Spellbound

Anyone who is a fan of documentary films may have come across the wonderful film 'Spellbound' that follows a number of children taking part in America's national Spelling Bee - a competition that happens every year and is a big big thing (the final even gets broadcast on ESPN). This is, in no small part, due to the prize at stake - the victor not only gets the title and a cup, but also gets a first-class education paid for, so no small potatoes here. However, given the amount of work that goes into their preparation for the competition (one of the contestants mentions learning something like 2000 words a day) then it's fully deserving, if not somewhat sadistic as well (kids from 10 upwards, I think it is, compete). Still, if it keeps them occupied. Anyway, for those who have not seen this film, I heartily recommend it. However, given all this interest in spelling things correctly, it's perhaps rather ironic that the college student population and upwards (in age) seem to have a lot of difficulty in spelling. Or at least, a few of the people i've met do.

Now, firstly you may be thinking - hang on Chris, remember different country, speaking a dialect - they drop the 'u' from colour and neighbour, they put the ER the other way round in words like theatre and metre, and they also spell gray like grey, or is it vice versa? I forget. Anyway, i'm definitely not talking about those, but just your other run-of-the-mill words that seem to come with an alarming number of variations. Now, in saying this, I also have to admit that the UK is not the most literate place in the world these days - by any stretch of the imagination. Many of you may have heard my story of the three final year student nurses who didn't know how to pronounce the word deter (they thought it was det-ter, to rhyme with better) nor knew what it meant. Another disconcerting thing over here is the tendency for many people to freely mix capitals and lower case like it's the right thing to do. So we end up with seNTenCes tHat sTaRT looKINg rAThER siLLy. Now, at least this hasn't started in the UK yet. At least to my knowledge. Now, if you'll excuse me, i'm going to run a spellchecker on this, just to make sure i've not shot myself in the foot.