules concerning Capitalisation – that all Words derived from proper Nouns must have Capitals – actually make it harder. Generally, you can safely put a comma in English where there is a pause in speech without screwing up or looking like an idiot, in contrast to German, which uses too many commas to make sense.

But one should avoid vulgar Orwellism in thinking about language. Unclear language does not intrinsically imply unclear thought any more than allowing same-sex marriage denies people the ability to make distinctions between gay and straight relationships. (A misconception all too common to people and lawyers alike, particularly Maggie Gallagher over at the Volokhs.)

while poorly punctuate–even entirely unpunctuated–prose may be unsightly and clumsy to read, its meaning is almost always completely discernible.

Oh, and “execution” was a misspelling; we meant to say “execration.” Our regrets to the family or families of Bob a pianist and a cellist.

Blah (no. 7)—the regularity of spelling in Spanish does indeed make mistakes less likely; there is one pitfall, at least in the Costa Rican Spanish with which I am most familiar: a ‘b’ and a ‘v’ are sounded identically as a voiced bilabial fricative (which does not exist in English). This can lead to mis-spellings, particularly among the less well-educated. Examples I have seen include ‘travajar’ instead of the correct ‘trabajar’ (to work), ‘dever’ instead of ‘deber’ (to owe) and, most amusingly, between ‘botar’ (to throw out, as in garbage) and ‘votar’ (to vote.)

In the non-Gallagher portion of Volokh today, Jim Lindgren examines the puncuation (and more) in Harriet Miers’ response to the Senate pre-hearing questionnaire. It ain’t pretty.

Spelling and punctuation are equally critical. Their utility varies according to the specific sentence being written, but routinely deprived of correct forms of one or the other simply results in bad writing.

Good writing is like good cooking. Ingredients, placed in just the right combination, at just the right time, become something sublime. True, anyone can make a peanut butter sandwich, and poorly spelled and ungrammatical sentences can convey a simple message.

But sometimes, I want to read a book with flair, and fun, and artistic sensibility. My God, some people can write. Sometimes it’s difficult to finish a few paragraphs by Saul Bellow, just because the writing is so beautiful. To re-read those sentences, even aloud, is a joy.

But spelling versus grammar? It’s like trying to choose between wit and wisdom. I want both.

Re: “I’ve often thought about what that indefinable quality is that makes Bellow so great. Now I know. He spells and punctuates correctly.”

Oh, for Pete’s sake. I meant that Bellow’s thoughts were expressed beautifully, in part because of good sentence structure and spelling. If his sentences instead included gross or frequent spelling errors, and the grammar made his thoughts hard to follow, he would not *be* Bellow.

Criminey.